Gold is a valuable cherished metal . It has been used throughout history as money and for jewelery yield . Today it has many more applications , including USA in medicine , electronics , and even food and swallow . Gold is therefore extremely attempt after , and a demand for it is always present . Although many mines exist for the extraction of amber from the primer , as these move juiceless we necessitate to find new areas which can cater gold . geographic expedition for these site is a very costly activity and try out difficult at times . Intriguingly , ants and termite may be the response to this problem .
An earlier subject field found that mounds produced by the termiteT. tumulican successfully be used to discover gold concealed below because this mineral was also present in the nest itself . Not all termites build mound on the surface of the ground , however ; some form large nests underground . These white ant are particularly abundant in country of Australia where gold can be regain . This contribute researchers to set forth investigating whether these subterranean mounds could also be used to indicate the presence of Au . In a report published in theJournal of Geochemical Exploration , two researcher collected territory samples from 3 dissimilar type of nest ; heap - shape white ant , subterraneous termite , and an ant species . They did this along a transect in an domain lie with to contain particular mineral , such as amber , take into account the scientist to see how or whether the content of the nest represents what lies beneath . They also used sampling points where the mineral substance of the land was unknown for comparative measures .
The study chance that ants brought the largest concentration of gold to their nest ; up to 24.4 parts per billion of gold was constitute in the nest material , in comparison to 7.4 and 8.4 of the mound forming termite and subterranean termite , severally . They also regain that the insects could vertically move the indicators gold , copper and zinc from at least 1.4 metre inscrutable .
This was the first survey to investigate the usefulness of subterranean nest in geochemical exploration . It demonstrates that the insects investigated could be an exceedingly useful tool in the identification of areas containing valuable mineral , with the potential to reduce geographic expedition costs and fourth dimension .
