It has been known for a while that ants have algorithms - although the similarity to TCP is a new interpretation. From an article in Edge [1]: Ants have algor

It has been known for a while that ants have algorithms - although the similarity to TCP is a new interpretation. From an article in Edge [1]: Ants have algorithms. If you think about an ant colony, it's a computing device; there's some wonderful work by Jean-Louis Deneubourg in Brussels and his collaborators that really started this field in a way with Ilya Prigogine and later on Jean Louis Deneubourg looking at the ways in which social insect colonies can interact. One example would be—it sounds trivial, but if you think about it, it is quite difficult—how can a colony decide between two food sources, one of which is slightly closer than the other? Do they have to measure this? Do they have to perform these computations? [1] : http://edge.org/3rd_culture/couzin08/couzin08_index.html http://edge.org/3rd_culture/couzin08/couzin08_index.html