“POWERFUL AND RESILIENT” BITE.
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The bite of army ants is so “powerful and resilient” that in some regions they are traditionally used to suture people. “It is not surprising that their jaws can remain attached to the finger of a goatherd long enough to make the 3,500-kilometer journey these birds make each year to visit their breeding grounds in southern Spain,” he noted.
The results of this study highlight the value of long-term monitoring programs for detecting and understanding the functioning of rare and hard-to-detect ecological processes, such as interactions between species.
Data from Doñana, comprising more than 3,500 surveys over 15 years, show that only 1% of individuals surveyed had amputations, although the actual incidence in goat populations may be much higher.
Such a bite can cause severe bleeding, ischemia, necrosis and bacterial infections that can lead to the death of the goat before it is returned to Spain.
