new food source. At the beginning, the search for food is a random process, with ants starting out in many different directions. Once they locate food, they return to the nest, laying down the pheromone trail as they go. But now comes the very sophisticated aspect to collective problem solving: the colony, acting as a whole, is able to select the shortest path. If one ant randomly finds a shorter path between the food source and the nest, its quicker return to the nest intensifies the concentration of pheromone along the path. Other ants tend to choose the path with the strongest concentration
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