http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25736049

The mystery of why so many birds fly in a V formation may have been solved.

Scientists from the Royal Veterinary College fitted data loggers to a flock of rare birds that were being trained to migrate by following a microlight.

This revealed that the birds flew in the optimal position - gaining lift from the bird in front by remaining close to its wingtip.

The study, published in the journal Nature, also showed that the birds timed their wing beats.

A previous experiment in pelicans was the first real clue to the energy-saving purpose of V formations. It revealed that birds' heart rates went down when they were flying together in V.

But this latest study tracked and monitored the flight of every bird in the flock - recording its position, speed and heading as well as every wing flap.

This was possible thanks to a unique conservation project by the Waldarappteam in Austria, which has raised flocks of northern bald ibises and trained them to migrate behind a microlight.

The aim of this unusual project is to bring the northern bald ibis back to Europe; the birds were wiped out by hunting, so the team is retraining the birds to navigate a migration route that has now been lost.

Fitting tiny data loggers to these critically endangered ibises showed that the birds often changed position and altered the timing of their wing beats to give them an aerodynamic advantage.

Lead researcher Dr Steven Portugal explained: "They're seemingly very aware of where the other birds are in the flock and they put themselves in the best possible position."

This makes the most of upward-moving air generated by the bird in front.

This so-called "upwash" is created as a bird flies forward; whether it is gliding or flapping, it pushes air downward beneath its wings.

"Downwash is bad," explained Dr Portugal. "Birds don't want to be in another bird's downwash as it's pushing them down."

But as the air squeezes around the outside of the wings, it creates upwash at the wingtips.

"This can give a bit of a free ride for the bird that's following," said Dr Portugal. "So the other bird wants to put its own wingtip in the upwash from the bird in front."

The other really surprising result, the researchers said, was that the birds also "timed their wing beats perfectly to match the good air off the bird in front".

"Each bird [kept] its wingtip in the upwash throughout the flap cycle," Dr Portugal explained.

Birds put themselves in the best possible position to make the most of upward-moving air - or "upwash" - generated by the bird in front

Natural phenomenon

Just as the birds save energy by gaining lift from other birds, many companies that are developing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are looking to copy the energy-efficient V formation.

"Elucidating this mechanism might go some way to helping [companies] understand how they can replicate that with their plane formation to save fuel," said Dr Portugal.

But for scientists, it is the insight into a remarkable natural phenomenon that is truly exciting.

"V formations are so beautiful," said Adrian Thomas, professor of biomechanics at Oxford University.

"We see them all the time and really want to understand and explain them, and this team has gone a long way towards doing that."

Dr Portugal added: "What these birds are able to do is amazing.

"They're able to sense what's going on from the bird in front, where this good air is coming from and how to position themselves perfectly in it.

"So from a sensory point of view, it's really incredible."

Flapping and flying

As a bird's wings move through the air, they are held at a slight angle, which deﬂects the air downward.

This deflection means the air flows faster over the wing than underneath, causing air pressure to build up beneath the wings, while the pressure above the wings is reduced. It is this difference in pressure that produces lift.

Flapping creates an additional forward and upward force known as thrust, which counteracts the weight and the "drag" of air resistance.

The downstroke of the flap is also called the "power stroke", as it provides the majority of the thrust. During this, the wing is angled downwards even more steeply.

You can imagine this stroke as a very brief downward dive through the air - it momentarily uses the animal's own weight in order to move forward. But because the wings continue to generate lift, the creature remains airborne.

In each upstroke, the wing is slightly folded inwards to reduce resistance.

http://www.peta.org/issues/wildlife/dealing-household-guests/ants/

Ants have been scurrying around on Earth for about 100 million years and can be found almost anywhere on the planet. There are 600 known species of ants in the U.S., but only a very small percentage of species take up residence near our homes.

Ants are extremely social insects and live in colonies that usually center on one or more egg-laying “queens” with smaller worker ants caring for the queen and her eggs. In these colonies, every ant has an individual job.

Workers forage and bring food back to the colony. Workers are incapable of digesting the food, but the larvae are not, so the workers give the food to the larvae, and the young ants digest the food and regurgitate it back to the worker ants, who then take it to the rest of the colony.

Ants also work together to transport materials in and out of the colony. Although these tiny critters can carry five to 20 times their body weight, ants also work cooperatively in small groups to transport heavier objects.

