This is doubtlessly beyond the remit of Irreal but it’s so interesting I thought I’d write about it anyway. It’s about ants, for crying out loud but take a look and see if you don’t find it interesting too.
As most of you probably know, army ants can use their bodies to build bridges across gaps. That by itself is pretty amazing but consider: how do they know how to do this. The individual ants are practically blind and have very small brains seemingly incapable of organizing such feats.
Simon Garner has been studying this behavior and has reached some conclusions. It’s all instinctual, of course, but how does it work? Army ants move very quickly (about 12 cm/sec) but when they find a gap, they slow down. That causes the ants behind them to march over their backs. When an ant feels that, it freezes in place and subsequent ants move a bit further into the gap until they too feel ants on their back. Bit by bit the ants form a bridge that the rest of the ants can march over. Take a look at the linked article. There’s a video of the process. The article also discusses how the ants know how to dismantle the bridge.
Even more interesting is what happens when there’s a V-shaped gap and the ants are at the top of the V. They could build the bridge there but that takes a lot of ants that could otherwise be employed. They could build it at the bottom but means further travel for the ants. There’s another video that shows the ants solving this problem.
I am by no means an entomologist and my interest in insects is mostly confined to keeping them out of my house. Still, I find this really fascinating and think you will too.