Ants Have a Simple Solution to Traffic Congestion

Ants seem to have cracked a problem we humans haven't. While our cars get clogged in jams, ants help each other to move around their colony much more efficiently. Understanding how they do this could inspire more effective routing of road traffic.

Collective intelligence expert Dirk Helbing from the Dresden University of Technology in Germany and his team investigated how ants move around their colony. They set up an ant highway with two routes of different widths from the nest to some sugar syrup. Unsurprisingly, the narrower route soon became congested. But when an ant returning along the congested route to the nest collided with another ant just starting out, the returning ant pushed the newcomer onto the other path. However, if the returning ant had enjoyed a trouble-free journey, it did not redirect the newcomer.

The researchers created a computer model of more complex ant networks with routes of different lengths. The team found that even though ants being rerouted sometimes took a longer route, they still got to the food quickly and efficiently.

If human drivers travelling in opposite directions could pass congestion information to each other in this way, we would all be better off.

Source: New Scientist