---
title: "The mystery of termite communication"
author: "Veselin Slavchev"
date: 2015-11-06
tags: ["artificial life", "emergent behaviour"]
description: "How termites gather wood into piles by following simple rules that add up to complex emergent behaviour, and my simulation of it."
url: https://vsslavchev.com/blog/termites/
---

# The mystery of termite communication

![Termite simulation screenshot](https://vsslavchev.com/img/artificial.jpg)

Until the 1960s scientists could not explain how termites manage to organise their activity to gather and pile up in one place all the wood pieces they find. Different theories tried to explain this like inaudible languages, but the truth was that they just followed simple rules, from which emerged a complex behaviour.

By taking a piece of wood when they encounter it and dropping it when they encounter another one the termites move the pieces to one or more piles, which in turn also get combined into bigger piles. The result is cleared areas and compact piles.

My implementation of the simulation: [on github](https://github.com/vs-slavchev/Small_projects/tree/master/TermiteSimulation)