Please explain how an organism might adapt to such low temperatures. Hint, recall how ice on the sidewalk melts (is kept liquid) when salt is applied.

Question

How does that relate to salt melting ice?

Answer 1

Ice melts when salt is applied because the salt begins to dissolve into the film of water that it comes into contact with on the surface of the ice; this lowers the freezing point, because salt water has a lower freezing point than pure water. Many organisms have physiological adaptations, such as antifreeze proteins, to prevent ice from forming in their cells in extremely cold environments!

Answer 2

Hi Pey! So there are two parts to your question.

First in regards to salt: Adding salt or other compounds to water can reduce the freezing temperature of water. This is because when salt is broken down in to it's ion components (NA+ and Cl-) it makes it more diffcult for the H2O molecules to orient themselves in order to bond together and create ice.

How does an organism do this? There's actually a really cool example of this with on of my favorite organisms, the wood frog. Before it gets to cold, wood frogs amass large amount of urea and glucose. Similar to salt, urea and glucose can raise the freezing temperature of water in the frogs body, preventing freezing and allowing it to live in colder temperatures

Here are links also explaining everything I just said

How salt de-ices sidewalks:

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-salt-melts-ice-3976057#:~:text=Salt%20melts%20ice%20and%20helps,bit%20of%20liquid%20water%20available.&text=The%20more%20particles%20(ions)%20formed,more%20it%20lowers%20freezing%20point.

How wood frogs can survive the cold:

https://www.breakthroughs.com/health-tomorrow/nature%E2%80%99s-antifreeze-holds-answer-preserving-human-organs#:~:text=The%20wood%20frog%20is%20built,in%20vital%20organs%20from%20freezing.