The next day it occurred to me, “Oh wait, this is almost the same as how [Internet] protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for transferring a file!” The algorithm the ants were using to discover how much food there is available is essentially the same as that used in the Transmission Control Protocol.

Balaji Prabhakar, in Bjorn Carey, “Stanford Biologist and Computer Scientist Discover the ‘Anternet’”