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pismire have less of a sweet tooth and more of a druthers for salty snacks , at least when they live in salt - poor country far from the sea , a new cogitation come up .
All animals — from pismire to humanity — involve salt to maintain their body ’s nerve and muscular tissue activity and water system balance .
Ants far from the coast are more attracted to a dilute salt (NaCl) solution than to a more concentrated sugar solution, probably because plant-eating ants in salt-poor inland areas are salt-starved.
Ants , though , typically cloud over sources of dinero because they take it for energy .
But researchers suspected those taste differences might vary with emplacement and test the salt - versus - sweet-flavored preference of ants at various distance from the sea , a source of common salt .
The " cafeteria experiment " offered the ants a choice of cotton balls soaked in salinity or loot solution . Ants that lived more than 60 miles ( 100 kilometers ) inland favor the salt solution ( which was less concentrated than the sugar solution ) .
This preference was mainly true of plant - eating ant , since carnivorous emmet get enough Strategic Arms Limitation Talks from their quarry . ( likewise herbivorous brute such as cows and cervid get their salt from salt licks , while wolves and other predators get it from the bloody sum they eat . )
The researchers want to see if this pattern holds for all insects and even microbes . In particular , study lead author Michael Kaspari design to see if spraying salt on forest foliage litter cranks up ecosystem bodily process , just as Gatorade improve the public presentation of sportswoman teams .
