Wild Ting Blog
I’ve always wondered if ants were attracted to artificial sweeteners, or are only human tongues fooled? And if they were, since there’s no caloric value to artificial sweeteners, would ants just constantly feed off them and die because they’d be expounding their energy on something of no caloric value? If so, that’d be a really cool, non-toxic way to get rid of them!
So I devised this experiment. I took a couple of Q-tips, labeled on end with a black mark, and dunked it in Coke and Diet Coke. The Coke was the black mark. I then set the Q-tips outside:
After a while, here’s what happened:
The one on the left I moved over closer to the second one to take this picture, but in the process I lost all the ants… except for the one lonely guy sucking away. So this is pretty clear… ants don’t go for the Diet Coke, only the real, genuine sugar high-fructose corn syrup in regular Coke.
An aside: I did this experiment on my back porch. When I closed the door behind me, it locked and I was outside without my keys… or shoes. Good thing I was fully dressed otherwise. The good news is I had my phone with me so I could take pictures of ants sucking on Coke soaked Q-tips. The bad news is this experiment costed me $100 for a guy to come out and get me back into the house (which in itself might be subject of another post).
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Ah, the price we pay for science. Perhaps the ants are actually experimenting on you ala Hitchhiker’s Guide: how much will Dale pay to get back into his house? =)
Hmm never thought about that… I’ve never read Hitchhiker’s Guide, maybe I should start?
fascinating experiment!
It’s also interesting that yeasts, molds, and bacteria don’t grow in sodas. Even they “know” there are no valuable nutrients there, yet so many people drink them regularly.
Well we eat a lot of things that have no nutritional value.
Is it because of the acidity as to why yeast and bacteria don’t grow in sodas?
Actually, I’m not sure if this experiment really makes the case. Humans aren’t fooled by artificial sweeteners. You can’t hand a diet soda to someone expecting real soda without them realizing it. It’s just that humans are willing to tolerate diet soda for other reasons, such as avoiding weight gain, decreasing cavities, etc. If you could remove all factors except for pure taste, I’m pretty sure 99% of humans would go for real soda.
I think a better experiment would be to starve some ants for a while, then give them a puddle of only diet coke, and see if they go for it or completely ignore it.