Okay, now I’m curious. The staff report on the cleanliness and fastidiousness and overall primness and properness of ants had this statement:
Have any of the major pharmaceutical companies realized the gold mine awaiting them in ant-ibiotics? Are there any medications based on these remarkable ant-imicrobial agents?
Just wondering… 
Have you ever tried to milk an ant? :dubious:
All we need is for someone to breed giant ants.
Do you remember or have access to the 1954 movie “Them!” ? All I know about ants came from that movie…and based on that movie, ants secrete boric acid which has applications in eyedrops and hand soap (20 mule team Borax)
I thought ants used formic acid, at least in their venom.
RR
Does anyone know of any ant-derived medicines? I think we can safely dispense with boric acid.
Ants secrete formic acid. Boric acid is the most common ingredient in ant baits, and hence harldy likely to be a product they naturally secrete.
All animals have developed methods to avoid dying from all the horrible stuff growing in the environment. Even humans have this neat trick that keeps us from going septic most of the time when Something Bad happens in the anal region.
I remember many years ago some people got excited when they realized that frogs don’t get infections in cuts in their skin despite living in swamp water. Must be a great antibiotic in the skin. The result? No frog based antibiotic yet.
What works for frogs or ants probably doesn’t work for humans.
So yes, people know that ants have the ability to avoid a lot of infections. But no, no miracle drug is likely to be found studying them.