Published in Horizon, 28 Jul 2015
Resistance to known antibiotics is one of the greatest concerns of 21st-century medicine, but finding new ones is proving difficult. Now scientists in the EU believe the answer may lie with insects such as ants.
There are tens of thousands of known species of ant. One of the most evolved groups is the leafcutters, so called because they march up trees, snip away at leaves and bring the pieces back underground to the colony, where they are fed to a fungus.
The fungus grows and creates food for the ants. In essence, then, the ants are farming – and they have been doing it for millions of years longer than humans have. […]
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