Different species of ants have different food preferences. When a worker ant has found a good food source, he leaves a scent trail so the other ants can find the food. In case you’re wondering, that’s how they all seem to know where to find your cereal!

With their combined weight greater than the combined weight of all humans, ants are the most numerous type of animal on earth. Ants have been known to share mutually beneficial relationships with plants. In what are known as symbiotic associations, both organisms benefit from the relationship through enhanced survival, growth, or fitness.

In Central America, ants live in the swollen thorn sections of Acacia trees, where the plant provides shelter and nutrients to the ants, and in return, the ants defend the Acacia tree from invaders. The ants attack other insects, mammals, or plants such as vines that try to invade their home. On the other hand, they steer clear of bees and other insects that pollinate the Acacia’s flowers, allowing the tree to reproduce.

The relationship between you and the ants in and around your home may be less than mutually beneficial. If so, there are a few simple things that you can do to solve any perceived problems with these tiny beings without the need for toxic chemicals and cruel traps.

Because insecticides are potentially hazardous to all animals, including humans, you should never use them. The best way to keep ants from entering your home is to remove sources of attraction. Keep your kitchen clean. Do not leave crumbs or garbage around, and keep all food, including companion-animal food, and trash in tightly sealed containers. Wash countertops, floors, and cabinets with equal parts vinegar and water.

When you see ants in your home, try to follow them back to the point where they entered. Use caulk to seal all possible entrances into the house, remembering that ants are tiny and can fit through almost any small opening. Apply weather stripping under doors and seal holes and cracks with caulk.

A product called Orange Guard is a nontoxic organic ant repellent that is harmless to humans and other animals and will drive ants away from areas where they are not wanted. However, when applied directly to ants, the active ingredient d-Limonene (orange peel extract) destroys the waxy coating of the insects’ respiratory systems, causing the ants to suffocate, so please do not spray ants with the repellent. Simply spray the repellent around your home—the citrus fragrance of d-Limonene will repel the ants without killing them.

There are also many natural repellents that you can place around your home to prevent ants from coming in. If ants are coming in the cracks of doors and windows, put a cinnamon stick, coffee grinds, chili pepper, paprika, cloves, or dried peppermint leaves near the openings. You can also squeeze the juice of a lemon at the entry spot and leave the peel there. Planting mint around the foundation of the house will also keep ants away. Place cloves of garlic around indoor and outdoor ant pathways.

http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/howAnts.shtml

How Ants Find Food

Many species of ants communicate with their nest-mates using chemical scents known as pheromones. Pheromones can be used in many ways by ants and other animals (including humans), but we are most interested in how ants use pheromones to direct each other through their environment---this particular task is closely related to the problem of directing the flow of information through a network.

Consider a colony of ants that is searching for food. Casual observation of an ant colony will reveal that ants often walk in a straight line between their anthill and the food source. The concept of an "army" of ants marching in file has permeated popular culture, and most people who live in ant-friendly locations (nearly every human-friendly place in the world) have seen this particular behavior first-hand. Marching in a straight line, which is usually the shortest route, seems like an obvious solution to the problem of efficient food transportation, and we might pass it off as uninteresting.

Photo by Harold Thimbleby --- used without permission
Of course, we humans would do the same thing, and in fact we do march in lines along direct routes when we travel in groups as caravans. When we look down at a line of ants from above, we might simply think "so what?" But we have huge brains compared to ants, along with extraordinarily complicated visual systems (over 25% of the human brain is devoted to vision), and we also have a more elevated view of the terrain. Even with these advantages, efficient route-finding, especially through an environment that is full of obstacles, is not an easy task for us. Given ants' comparatively simpler brains, we cannot pass their collectively intelligent route-finding off as trivial. So how do they do it?

Suppose that an ant colony starts out with no information about the location food in the environment. The human strategy in this case would be to send out a "search party" to comb the surrounding area---the scouts who find food can bring some back to the home-base and inform the others about where the food is. Ants do search for food by walking randomly, which is similar to the human "combing" approach, but two issues prevent ants from implementing a human-style search party directly. First, how can an ant-scout, upon discovering food, find its way back to the nest? Second, even if a scout makes it back to the nest, how can it inform the other ants about the food's location? The answers lie in a clever use of pheromones.

To solve the "finding home" problem, each ant leaves a trail of pheromone as it looks for food. In the following example pictures, the pheromone trail left by each wandering ant is shown in transparent red.

