Sunday, August 26, 2012

The "Anternet" - nature's internet works like ours

Ants, it seems, behave in response to the amount of food the same way the Internet handles packets of data. If there's less food (think of it as bandwidth), fewer gatherers (packets) leave the nest. If the net is broken by researchers preventing gatherers from returning to the nest, the nest, after a delay, stops sending out new ants. Ants can transmit only very limited amounts of information, but the way they operate, like the Internet, allows them to circumvent that limit and forage and gather with great efficiency.
COMMENT: Cool. 

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