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This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher Entagata. Got a minute?

We humans take medicine when we're sick. As do our primate cousins. Chimps, for example,

snack on a bitter African shrub to combat intestinal worms. But the habit extends even to

invertebrates. Take fruit flies, which sip alcohol to ward off parasitic

wasps. Or wood ants, which line their nests with antifungal antibacterial tree sap. Now researchers

in Finland report that ants there that have encountered a pathogenic fungus appear to fight

the infection by eating foods high and free radicals. Those are molecules with a talent

for causing cell damage, in this case to the cells of the fungus. That's according to a study in the

journal Evolution. The researchers collected some 400 wild ants. They exposed some to the fungus and left

the rest alone. Then they offered up a sort of eggy custard, either plain or laced with free radicals in the form of hydrogen peroxide.

Uninfected ants didn't want anything to do with the radical rich food, which makes sense.

Exactly. I mean, we don't take painkillers on a daily basis or we don't take antimicrobial agents on a daily

basis because that would have really severe side effects on our organism.

Dahlia L. Fritok, an insect immunologist at the University of Helsinki.

Sick ants, on the other hand, preferred the peroxide diet, even before developing a full-blown

infection, and the medicine up their odds of survival some 30%.

I would definitely go free.

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