A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that ants have a more efficient ability to collect information than Google. 

The study found that ants use a much developed systematic process how they scour the environment in search of food. The Beijing University of Posts and Communications teamed up with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and found that ant foraging behavior is much more efficient than what scientists have previously discovered. 

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In previous studies, scientists have established that ants need to leave the nest to search for food, but none of these studies were able to show how ants disperse themselves unilaterally when they leave their nest. 

The Beijing and Potsdam team decided to harness algorithms to show how ants use their foraging skills. 

Researchers from Potsdam gathered as much data as they can about how ants scour for food. Then they used these data, uploaded them into powerful computers and afterwards searched for predictable patterns that ants follow. 

The Beijing researchers used a similar approach and found that ants would divide themselves into two groups. One group form scouts and the other becomes a group of gatherers. 

The researchers found that scouts leave a trail of pheromones when foraging to guide gatherers where the scouts have been. Over time, the trail becomes more familiar, which increases the search's efficiency. 

The ants' efficient patterns - using pheromone trails - save the ant colony time and energy, the researchers said. 

The study also found that older ants are better repositories of knowledge. The older ants get, they become more familiar with the terrain that surrounds their colony. They then pass the information to other member ants, which make the colony more efficient in gathering food in the long run. 

Jurgen Kurths, one of the researchers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, said that ant collective behavior in managing information is much better than the best human designers can achieve. 

"That transition between chaos and order is an important mechanism and I'd go as far as to say that the learning strategy involved in that is more accurate and complex than a Google search," Kurths told The Independent. 

TagsAnts, ant foraging, information gathering, ant foraging behavior, Beijing University of Posts and Communications, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences