Ant Foraging — Iris Lab

Colony Settings

Ant count: 150 Pheromone strength: 0.60 Evaporation rate: 0.004 Exploration bias: 0.25

Colony Stats

Total food collected0

Active trails—

Foragers out—

Food sources—

Best trail quality—

Click canvas to place food. Ants wander randomly, leave pheromone when carrying food. Shorter paths get reinforced — emergent optimization.

ACO insight: Ant Colony Optimization mimics this — solutions to TSP, routing problems, etc. emerge from stigmergy (environment-mediated communication).