Ultimate Swarms Page #5

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shed into the Indian Ocean

that it's turned into soup.

That is just full of now

freshly-hatched crab eggs.

The minute they hit the seawater,

the eggs hatch into tiny larvae.

But now they're at the mercy

of tides and currents.

Most will end up as fish food or get

swept away into deeper waters,

never to be seen again.

Which is why this swarm is so vital.

To ensure the survival of just

a few crabs,

nature has to throw

a lot of zeros at the problem.

Over the next three days,

something like three trillion

individual crab larvae will be

released into the Indian Ocean.

But despite the incredible numbers,

the baby crabs will only make it

back to shore every six

or seven years.

And when they do, the scenes

are spectacular.

A super-swarm of tiny crabs

defies the odds

and climbs back out of the ocean.

For a land crab

trapped in a forest,

this swarm has the ultimate

survival strategy.

And across the globe,

there are similarly amazing sights

as other swarms set off on the move.

Individually, each animal has no

idea which way they're heading.

But as a group, somehow they all

move in the same direction.

But how do you get tens of millions

of individuals

to work together as a team?

Well, strangely, it's all thanks

to having nobody in charge.

It might sound like a recipe

for disaster,

but if you look at a colony

of leafcutter ants,

everyone is doing their own thing.

No single ant is in charge

of organisation, not even the queen.

But with every ant ignoring

the bigger picture

and focusing on the one job,

the process actually becomes

highly efficient.

So, by thinking like ants,

we're now changing the way

we look at some of our

own logistics.

Every day, millions of us travel

through the world's transport hubs.

Getting from A to B by the most

efficient route is vital

to keeping things running smoothly.

Something the ants do really well.

So, how would they run an airport?

By designing software capable

of thinking like a swarm,

we've been finding out.

An American airline tried to solve

a long-running debate -

was it faster to board a plane by

giving passengers allocated seating

or by allowing them to pick

their own seats?

Surprisingly,

when the computer programme used

digital ants to fill the plane,

it showed that sometimes, letting

people choose their own seats

is quicker than giving them

seat numbers.

Because when there's no top dog

to make decisions for us,

like the ants, we all have to think

for ourselves,

and it doesn't result in the chaos

you'd expect.

And new technology is taking this

even further,

with robots that use

swarm intelligence.

Just like insects,

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