Why Don't Ants Get Stuck In Traffic?

The species of ants are more than the species of us humans. While we reside in the billions, ants reside in the trillions. There are times when we take our vehicle and set out for our destination but get stuck in traffic jams. On the other hand, in the case of ants, though there are trillions of them, they still don’t create fuss and get stuck in traffic. The reason behind us getting stuck in traffic rather than ants is our big complicated brain.

Let’s talk more about this in detailed understandable subdivisions:-

Contents

Lanes in the world of ants

No matter if it is crowded or not, ants will never get stuck in traffic jams. They have lanes, yes you read
that right! The ants that carry the food and are heading back to their colony, seek the help of centre lane. Other ants like the outbound ants, they stick to the edges.

They have three lanes unlike us humans who have two lanes. When a loaded and an outbound ants are about to collide, it is difficult for the loaded ones to maneuver. In this case the ant that carries nothing will turn either side creating a win-win situation for both the ants.

This results in three lanes instead of two which later leads to no traffic jams, confusion or anything.

Similarity between humans and ants

Between humans and ants there is the same difference. If you have observed, you would see that when you are in a crosswalk, people who are present in that area will unconsciously create similar lanes in the crowd. But as soon as the same people are driving a vehicle, the table turns and no lanes are created neither consciously nor subconsciously.

Reason behind this cause

The reason behind creating traffic jams is that we don’t like to wait in a queue. When people are in a queue, the brain takes the advantage and plays strange tricks on our brain.

If the time is occupied then it will feel shorter and in the same case if the time is unoccupied then we would feel that it is long. Anxiety creates a worse situation in this type of case. The reason behind this is that anxiety makes the wait seem longer.

This means that if the wait is unexplainable than it will feel longer than the wait that is explainable.

Ants awesome traffic system

In case of ants, if the leaf-cutter ant gets stuck in its way on a twig and there is a heavily-loaded slowpoke behind the leaf-cutter ant, it (heavily loaded one) slows down its pace and continues marching behind the ant that is returning with its goods. Working ants realize that they are all related and are hence working for the common objective and for the betterment of their colony.

Thus this cooperation behind the trillions of ants leads to an awesome establishment of a traffic system among them.