minicomputer

I should not be allowed to watch Discovery HD Theater while I am fatigued, but hey, that’s when my brain is able to absorb information and process it a bit more creatively.

Last night, I watched a show called “Ants! Nature’s Secret Power“, which included fascinating details about ants (including some I didn’t know!) such as:

Ants “farm” aphids and mealy bugs, herding and even carrying them about so that they can secrete honeydew which the ants consume. I’m used to seeing ants carrying much larger things around, like, oh, baby toads (while listening to Depeche Mode), but seeing them “herd” the aphids under some leaves to protect them from an impending rainstorm demonstrated that they were fully capable of some fairly advanced behaviors.

Immense ant colonies are built without a centralized “plan”, but managed to provide everything from ventilation to a miniature highway system within the colony. It truly does look like a futuristic city when it’s unearthed.

And the most interesting one (which I remember from when I was a kid): Ants use chemicals to mark their paths, and disrupting the scent can throw them in to complete disarray. In fact, the weakness ants exhibit during certain crises (such as fires) indicates that they some core programming (for lack of a better analogy) they will blindly follow when disaster strikes.

Most humans start screaming incoherently and running at the first sign of trouble — so ants might be one up on us, eh?

In general, social insects seem to have solved some of the common problems that face us in the realms of networking and artificial intelligence. In essence, the algorithms we see in nature are often a great basis for attacking problems in the realm of computer science.

In fact, while Googling for applications of “insect logic” in software, I found this interesting page about an “anonymizer” for use on peer-to-peer networks called MUTE.

So no, I wouldn’t dare to presume to claim to be the first to think this way… Other bigger brains have also contemplated this topic, and the contemplation of our little buddies’ behaviors even gets a Biblical endorsement: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” (Proverbs 6:6).

7 June 2008 | Nature | Comments