Overarching Question: How can ants spontaneously organize themselves so that each becomes specialized for a food pile, and together the ants cover all of the food piles efficiently?
Rules of the Simulation:
- A piece of food, shown as a yellow pellet, is randomly selected at one of the food regions
- The closest ant to the selected food, colored red, moves toward the food at a rate specified by the "closest-ants'-movement-speed" slider
- All of the other ants, shown in blue, move toward the selected food at a rate specified by "other-ants'-movement-speed"
- Another piece of food is selected and the cycle begins again
Quick Experiment:
- Press the "Set up" button to create two ants
- Press the "Draw" button to allow drawing of food
- Draw two food piles that are close to each other by using the mouse and clicking to form food regions
- Press the "Draw" button again to stop drawing food
- Press the "Cover" button to have the ants start moving according to the above rule
- Interact with the simulation by moving the sliders, picking up ants, and changing the food piles.
Exploration Questions:
- What happens when both of the ants move at the same speed? Do the two ants cover the two food piles well?
- What happens when the closest ant moves quickly, and the other ant doesn't move at all? Do the two ants cover the two food piles well?
- What happens when the closest ant moves quickly, and the other ant moves very slowly? Why does this lead to the best coverage of the food piles?
- With these best covering movement rates, try picking up an ant from one pile and moving it to the pile where the other ant is. How are the ants still able to separate from each other, with each becoming "specialized" for one food pile?
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