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Bee Hives and Ant Colonies
In emergent systems such as bee hives or ant colonies, there used to be a perception that the queen of the colony held a leadership role and that all the workers were drones. This anthropomorphizing of these simple animals would seem to be obvious, but only recently did scientists become aware that there isn't a single member of this animal community that is aware of the plan of the hive or of the colony. Each member has a small job with several variables. The variables include density of population, wealth of resources, and the activities of the surrounding members. For example, if an ant intends to leave the colony to forage and it intercepts many other ants that are already returning with food, the ant might change its task because resource requirements have already been met by other ants.