When an ant finds food, it can follow its own pheromone trail back to the nest---this is similar to leaving a trail of bread crumbs through the woods to find your way back home. On the way back to the nest, the ant solves the "telling others" problem by laying down more pheromone, creating a trail with an even stronger scent. In the following picture, ant A reaches the food first and then follows its own trail back to the nest, while the other three ants keep wandering.

When other ants run into a trail of pheromone, they give up their own search and start following the trail. In the following picture, ant D discovers the double-strength trail left by ant A and starts to follow it. Ant C encounters the single-strength trail left by D and follows that trail, which will eventually lead to A's trail as well. Ant B eventually discovers its own route to the food source that is completely disconnected from the routed used by A.

If a pheromone trail leads an ant back to the nest with empty jaws, it turns around and follows the trail in the opposite direction. Once an ant reaches the food, it grabs a piece and turns around, following the same trail back to the nest. On the way back, an ant reinforces the trail by laying down more pheromone. In the following picture, ant C joins A's trail but follows it it the wrong direction, reaching the nest empty-jawed. Ant B follows its own trail back to the nest---it never comes in contact with the more direct trail that the other ants are using. A and D carry food back to the nest along the established route.

Once they reach the food, they grab a piece and turn around, following the same trail back to the nest. On the way back, they reinforce the trail by laying down more pheromone.

We have explained how ants find food in the first place, but how do they find the shortest route to the food? One more detail helps to answer this question: ants prefer to follow the trails with the strongest pheromone scent. Shorter routes between the nest and the food are completed faster by each ant that takes them. For example, if ant X is traveling along a 10-meter path to the food repeatedly, and ant Y is traveling along a different 20-meter path repeatedly, ant X will make twice as many trips in an hour as ant Y. Thus, ant X will lay twice as much pheromone on its trail as ant Y. Given the choice, ants will prefer the strongly-scented 10-meter path over the more weakly-scented 20-meter path. The following picture demonstrates this point. When B deposits food at the nest and sets out for another trip, it discovers the strongly-scented path used by the other ants and abandons its own path. At this point, all four ants are using the path discovered by ant A to carry food between the source and the nest.

Over time, many paths between the nest and the food are explored, but the scent on shortest path is reinforced more than the other paths, so it quickly becomes the most popular path, and soon all of the ants walk in file along it.

Simple Rules

The ant approach to route-finding is quite different from the way humans navigate their environment. We would visually study the environment as a whole and try to "plan" the best route ahead of time. Of course, the ant method has advantages over our "high level" approach. For example, the ant method works fine in complete darkness. When it comes to navigating without visual cues, humans are comparatively helpless.

The ant method can be distilled into simple rules followed by each member of the colony:

Condition:	Action:
Not carrying food not on pheromone trail	walk randomly lay pheromone
Not carrying food on pheromone trail	follow pheromone trail lay more pheromone
Reach home without food on pheromone trail	turn around follow trail in opposite direction
Reach food	pick up food turn around follow trail in opposite direction
Carrying food	follow trail lay more pheromone
Reach home with food	deposit food turn around follow trail in opposite direction

More About Ants

As we go on to describe MUTE's ant-inspired message routing scheme, we will leave real-world ant behavior behind us. However, there is a wealth of information about natural ants and their behavior online, including:

Simplifying Nature

Though the table of "Simple Rules" above is relatively easy to understand, it still contains seven rules, which is not as simple as we might like. Also, there is a bit of sub-optimal behavior lurking: an empty-jawed ant may follow a pheromone trail in the wrong direction, all the way back to the nest. Of course, when an empty-jawed ant reaches the nest, it turns around and eventually makes its way back to the food, but this is still a wasted trip. The problem seems to be the lack of directionality in the trail, and it is certainly difficult to represent direction when all you have to work with are spots of chemical scents.

In the world of networking programs, we are not limited to directionless trail markers. By adding direction to the trail markers, we actually get a much simpler set of rules

Suppose that we augment the ants with two types of pheromone instead of just one, and suppose that we give these pheromones directionality. The first pheromone can be thought of as a "this way home" marker, and we will call it a home-finding pheromone. The second pheromone will be the food-finding pheromone, and it points in the direction of the food source. When ants leave the nest in search of food, they walk randomly, leaving trails of home-finding pheromone as they go. When an ant finds food, it picks up a piece and follows its home-finding trail back to the nest, leaving a trail of food-finding pheromone as it goes. If a wandering ant ever encounters a food-finding trail, it follows that trail to the food source, leaving more home-finding pheromone as it goes.

