Physiological and Ethological Disruptions Induced by a Mixture of Saccharose/Sucralose 99.5/0.5 - A Study on Ants as Models

Experiments made on ants as biological models revealed that a saccharose/sucralose 95.5/.05 mixture increased sugar water consumption, decreased general activity, precision of reaction, audacity, brood caring, cognition and ability in acquiring visual conditioning (short term memory), induced aggressiveness against nestmates, and slightly reduced tactile perception. It may not change the speed of locomotion and did not affect middle and long term memory. The adverse effects may be related to the strong sugared taste of the mixture (in presence of sugar and the saccharose/sucralose mixture, the ants slightly preferred the mixture) though it contains little sugar, and to the toxic chloropropanols sucralose may produce. When ants consumed again sugar instead of a saccharose/sucralose mixture, their aggressiveness rapidly decreased during eight hours and entirely vanished in 29 hours.