Longhorn crazy ants cooperatively transporting awkward loads through mazes reveal a striking scaling effect: larger teams solve geometrically difficult problems much more effectively than smaller ones, even when the physical burden per ant is held constant. Simple gravity-like simulations reproduce easy cases but fail on harder puzzles unless researchers add distributed, ant-like rules such as shifting force directions and responding to nearby openings. Unlike the simulations, the ants appear to apply broadly useful behavioural rules without retuning them for each maze.
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ant-teams-gravity-based-puzzle.html
