Ant Intelligence
It is commonly believed that an ant colony is run by a central figure, the queen. In reality the queen is little more than a reproduction machine. According to different estimates of different species, ants have between 200 and 10,000 neurons in there brains. Our brains contain around 100 billion. No ant in the colony is capable of learning and relaying knowledge to others yet the colony does appear to learn. How is it that ants manage to find the shortest path to food sources.
Ants communicate with one another through the use of pheromones. When an ant is on the search for food it communicates this by dropping a “looking for food” pheromone (in black) whilst following the trail left by ants who have already found food (in green). If an ant, that is looking for food, finds food, it changes its message and begins dropping a “found food” pheromone. The ants looking for home, look where those looking for food are coming from, and vice-versa.
The important part of this process is the feedback loop provided as soon an ant looking for food meets an ant who has found food. The ants leaving the nest can follow this trail to the food source and strengthen the path back home. The more ants that leave the nest, on the path to the food, the stronger the path back home gets.
