Dripping faucet with ants

The formation of droplets of ants is observed under certain experimental conditions. An aggregate forms at the end of a rod, the size of this aggregate fluctuates, and a droplet containing up to 40 ants eventually falls down. When the flux of incoming ants is sufficient, this process can continue for several hours, leading to the formation and fall of tens of droplets. This phenomenon is reminiscent of a leaky faucet, a well-known example of a simple chaotic system. It is found that the similarity is mon than apparent: the time series of drop-to-drop intervals appears to result from a nonlinear low-dimensional dynamics, and the interdrop increments exhibit long-range anticorrelations.