Harvester ants. Creative commons photo: Steve Jurvetson (via Stanford)

How is an ant colony like a computer?

No, that’s not a riddle – it’s science! Two researchers at Stanford have demonstrated that the algorithms that computers use to transfer data and avoid congestion on the Internet actually mimics the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food. Ant biologist Deborah Gordon and computer scientist Balaji Prabhakar have found that to avoid traffic congestion and optimize available resources both the ant colonies and the internet’s Transmissions Control Protocol (TCP) follow an algorithm based on feedback loops.

While the ants  didn’t influence the development of the TCP (it predates our understanding of the ants’ behavior), Prabhakar and Gordon think scientists have a lot to learn about how ant colony behaviors could be applied to the development of computer network algorithms. By applying simple rules, the colony can perform complex tasks even while each ant has limited capabilities. Those simple rules are what allow a system to function in a distributed, resilient, and scalable way — exactly the qualities needed in in large engineered computer systems.