A science article today in the New York Times, discusses army ant achievements, such as creating bridges from their own bodies, as being possible because of collective intelligence evolved over time. Humans, we are told, have not yet evolved the mob smarts to, for example, flow in mass traffic without jamming up—something ants do perfectly. Can it be that mobile phones in the hands of mobbing humans are catching us up? (I am only half kidding). And not kidding at all: we probably can learn some important basics from swarming critters about digital mobbing.

From the article, quoting army ant expert Iain D. Couzin:

The reason may be that the ants have had a lot more time to adapt to living in big groups. “We haven’t evolved in the societies we currently live in,” Dr. Couzin said.

By studying army ants — as well as birds, fish, locusts and other swarming animals — Dr. Couzin and his colleagues are starting to discover simple rules that allow swarms to work so well. Those rules allow thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism.

Deciphering those rules is a big challenge, however, because the behavior of swarms emerges unpredictably from the actions of thousands or millions of individuals.