Natures wonders: Ants control traffic flow (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 22, 2015, 15:16 (3501 days ago) @ David Turell

No traffic jams. Moving to the left to pass. As density increases speed increases:-"When food increases in supply, more forager ants are sent out to carry it back to the nest. With this increase in ant density, the number of encounters between outbound and incoming individuals increases. Researchers at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany suggest that the encounters provide an opportunity for ants to swap information and to change their behavior according to conditions.-"The researchers also identified rules of ant etiquette. For example, workers returning to the colony more often moved to the left than to the right to avoid colliding with an oncoming ant. Rather than segregating strictly into lanes like human traffic, the ants used only a degree of segregation, with inbound ants more frequently using the left side of the trail."-
 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-ants-self-organize-traffic-trails-accommodate.html#jCp