Ants Build Cheapest Networks

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 17, 2011 @11:13AM from the where's-antdude-when-you-expect-him-most? dept.

schliz writes "When building a network from scratch, Argentine ants tend to connect their nests in the way that, while more inconvenient for individual ants, requires the minimum amount of trail. Researchers studying 'supercolonies' of the ants found them building networks that closely resembled the mathematical shortest path — a Steiner tree. They hope to apply their work to self-healing, organic computing networks of self-organising sensors, robots, computers, and autonomous cars." This story adds to the earlier report of ants' networking prowess.

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Re:Improper illustration: No. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-17 11:46 · Score: 0, Troll

And yet, the O'Reilly TCP/IP book has a crab on the front.
That's a metaphor for the crabs one gets from fucking sluts.
You see, it's a network: one guy fucks the slut and other guys fucks her and creates a network of crab infestations.
Now, they wouldn't sell many books if they put a herpes virus on the cover, would they.
Geeze!