A simulation of Langston’s Ant is quite simply programmed in most computer languages.

Clicking this line will take you to the source code for a minimalistic Visual Basic version.

A search of the web should provide lot’s of links to Java versions that will run in your Web Browser but most of these are very slow and provide little variation in the state of the ant’s world.

It is possible to construct a more complex set of rules for the ant and perhaps to add multiple ants to the simulation. Different simulations produce different results in different timescales but they all seem to result in the sudden emergence of a new and repetitive behaviour.

This simulation was first described by Chris Langton in the July 1994 edition of the Scientific American.

There is no way to predict the position of the ant after any given number of moves. The only way of finding out is to run the simulation. In spite of being constrained by relatively simple rules, Langton's Ant exhibits a measure of autonomy.

Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen paper (Figments of Reality, CUP, 1997) uses Langton's Ant as an analagy representing an essential stage in the evolution of complex systems - even life itself. This is because Langton’s Ant demonstrates that chaotic behaviour contains the potential for the spontaneous emergence of unpredictable forms of order.

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