Try thinking about it more holistically. It's not so much that ants on their own are great for a specific purpose, but rather that they work together with other

Try thinking about it more holistically. It's not so much that ants on their own are great for a specific purpose, but rather that they work together with other parts of the ecosystem to make the whole thing work. If you're so inclined, maybe it's useful to think about neural networks; take a face-recognition network, pick any node, then ask 'what is this good for?'.