What Do Ants Know That We Don’t?
8th July 2013
But insect behavior mimicking human networks — another example are the ant-like solutions to the traveling salesman problem provided by the ant colony optimization algorithm — is actually not what’s most interesting about ant networks. What’s far more interesting are the parallels in the other direction: What have the ants worked out that we humans haven’t thought of yet?
July 10th, 2013 at 11:30
“Ever notice how ant colonies so successfully explore and exploit resources in the world … to find food at 4th of July picnics, for example? You may find it annoying. But as an ecologist who studies ants and collective behavior, I think it’s intriguing — especially the fact that it’s all done without any central control.”
What a shame that the one lesson she fails to learn is that exploring and exploiting resources works best without any central control. Henry Ford, not a committee, invented the automobile assembly line.