Underground Sugar?

What if there's an anti-yeast that excretes sugar instead of digesting it?

 

Maybe have them get the sugar from the roots of the plants they eat like how you get cane sugar from sugarcane?

 

Is there a reason it has too be sugar? You mention rock salt, that would be a fine way to go. Plus, salt is treated as a thing that wards of evil and bad luck in a number of cultures.

Depending on what you've thought up as their food supply, you might want to think of spin-offs on sugar producing plants. Sugar cane needs a lot of sun, water and heat, so that might be difficult. But here in Belgium, sugar is won from sugar beets. Huge things that store pretty well. So they could grow a variant of that or they could trade it for the minerals they mine from their mountain.

ANd one other thing, if they're trading for spices like cinnamon, then what's stopping them from trading sugar? Sugar was the number one global bulk trading good for a good long while. Any breakdown in trade relationships or supply could have disastrous consequences then.

 

Pretty much all plants have glucose (blood sugar) in them. If it has to be sucrose (table sugar) then there could be a magic feeding underground plant. Or there could be naturally occurring sugar crystals in the rock (or a crystal sugar can be extracted from). If it can be any sort of sugar the cave people (not even gonna try at that name) could take whatever starch/grain they have and use special enzymes (from a cave creature) along with water to make it into glucose. See Enzymatic hydrolysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for more details on the process. See Glucose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for more information on glucose.

 

Well, if you want something different you could go with something that's more interesting, in terms of chemical properties. There's all kinds of stuff that dissolve or explode stuff. And since life underground is hard, the risks involved in throwing around all those dangerous chemicals add to the hardness.

 

How about honey pot ants? Where the ants' abdomen swells up as a hoeney store.
They're underground and honey is basically a sugar.
Honeypot ant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As eventor66 says - If you want a sugar then all you need is a way of digesting cellulose (e.g. wood) or a larger carbohydrate/starch (such as a potato) - because that's all a sugar is effectively. So, for example, a fungus could digest cellulose and make sugars in a special gland.

 

Hi,

I'd go with the sugar from plant roots. I can easily imagine some sort of tree having roots that go a hundred feet down. And you can harvest the sugar much the same way you harvest rubber - find - well a root in this case, scrape the bark off, stick a spigot in it and let the sugar sap drip down. Add to that if you want conflict, that they can only harvest the surgar from the shallower caves - the ones where more of the monsters live. You know the ones - the ones that hunt the sugar sucking prey!

Cheers, Greg.

 

Here's an idea: hydrothermal bacteria that consume water and carbon dioxide and excrete disaccharides (sugars). If your creatures live underground, there could be a lot of geothermal activity, hot springs, etc... that could drive thermosynthesis. But all of those words don't have to be in your story, unless you are doing a sic fi... anyway, that's the idea and the sugar crystals would collect on the banks of the underground rivers and steam vents.

EDIT: Of course, plant roots are also a fantastic idea since starches and sugars are abundant in plants and it wouldn't take a lot to get what you want.

 

Thermosynthesis: That is fkn genius. Beautiful sf. Sounds like it makes sense, which is all you need, especially how it gathers. And you can show it through the effects without having to go into the actual process.

 

You could have a mold or moss that grows that tastes sweet.

 

Furthering Terry Greer, I was thinking that your Chupabracadabras (sp?) could domesticate a creature that travels to the surface and brings back the processed sugar like the ants do. Just a thought