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Stanford Researchers Discover the 'Anternet'

Posted by samzenpus on from the ant-power dept.

stoilis writes "A collaboration between Deborah Gordon, a Stanford ant biologist, and Balaji Prabhakar, a computer scientist, has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants, as they forage for food, mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet. From the article: 'Prabhakar wrote an ant algorithm to predict foraging behavior depending on the amount of food – i.e., bandwidth – available. Gordon's experiments manipulate the rate of forager return. Working with Stanford student Katie Dektar, they found that the TCP-influenced algorithm almost exactly matched the ant behavior found in Gordon's experiments. "Ants have discovered an algorithm that we know well, and they've been doing it for millions of years," Prabhakar said.' The abstract is published in the Aug. 23 issue of PLoS Computational Biology."

12 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Has to be done by paiute · · Score: 4, Funny

    Formic post!

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    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  2. How close? by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the TCP-influenced algorithm almost exactly matched the ant behavior

    How close?

    They talking about a full implementation of RFC 5681 with all 4 schemes and all the bells and whistles, or just some trendy popular science stuff with "well, there seems to be ACKs".

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5681 (not a rickroll, I promise)

    I suppose a RFC 5681 loss recovery mechanism would be something like what happens when you step on an ant. ssthresh TCP setting is like how many ants fit thru the hole at once when you agitate the colony with a stick? We could probably have a lot of fun doing "official slashdot ant analogies" instead of the more common "official slashdot car analogies"

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    1. Re:How close? by N0Man74 · · Score: 4, Funny

      How close?

      If only there were some way to know... such as reading the damned article.

  3. Anybody see the problem with this statement? by thomasw_lrd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Ants have discovered an algorithm that we know well, and they've been doing it for millions of years," Prabhakar said.

    Does anybody else see the problem with this statement?

    I think it would have been better said "We have discovered an algorithm that ant know well."

    --
    21st Century Renaissance Man
    1. Re:Anybody see the problem with this statement? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Arguably, unless 'knowing' is something that you can do with substantially less nervous system than we expect, it might be more apt to think of ants as being capable of executing an algorithm, rather than 'knowing' it.

      The ant executes the algorithm. The colony knows the algorithm. (It's embedded in the colony's firmware, implemented in ants. Just as the sort of real-time calculus required to catch a ball is embedded in primate DNA, implemented in neurons.)

    2. Re:Anybody see the problem with this statement? by VortexCortex · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Ants have discovered an algorithm that we know well, and they've been doing it for millions of years," Prabhakar said.

      Does anybody else see the problem with this statement?

      To be fair, the ants implemented the algorithm first, ergo: Nature discovered it first. Or, if you'd rather not personify the cosmos: Such protocols are naturally emergent.

      Most of what we're now learning and formalizing was discovered by nature millions of years ago. Slime molds can solve traffic patterns too. Pine cones "know" the Fibonacci sequence (at an intimate level). Fast Fourier Transforms are how our brains filter signals for certain kinds of pattern recognition. Holograms are macro scale demonstrations of reality at the quantum level. Neural networks can think (well duh). Life, as we know it, is merely a fractal expansion of DNA.

    3. Re:Anybody see the problem with this statement? by InlawBiker · · Score: 4, Funny

      Now you're just arguing semANTics.

  4. Anthill inside by Jade_Wayfarer · · Score: 4, Funny

    And yet again, Sir Terry Pratchett is making me speechless with his insights. Now, it's almost like something is taking its pleasure in making a real-life citations from his books.

    --
    Absence of proof != proof of absence.
  5. Thankfully... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ants may have discovered TCP; but they are ignorant of the secret of aggressive litigation...

  6. All fine and good... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...but the anternet is still a really buggy network

    1. Re:All fine and good... by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      I also think in this case using RAID will not help protect your data.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  7. Common sense? by kgskgs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I honestly didn't see a lot of substance here.

    Instead of saying ants use TCP, I would say ants and TCP both use common sense.

    When I apply for jobs, I contact friends in my network. If someone gets back to me faster, I reply back faster and send my resume to them quickly. Does that mean I am following TCP/IP?