this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2022
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I am not convinced. What makes this system the "most efficient"?
A billion years of evolution to find a efficient way to search food?
It's efficient for sure, but the most efficient?
Yes, like almost all the solutions that nature offers, that is the reason why the branch of engineering was created, called Bionics, with infinite current applications in aeronautics, new materials, chemistry and physics. For example the small vertical fins at the end of the aircraft wings, to reduce turbulence, are the result of this, also to name the lotus effect, or stickers inspired by the feet of the gecko, to climb smooth vertical surfaces and a long etc. . more. The evolutionary effect can be mimicked by computer models, but this requires a huge number of iterations, to obtain (mostly bad) what nature achieved over many millions of generations, which alternatively just needs to be mimicked. In the case of this fungus, similar results were achieved in other cities using ants, which also found the optimal paths.
My point is that you don't know if it's the optimal path
Naturally it is known, once the result has been verified and the distances/time/energy expenditure required have been measured. The evolutionary process admits no other than the most efficient solution, either by path or energy, especially in very old current species, all of them adapted to the maximum to their corresponding environment. Other solutions that nature offers even today are not yet well understood, such as photosynthesis, which only now with quantum physics is beginning to reveal how it works. Ceramic materials, harder than porcelain, created at room temperature in certain sea slug shells, spider silk that also cannot be reproduced satisfactorily... We are very advanced technologically, but it is a mistake to think that we are at the top of what we understand. There are still many unknowns, many, and until now we only understand part of 5% of what surrounds us and what we can reproduce. No more.