It's why I keep a bottle of spray ammonia available in the South where ants are everywhere (not to mention those pesky fire ants)!

>Here's the way ants do it. They always leave a scent trail as they travel. When they find food, they return to the nest along the same trail they just came ... thereby doubling the strength of their scent along the trail. Other ants follow the scent and always follow the strongest scent ... which will be stronger along the trail where there actually has been some food found.
>
>Cool, huh? =0)
>
>~~Bonnie
>
>
>
>>>Hey, I found something awesome to play with:
>>>
>>>"breve: a 3d Simulation Environment for
>>>Multi-Agent Simulations and Artificial Life"
>>>
>>>http://www.spiderland.org/breve/download.php
>>>
>>>Here's one of the samples. I'm running it in their IDE now.
>>>
>>>I'm going to figure out how this stuff works.
>>
>>Looks like a nice toy, but I could have told you that
>>
>>>

>>># After a short while all the food in the world has been organized into
>>># a large piles.  Left to run long enough, all of the food will end up in
>>># the same pile, though this takes quite some time.
>>>

>>
>>...this would happen, because over time any particle of food would be left next to another one - there's nothing but the initial scatter that would leave it unheaped, so it will heap up.
>>
>>Still just a nice toy - because no matter what you get, you always have this nagging doubt, "does it really do what nature does". I'd rather try a better rule - if you meet another gatherer, give him the food if his scent of home is stronger than mine. And anyone who receives food in this manner would turn 180 degrees and go in general direction of home(), drop it there and go out again. So these who happened to be at home() more recently are assumed to be closer to it. This would simulate a bucket brigade.