Theory of Colonies

I was reading a feature article today about The Swarm Theory. It talked about ants and other insects a fairly stupid when they are by themselves and cannot get much of anything done, but when they are working in groups or swarms they can get a lot done. I found it very interesting that a colony can solve problems unthinkable for individual ants, such as finding the shortest path to the best food source, allocating workers to different tasks, or defending a territory from neighbors. As individuals, ants might be tiny dummies, but as colonies they respond quickly and effectively to their environment. They do it with something called swarm intelligence.