Disinfection and vaccination 

“When larvae are sick to the point that they’re about to sporulate, they emit a signal to say ‘that’s it, I’m sick. It’s over for me, I’m a risk to you,’” says Stroeymeyt. “That triggers the other ants to destroy it. They then chew it into little pieces and spray it with formic acid to disinfect everything.”

Nurse ants do try and save those in the early stages of infection. They do this by removing the fungal spores from the bodies of sick ants, chewing the spores with their acid, before spitting them out. This has a double benefit — while you expect these caregivers to be at a higher risk of infection due, these brief exposures result in a lower than usual rate of infection. Immunization.

Eric Shattuck, assistant professor of research at the University of Texas in San Antonio, studies the connection between behaviour and infectious disease in humans. He says there are overlaps between behaviours shown in humans and animals. Zebra finches, for example, display stronger sickness behaviour when alone, but this weakens when faced with group social pressure. He compares this to healthcare workers who work even though they are sick. “They’re still compelled, whether that’s spoken or unspoken, to keep attending work, even though that’s in contradiction to the biological drives that are telling us to rest and recuperate.”

Other animals prefer a more passive approach to social distancing. Vampire bats display lethargic behaviour when sick and spend less time grooming each other. Avoidance is another common response to the presence of disease, with many species going out of their way to escape infection. Trinidadian guppies and Caribbean spiny lobsters have both evolved the ability to recognise when fellow members of their species are sick and try to avoid them. To Stockmaier, it’s a behaviour we should find familiar.

“We know this behaviour —  if we go to the grocery store and someone sneezes next to us, we will probably step away,” says Stockmaier. “We would have done that before COVID, even though we’re more sensitised to it now.”

Stockmaier, Stroeymeyt and Shattuck are all in agreement on one thing. While there are lessons to be learned from the way animals respond to disease, we must keep in mind the differences in our social structures and avoid making direct comparisons. 

“In humans, it wouldn’t be desirable to sacrifice individuals for the sake of the group, which ants do, because that’s their interest,” says Stroeymeyt. “They have this particular organisation where only the Queen reproduces, and humans don’t have that. We want to save everybody.”