Follow

It'd be awesome to learn how ants do scouting and organize to find food. It's incredible how they manage to form a stream of workers within days once there is any food residue. But I never notice any scouting, so they must be quite efficient at searching or following scent.

@noeldemartin I have a vague memory of seeing a documentary about ants finding a new nest location. There's an algorithm to that. Maybe finding food is similar. I believe they send out ants in all directions and they all report back whether they find something or not. Each ant will show a level of enthusiasm and more ants will follow the most enthusiastic ant, but some will follow others. These groups also report back. Repeat, and they soon arrive at an optimum without risk of individual bias.

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Noel's Mastodon

This is an instance-of-one managed by Noel De Martin.