Although there are only about 250,000 neurons in the brain (compared to 86 billion cells in humans), ants still perform many impressive feats that we humans have to admire.When it comes to the ability to build bridges and roads, for example, the ants are not only brilliant architects, but they are also a collective of true economists. Ants know how to choose the most economical and efficient way to build bridges.They also know how to level the ground to overcome a difficult terrain like engineer soldiers. Then build highways on steep slopes up to 90 degrees. On top of that, ants can run their entire transportation network with almost no traffic jams.In this article, let's find out the secret that helps ants do that. 1. When building bridges, ants are both architects and economists Surely you are no stranger to the sight of a swarm of ants bridging each other through a gap in the air. At that time, one by one ants will stretch out their bodies, bite their fellow legs and form a living bridge.Even more surprising, during their entire bridge-building process, the ants received no instructions from any of the ants. That is, they have no chief architect, no foreman, and bridge-building is simply instinct.To find out why ants can do this, a team of scientists from the New Jersey Institute of Technology did a number of experiments. They recorded a time lapse video to analyze how ants build bridges.How do ants build bridges?As it turned out, things went like this: When an ant reached a dead end, it slowed down before reaching the edge and reaching out into the open to probe. At the same time, another ant will step on it.As soon as the ant below sees another step on it, it will activate the effect "freeze". The same process repeats, a third ant climbs onto the second one and the second one freezes.Over time, a whole swarm of ants will gather together that way, until they form a bridge to the other side of the gap. The ants below the bridge continued to freeze to hold the bridge firmly for the whole colony to pass.Finally, when the ants below notice that the pressure on their backs has decreased, meaning there is less traffic across the bridge, they will slowly disperse the bridge, step on each other's backs, and return to their normal state. normal operating state.But the collective intelligence of ants doesn't stop there, in another experiment, New Jersey scientists tested ants with a V-shaped path. This time, they expect the ants to find a way to build a large bridge to cross the position of the V-mouth, where there is the largest gap. This also means that the distance of the ants will be shortened.But surprisingly, the ants did not. They just build the bridge to the middle of the V and stop:This ant colony has calculated an economic calculation to choose the location to build the bridgeExplaining why the ants chose to do this, the scientists say they may have been doing an economic calculation in their heads. Accordingly, if it takes too many ants to build a bridge that is too long, the number of ants participating in feeding will be reduced.At this point, the ants will choose to take a short and moderate path, but still ensure the flow of ants to do the task. Subsequent statistics show that ants spend a maximum of 20% of the population in bridging. During a march, they can build 40-50 different bridges, but always maintain 80% of the animals in the herd move constantly to feed. Therefore, when it comes to building bridges, ants are both architects and economists. 2. Guarantee for highways During each of your foraging trips, you can see the ants always running around scouring the area around them. The fastest running ants can reach speeds of more than 85.5 cm/s, or about 3 km/h.It seems like a small number, but no, if you shrink yourself down to the size of an ant, that speed is equivalent to 108 times your body length in just 1 second. At the scale of the human body, it is equivalent to someone running at 200 m/s, or 720 km/h.Therefore, in the world of ants, they prefer highways.The ants level the floor to ensure the speed of movement on the sticky surfaceUnfortunately, the ant's feeding grounds are often rugged and feature a variety of terrain. To be able to maintain speed on those roads, sometimes the ants will have to rebuild the route.For example, in the experiment above, scientists are simulating how a colony of ants leveled their highway, to ensure speed when crossing a piece of double-sided tape.This piece of tape can simulate a muddy puddle, sticking to their feet and slowing them down. Accordingly, the ants worked as a company of engineers. They continuously collect debris around to level the highway.What about rough surfaces? The ants will build a bridge over it again. For example, in this video, scientists have ants walk through two cardboard slopes 50 degrees and 90 degrees. Ants build bridges over steep terrainNormally, with their prongs, ants, no matter how firmly they cling, can be dropped down a road with an angle of over 40 degrees.Therefore, they quickly built a bridge over this rugged terrain. As a result, the ants continued to maintain their speed, while being able to safely cross the slope without falling. 3. Why is it that despite being very crowded, ants almost never get stuck in traffic? In 2020, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology did more than 170 experiments to understand the traffic behavior of ants. They let the ants pass through narrow bridges and found that the ants could take up 80% of the bridge's capacity and still walk normally.While if it is a human bridge, just crossing 40% of its capacity will cause traffic jams.Ants can keep traffic on a bridge steady, even when it has reached 80% capacity.In an ant nest of up to tens of thousands of ants, ants also only build narrow passages, sometimes just for "two lanes of traffic". But absolutely never in the ant nest is congested.Scientists in Georgia discovered that every time an ant enters a tunnel and sees another in it, it immediately retreats and finds another tunnel.At the same time, the turning ants will warn ants traveling in the opposite direction not to take the overcrowded route, forcing them to find an alternative route."The secret of ants is very simple," the scientists said. "They put the interests of the whole nest first. Ants often sacrifice a part of their personal interests when participating in traffic, but that makes the whole system operate more efficiently."On the contrary, people always have an inherent conflict between individual interests and collective interests. That is the main reason for traffic jams and increases the total travel time of the whole society.The art of bridges and roads of ants.Scientists say that by observing and studying the behavior of ants, we can learn a lot from them. For example, the ant's transportation design and operations skills can be used to create self-healing metal, flexible materials.They can also be used to create self-propelled mini-robots and explore dangerous areas, such as radioactive sites. Imagine a swarm of robots that could also form structures to close gaps, help build escape bridges to a ruined area that has just been hit by a natural disaster.In short, humans can learn a lot from ants, because they are social creatures like us but know how to organize their society in a very orderly and disciplined way.Refer Sciencealert, Theconversation, Quantamagazine https://genk.vn/nghe-thuat-xay-cau-lam-duong-cua-loai-kien-de-khong-bao-gio-bi-un-tac-2022042005593937.chn You are reading the article The art of building bridges and making roads for ants to never get stuck at Blogtuan.info - Source: genk.vn - Read the original article here
