Ants seem surprisingly adept at controlling traffic congestion, of the worker ant variety that is, within their colony.

Collective intelligence expert Dirk Helbing from the Dresden University of Technology in Germany and his team investigated how ants move around their colony. They set up an ant highway with two routes of different widths from the nest to some sugar syrup. Unsurprisingly, the narrower route soon became congested. But when an ant returning along the congested route to the nest collided with another ant just starting out, the returning ant pushed the newcomer onto the other path. However, if the returning ant had enjoyed a trouble-free journey, it did not redirect the newcomer.

The ultimate aim is to collect as much food as possible in the shortest time of course… the joys of living in a collective society.