EXPERIMENT 07● RUNNING
NO PHEROMONES
How much of the colony's intelligence exists in its memory?
Two identical colonies: same maze, food, ant count, start positions and random seed. The only difference: the right colony cannot deposit or detect pheromones.
Question
How much of the colony's intelligence exists in its memory?
Conditions
51×35 maze, 250 ants each, same seed.
Rules
Identical movement rules; pheromone sensing and deposit disabled on the right.
Pass rule
Normal colony returns at least 1.5× more resources.
Control
NO PHEROMONE COLONY.
Limitations
Removing pheromones reduces agents to a correlated random walk; real ants have other cues.
Does environmental memory create swarm intelligence?