Ants and Vocabulary

I am at the moment having a great time in a student exchange program in Singapore where I am having my final year ( nobody cares... ). So this semester I am doing a end of study project about some ant algorithm stuff ( or better said about slamming ant algorithmes ) and stumbled during my paper reading on some quite interresting words I'd like to share with everbody ... So the first one is a bit technical :

Stigmergy : A way of communicating between individuals by interfering with the environment

Example : I am on a skiing trip in Obersdorf (Fellhorn), I find a nice new spot no one went there before me, so I open the spot. Then a guy comes along, didn't see me opening the spot but notices the track I left in the snow, and follows then. This is a stigmergic way of communication because I don't tell the guy about the spot ( oh no I wouldn't tell him....) but I still communicate with him through my track (at least it is like that that I understood it...)

Then second one which actually is really nice and almost usefull :

Thigmotactism : A tendency to follow walls

Example : actually wouldn't need one but I will still gice U one if U are a bit slow. Imagine the same skier who followed my tracks just before thought that he is cleverer than me and dessides to go a bit of my good tracks to open some other pure powder, and the sudenly! Arf! a cliff in front of him ... oki he is not bad so able to stop on top of it ... but he is damn lazy and doesn't want to walk up the mountains and dessides that the easyiest way of geting back to a slope is to follow the cliff .... this is thigmotactic behavior!

So now that U know those 2 marvelous words, use them and each time U find an application for them let me know .....