It sounds like a scene from a Spielberg film: an injured worker undergoes an emergency amputation, performed by one of her colleagues, allowing her to live another day. But this is not a human story it is behaviour seen in ants. While it is not the first time wound care has been seen in ants, scientists say their discovery is the first example of a non-human animal carrying out life-saving amputations. Surprisingly, the insects appear to tailor the treatment they give to the location of injury. "The ants are able to diagnose, to some extent, the wounds and treat them accordingly to maximise the survival of the injured," said Dr Erik Frank, from the University of Lausanne. Writing in the journal Current Biology, Frank and colleagues report how they cut Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) on their right hind limb, then observed the responses of their nest mates for a week. "Nest mates would begin licking the wound before moving up the injured limb with their mouthparts until they reached the trochanter. The nest mates then proceeded to repeatedly bite the injured leg until it was cut off," the team wrote. By contrast, no amputations were observed for the nine ants with injuries on their tibia, or lower leg. Instead, these ants received only wound care from their nest mates in the form of licking. "It is another example of an adaptation in the lives of social insect workers in which workers help each other to work for their colony and to help their colony," [Prof Francis Ratnieks at the University of Sussex] said. "Such as when a worker honeybee makes a waggle dance to direct a nest mate to food, or when a worker sacrifices its life in defence of the colony, or here where workers amputate the limbs of an injured or infected worker."