Art of dealing with traffic congestion of ants

It seems that ants have excelled in solving a problem that has made people worry for many years. While millions of cars on the planet are trapped on highways every day, billions of ants still move smoothly around the nest without causing congestion.

Dirk Helbing, a scientist at the Technische Universität Dresden (Germany) and colleagues, learned how to move around ant's nest. They created two different width lanes connecting the ants with a lump of sugar. One lane is wider and longer than the other. A few dozen minutes later, just as expected by the research team, ants rushed to the road on the narrow lane, making it crowded and congested. When an ant returns to the nest in the narrow lane and meets another one who starts to leave the nest, he will return to try to push the other into the wide lane.

The team expanded both lanes and repeated the experiment. Due to the significant increase in width, congestion does not occur. This time the experts found that the ants returned without pushing the ants out of the nest.

After analyzing the tape for two tests, experts found that although ants were pushed to go a long way, they still reached their destination faster than when traveling on narrow roads.

Researchers believe that if drivers can provide traffic information for people on the opposite side like ants, traffic congestion across the planet will be significantly reduced.

(Artwork: Discovermagazine.co)