Tectonic has created an ant simulation in Second lIfe. The video shows a simulation of how ants find food, leave a pheromone trail for recruiting, and occasionally run into dead ends. It’s a short, pretty interesting video to watch.
Second Life’s scripting language and avatar creation tools make it ripe for this type of simulation/instructional video. Are there any others you’d like to share? Link to them in the comments.
Update: National Geographic has an interesting story on how learnings from swarms (ants or bees) are being used to manage complex systems.