Ant hills are an unlikely source of inspiration, but some large
organisations are developing biologically-based techniques in
the drive to deliver a competitive edge to IT systems in cut-
throat markets. Danny Bradbury reports on how nature can supply
some new answers to old problems You might wonder what IT could
gain from emulating nature. Yet large corporations in the UK are
already investing in research into biological computing to
enhance their IT systems. Royal Mail is looking at immune
systems as a way to highlight anomalies and detect fraud, while
BT sees studying the behaviour of ants as a source of routing
algorithms. Using biological characteristics found in the
natural world as a means of enhancing software has existed as a
concept since the 1940s, when neural networks were proposed as
the basis for artificial intelligence. It is only in the last
few years, however, that links between algorithms found in
nature and computer software have fuelled commercial interest.
Most of these techniques exhibit