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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."

5 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. 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. Thankfully... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  3. 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.