The not so humble ant can teach pushy humans a thing or two when it comes to traffic management.Despite route-marching over every continent in their quest for global domination, they never get stuck in jams.
Experts at the University of Sydney have been studying leaf-cutter ants to see if their behaviour could provide the basis for a system of driverless cars controlled by ant traffic algorithms, according to a recent report in Wired Science.
'We should use their rules,' said Sydney entomologist Audrey Dussutour. 'I’ve been working with ants for eight years and have never seen a traffic jam, and I’ve tried.'
According to Dussutour, the secret of success is simple - patience. Leaf-cutter ants on the move organise themselves into highly regular streams of load-carrying and unloaded individuals, a bit like a multi-lane highway.
Now studies have shown that when the creatures reach a potential bottleneck like a ‘single lane’ tree branch, unladen ants queue patiently behind the slower-moving load carriers instead of trying to overtake.
The university team has calculated this behaviour reduces the delay experienced by an individual ant crossing a crowded three-metre bridge from 64 to 32 seconds.
When applied to future Inter-Vehicle Communications systems, researchers hope ant behaviour can one day help improve the human rat race.
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