The Road Best Traveled: A Tale of Ants, Slime Mold and the New Jersey Turnpike

For most people, getting stuck in a traffic jam on the New Jersey Turnpike is a grueling lesson in futility. But if you're Simon Garnier of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, you often view it as an opportunity to examine our collective behavior and ponder how we became so inefficient compared to other species. Having studied the expansive food trails of army ants and the seemingly mindless exploration of slime mold, Garnier hopes to model the systems of their behavior in order to understand how and why relatively simple organisms organize themselves so dynamically.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Stills and Video Provided by:
Sean McCann, Matthew Lutz, Simon Garnier, Aladin Casino (C.C. 3.0), Phy Chip (C.C. 2.0), Un Poco Del Choco (C.C. 3.0),
Jeff Gerber PD (C.C. 3.0), Vimeo User Implicate Order (C.C. 3.0), Murray Gans (C.C. 3.0)
S.P Sullivan (C.C. 3.0)