Related papers: Ants as Fluids: Physics-Inspired Biology
The spontaneous emergence of collective flows is a generic property of active fluids and often leads to chaotic flow patterns characterised by swirls, jets, and topological disclinations in their orientation field. However, the ability to…
Models for the behavior of ants and pedestrians are studied in an unified way in this paper. Each ant follows pheromone put by preceding ants, hence creating a trail on the ground, while pedestrians also try to follow others in a crowd for…
There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…
Dynamical clustering represents a characteristic feature of active matter consisting of self-propelled agents that convert energy from the environment into mechanical motion. At the micron scale, typical of overdamped dynamics, particles…
Flight on the two-dimensional air-water interface, with body weight supported by surface tension, is a unique locomotion strategy well adapted for the environmental niche on the surface of water. Although previously described in…
The continental plates of Earth are known to drift over a geophysical timescale, and their interactions have lead to some of the most spectacular geoformations of our planet while also causing natural disasters such as earthquakes and…
An ant colony optimization approach for partitioning a set of objects is proposed. In order to minimize the intra-variance, or within sum-of-squares, of the partitioned classes, we construct ant-like solutions by a constructive approach…
The exceptional reactivity of animal collectives to predatory attacks is thought to be due to rapid, but local, transfer of information between group members. These groups turn together in unison and produce escape waves. However, it is not…
Understanding predator-prey relationships among insects is a challenging task in the domain of insect-colony research. This is due to several factors involved, such as determining whether a particular behavior is the result of a…
From the mitotic spindle up to tissues and biofilms, many biological systems behave as active droplets, which often break symmetry and change shape spontaneously. Here, I show that active nematic droplets can experience a fingering…
We explore self-organizing strategies for role assignment in a foraging task carried out by a colony of artificial agents. Our strategies are inspired by various mechanisms of division of labor (polyethism) observed in eusocial insects like…
Liquids flow, making them remarkably distinct from solids and close to gases. At the same time, interactions in liquids are strong as in solids. The combination of these two properties is believed to be the ultimate obstacle to constructing…
We present a fluid dynamics video showing how capillary rafts sink. Small objects trapped at an interface are very common in Nature (insects walking on water, ant rafts, bubbles or pollen at the water-air interface, membranes...) and are…
Biological tissues exhibit complex behaviors with their dynamics often resembling inert soft matter such as liquids, polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals. These analogies enable physics-based approaches for investigations of emergent…
Some carnivorous mammals (e.g., cats and dogs) lap water with their tongues to drink water at high frequencies. Such a fast moving tongue creates a liquid column out of a bath which is bitten by the mouth for drinking. Presumably, the…
We perform large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to study heated granular fluids in three dimensions. Granular particles dissipate their kinetic energy due to solid frictional interaction with other particles. The velocity of each…
A lattice model for active matter is studied numerically, showing that it displays wettings transitions between three distinctive phases when in contact with an impenetrable wall. The particles in the model move persistently, tumbling with…
Social insect societies and more specifically ant colonies, are distributed systems that, in spite of the simplicity of their individuals, present a highly structured social organization. As a result of this organization, ant colonies can…
We analyse the dynamics of fishing vessels with different home ports in an area where these vessels, in choosing where to fish, are influenced by their own experience in the past and by their current observation of the locations of other…
The evolution of the Langton's ant on a 2D lattice is studied from the "ant's framework". The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, to see if one can explain the emergent behaviour of the ant as an analogous sytem of a particle crossing…