Ant Traffic Flow: Raiding swarms with few rules avoid gridlock

A novel analysis shows how individual ants’ behavior keeps the traffic flowing as 200,000 virtually blind army ants use a single trail to swarm out to a raid and return home with the booty.

ANT BIVOUAC. Nomadic army ants make temporary nests with living walls of ants clinging to each other. Christian Ziegler

The South American army ant Eciton burchelli avoids epic gridlock by forming traffic lanes on its trail, explains Iain D.