Earlier this month we wrote about a study of adaptable ants that
changed their leaf-gathering strategies to bypass a roadblock
thrown in their way. These clever insects solve traffic jams
much more easily than big-brained humans do, and now scientists
want to borrow their secrets to ease our highway woes. Ants
leave a trail of pheromones to show others the best way back to
the nest; when others follow, they leave their own pheromones
and the trail is reinforced. They all work together through what
biologists call “distributed intelligence.” You can see this
skill demonstrated in a Slate video here. Unfortunately, getting
a swarm of humans to all work together isn’t so easy. But
thankfully, we might not have to—our cars could do it for us.
Some scientists think we could copy ant ingenuity by teaching
our cars to talk to one another. In one model, called Inter-
Vehicle Communication, cars would send out a signal when they
drop below 10 mph that tells other cars that they’re entering a
traffic jam. If all the veh