Ants navigate and talk to each other by following pheromone trails. They can read different meanings into the trails, as well as register how important they are.
The decisions made by a colony of ants rely on feedback - "I haven't come accross any tidy-up-the-nest pheromones for a while, so why don't I start cleaning up the nest" and are self reinforcing - "this trail is stronger than that, so I'll go this way as well and make it even stronger".
Monday's Guardian had a piece about the difficulties the city of Manchester was having in attracting grown ups into the city centre after sundown, when it was overrun by young England.
What they need is a mechanism for reading pheromones and feeding back.
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