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Ant Intelligence Knows No Bounds

November 9th, 2009 Posted in Ants & Roaches

A single neuron in your brain can do nothing, but combined with the collective power of many neurons your brain can do many intelligent things. The same goes for an ant. One ant is dumb and powerless, but once together in great numbers, an ant colony has a whole new level of intelligence.

Researchers have discovered many new ways of applying this intelligence to benefit humans in recent years.

This article will discuss:

• Ant Intelligence
• Adapting Ant Intelligence
• Controlling Smart Ants

Ant Intelligence

Ants use varying tactics to complete their daily tasks. Ants often use swarming intelligence to fend of intruders. When one ant identifies a danger, he notifies the whole colony, quickly overpowering an enemy of the hive, no matter the size.

This same idea goes for completing other tasks necessary for the colony to survive. During an ant’s search for food, they fan out, searching the areas closest to their colony. In large numbers they’re likely to identify more food more quickly.

Upon identifying a food source, the ant will leave its pheromone around the food source, almost like a trail of bread crumbs. This way, the rest of their colony can find the same food source and be more efficient about bringing back to their home.

This intelligence is what makes ants so successful in the insect world. By collectively communicating through chemicals, they rely on their sense of smell to lead them to complete group tasks.

Adapting Ant Intelligence

There are two major ways researchers have begun to adapt ant tactics to human life. One of which is adapting ant tactics to the protection of computers from viruses and worms.

Like we discussed above, ants swarm their enemies overwhelming them when they feel threatened. Using this same idea, researchers have developed ant like software that wanders computer networks looking for a fight.

By spreading out and trying to identify worms and viruses individually, they can more efficiently identify threats. But, once a threat is identified they can then call upon the rest of the wandering programs to attack the virus in large numbers, overwhelming it to the point of no return.

The programs leave a digital trail that much like ant’s pheromone trail, which can help lead other virus fighting programs to the source of the threat. The second adaptation is through ants helping humans prevent and interpret traffic jams.

When ants identify a food source they leave a pheromone trail for their fellow ants to find it. Sometimes these trails become obstructed, thus preventing the ants from getting to their food. However, ants adapt quickly by going around the obstruction and leaving a new fresher pheromone trial for other ants to see the new path.

So, future ants avoid the obstruction completely and are able to follow this new path directly to the food source. Scientists believe they could adapt this behavior as well.

If cars could somehow give off a message when they are going slower than 10mph, it would let other cars in the area know to find a different route to their destination. This would dramatically cut down on excessive traffic jams, especially in the city.

Controlling Smart Ants

Ants are super intelligent, but don’t give them too much credit. With literally one stomp of your foot you could destroy half an ant colony.

With that in mind ants don’t pose much of a threat, despite their intelligence. The only problem is they come in large numbers and are often hard to get rid of once in your home.

The only completely effective method to deal with these pests is through using EcoSMART’s organic insecticides. Chemical free and safe for the environment, EcoSMART products are the only efficient way to remove these critters from your home and property quickly.