This simple modification reduces the complexity of our rule set:

Condition:	Walk:	Mark Ground With:
Not carrying food	on food-direction trail, or randomly otherwise	home-direction pheromone
Carrying food	on home-direction trail	food-direction pheromone

Painting Arrows in the Forest

This mechanism is similar to the way humans might navigate a forest by painting colored arrow markers on tree trunks. For example, blue arrows might mean "this way to the lake," and yellow arrows might mean "this way to the lodge." If you walk away from the lodge in search of the lake, you can paint backward yellow arrows as you go along. On your way back from the lake, you can follow your yellow arrows home while painting backward blue arrows. The key point here is that you always know how to get to where you are coming from, though you may not know how to get where you are going. If you get to a tree trunk that has already been painted, you simply add your own arrow, even if it contradicts an existing arrow.

After many people have traveled between the lodge and the lake using this method, there will be many arrows painted throughout the forest---many trees will bear multiple, contradictory arrows. When trying to find your way back to the lodge, how do you interpret a tree trunk that bears ten yellow arrows? There are many possible strategies, but the simplest might be to just obey the majority of the arrows, since they probably point down the more direct paths (recall that direct paths are faster, so they receive more traffic).

(This navigation technique was presented only as an example and not as a suggestion. Please do not paint arrows in the forest.)

How MUTE Routes Messages

In a network, we do not have ants looking for food or hikers trying to find their way between the lodge and the lake. Instead, we have messages that need to travel from a sender to a recipient. Since MUTE users are anonymous, none of the nodes in the network know exactly where to find a particular recipient (or, more precisely, which computer a particular recipient is using). Like ants that are unaware of the overall environment layout, MUTE messages must be directed through the network using only local clues.

Each MUTE node maintains connections to several "neighbors" in the network, and these neighboring connections are used for message passing. Suppose that MUTE node X receives a message from Alice to Bob through node Y, one of its neighbors. X may have no information clues about where Bob is in the network. However, upon receiving this message, node X learns something about Alice: it learns that messages from Alice come through node Y. In the future, if node X ever receives a message to Alice, it can send it back through node Y using this clue.

Regardless of what X learns about Alice, it still has no information about Bob. The best strategy here, using ants as inspiration, is to "send ants in all directions", or to send a copy of the message on to each one of X's neighbors (what we will call "broadcasting" the message). One of the neighbors may have more information about which direction Bob is in. If none of the nodes in the network have clues about Bob's location, they will all broadcast the message to their neighbors. If Bob exists in the network, this technique will eventually find him.

Notice that throughout the search for Bob, the message has been leaving a trail of clues about Alice. If the message reaches Bob, and then Bob sends back a response, the response can follow these clues on a rather direct path back to Alice.

As the response is routed to Alice, it leaves a trail of clues that can be used to route future messages from Alice back to Bob. Other nodes can make use of these clues too. For example, if the owner of node X sends a message to Bob, the message will travel on a rather direct route using the existing clues.

Looking at these example diagrams, we can see that MUTE's routing mechanism is quite similar to the technique of "Painting Arrows in the Forest" presented earlier. Each node can be thought of as a tree, and each neighbor connection can be thought of as a path between neighboring trees. Each node maintains a collection of arrows, and each arrow says something like "To get to Bob, use this path." In these diagrams, we follow the blue arrows backward to find Bob.

We can also think of each message leaving a "scent" as it travels through the network. Messages from Alice leave Alice's scent, and we can follow this scent when sending messages to Alice. The darker arrows in these diagrams represent messages, while the faded arrows can be thought of as the scent left by messages.

For more information about how MUTE implements ant-inspired routing, see the MUTE Technical Details page.

Routing Clues and Privacy

In terms of anonymity, the notion of "clues about Alice" sounds scary. Keep in mind that all of these "clues" are just local hints that will not enable anyone to directly pinpoint Alice in the network. A node's routing clue essentially tells it, "my neighbor knows more about Alice than I do." Of course, none of the nodes have a good measure of how much they know about Alice, so the fact that a particular neighbor knows more gives a node little extra information. For example, none of the nodes along a path between Alice and Bob know enough to conclude that "my neighbor is Alice."