I'm sure many of you like me at some point in your lives, probably when you are younger, have sat patiently to watch a colony of ants going about their

business. I was always intrigued by how the long lines

of dark little bodies streaming across the paving stones and over the grass could all figure

out where they were each meant to go.

Like a well-oiled team, ants often resemble a regimented army, following every order given

by their leader telling them what to do. But that's where I was wrong. You see,

ants don't act in obedience to anyone army general as such. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The seemingly random activities of individual

ants, each without any apparent sense of a common purpose, combine to allow colonies

to collect food, build nests and defend our host plants,

all without any supervision.

And now this has captured the interest of scientists.

Hi, I'm Patrick I and welcome to 30 animals that made us smarter from the BBC World Service.

The podcast which investigates the myriad of ways in which animals

have inspired us.

Thanks for all your comments.

It's been great to hear from you.

Loads of you are clearly enjoying the podcast, so don't keep it to yourself go on and share

this series with your friends and your family. Now back to those ants in this

episode number 27, we'll be discovering how ants could help us

when it comes to designing better communication networks.

Stanford University Professor of Biology, Deborah Gordon, has been studying the

foraging behavior of red harvester ants for over 30 years. This is just one of

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