Myrmecology (from Greek: μύρμεξ, myrmex, “ant”; and λόγος, logos, “knowledge”) is the scientific study of ants, a branch of entomology. Ants are often chosen as a study group to answer questions on the evolution of social systems.

I was introduced to myrmecology while doing a little research for this post, prompted by a post-convo conversation with Corey Reid (FreshBooks), Michele Perras (OCAD MEIC and lots of others), and Patrick Keenan (The Movement). Corey got me started down this path with a comment that ants find food sources in the same way that collaborative societies find information, which immediately made me think of Twitter. Stick with me for a brief myrmecological detour before I bring it back around for your moment of zen.

A Brief Explanation of Ant Trail Pheromones, or Any Excuse to Show Off My Newly Acquired Ant Knowledge

Like many insects, ants release pheromones as a means of communicating with other members of their colony. Just like that awkward moment in the fancy staffed bathroom when you’re offered a spritz of cologne, they have a number of different chemical scents they can lay down depending on the job at hand. We’re particularly interested in the ‘Trail Pheromone’ that some species use to signal a path to food, but their olfactory arsenal is also well equipped with smell bombs for alerting their colony mates to danger and for luring them into producing lots and lots of baby ants.

The best explanation I could find of trail pheromones was on the MUTE Sourceforge site, a project to create a simple, anonymous file sharing network that uses ant-inspired behaviour to route messages. Their explanation goes into more detail than I need here, so take a look at their How Ants Find Food page if I’ve peeked your Formicidae curiosity beyond cursory levels or follow along below if you just want to get to the good stuff. Also, for those of you who are sticklers for species accurate posts, note that this applies to species of ants who use pheromones for navigation, rather than crazy things like the earth’s magnetic field or visual landmarks (for real).

I’m going to tell this story by relating the parable of the Four Crazy Ant Brothers, Adam, Bob, Carl, and Doug.

Four ants set out from The Nest in search of Food

One day, the foursome were sippin’ some fine vine dew at The Nest when they began to feel quite hungry. Being ants and all, they set out in random directions in search of food. Lucky Adam Ant is the first to stumble across the stash of Johnny’s Hamburgers.

Adam finds Food while his brothers continue to wander

Being conscientious ants and all, they made sure to lay down a trail of pheromones as they wandered, making it easy to backtrack when they hit the jackpot. Adam grabs a tasty, tasty piece of burger and makes for The Nest while his brothers continue to wander aimlessly.

Bob finds the same Food while Doug retraces Adam's steps

Adam finds no one at The Nest so he drops off his bite and heads back out on his trail to get more. Doug happily finds Adam’s trail, which is now three times as strong as his own, so he takes a left and starts following along, sure that he’s on the trail of juicy burgers. Meanwhile, Bob happens across the stash from the other side and makes like a bandit, carting a chunk-o-burger homebound along his own trail. Carl has encountered Doug’s trail and since he hasn’t found any food yet either, figures he might as well follow along.

Carl makes a wrong turn while Bob continues to wander

Bob’s route is much longer than Adam’s, so he’s still of wandering in the hinterlands with his rapidly cooling burger bite. Adam and Doug are on the Highway to Happiness, making off with delicious morsels as quickly as they can carry them and strengthening the trail with every pass. Clueless Carl, having run into Adam’s strong trail, decides to take a right and heads back to The Nest empty-pincered.

The Four Brothers are reunited in their quest

In the last instalment of our tasty tale, Bob finally makes it home only to find a much stronger trail heading off in the other direction. Happy to abandon his thankless trek, he joins in with the rest of the crew. Carl makes it back to The Nest and realizes his mistake, so he turns tail and makes off in the opposite direction. The Four Brothers are now a ruthless hamburger fetching machine, having optimized on the shortest route to Johnny’s and quickly making off with some poor sap’s lunch.

Bringing it Back to Twitter

So, you’re surely wondering, how could this possibly relate to Twitter? Think about the behaviour of your Twitter network.

Twitter is the Shortest Path to Food

We all go out into the ‘net looking for interesting content, sometimes even wandering at random in the pursuit of the next data hit. When we used to stumble upon (or even StumbleUpon) a tasty morsel, we put the URL into places like del.icio.us or IM or email: all long and asynchronous ‘Bob’ routes when it comes to information sharing. Now that our brains are connected to the firehose directly, we pop into our Twitter client of choice and create a quick, immediate, synchronous, ‘Adam’ route to the information. If this is the first time our friends have seen it, they follow the trail and check it out for themselves, retweeting the link if the food is to their liking. The trail gets stronger with each retweet, eventually earning a hashtag, hitting the trending topics list, and possibly (albeit briefly) becoming the strongest scent on Twitter. The colony establishes the most direct route to the information and digests it until there’s nothing left, moving on when a new stash is found.

I’m not entirely sure what we can learn from this in a bigger picture sense. Is there a way to use this new model to influence the behaviour of the rest of the colony? Are there shorter routes that could be mapped to tasty food? Leave your thoughts below.

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