People who go on social networking sites are often compared to ant colonies — but it may be truer than anyone realizes. A new study from the University of Madrid suggests that the behavior of real-life ants could inspire developers to improve the way these sites function. By constructing an algorithm modeled off the foraging behavior of ants, researchers are hoping to accelerate the way relationships are established in social networks — and these findings could have implications for the development of such things as GPS navigation and online gaming.

Social networking sites are becoming increasingly generalized on account of their explosive popularity. A consequent problem facing today's software developers is in locating the referential chain that leads from one person to another - or what the developers describe as the path from node to node. As these networks increase in size, so too does latency. And as any user of social networks can attest, delays are a complete turn-off.

This is where the ants come in.

Ants have evolved extremely sophisticated behaviors when it comes to looking for food. Their foraging techniques have been delicately refined through the processes of natural selection — and now, researchers want to tap into that biological insight in an effort to develop an algorithm that could vastly improve the efficiency of any kind of software that needs to make quick associations between related elements.