The idea of information cascading can be placed in many different human situations. This can be seen by all the examples given in class (ie: fashion, juries, and entertainment). However, with all these human examples, many people can make the argument that all it takes is one strong willed individual to break the cascade. Sometimes the best examples of social phenomena exist in animals. This article discusses the biological habit of circular mills found in army ants. Circular mills occur when a group of food foragers separate from all the other foragers. Usually the ants march in a line. However, if a group separates, the ants will begin to form a circle where the lead ant will follow the end ant. The ants will continue going around in circles until they exhaust themselves and die.  Interestingly enough, this may have been a result of the evolution of ants.  Ants have been around for millions of years and have always gathered in groups.  This evolved into the army ants we see today, where all ants follow the ant in front of them.

Many times the fact that humans have conscious minds prevents us from analyzing basic properties of our behavior.  This is where analysis of animal behavior is useful.  Where a human may stop the cascade, an animal my follow the cascade to it’s death.  What has worked for millions of years must be right.  Also in the case of ants, it may be even more true since ants are well known for their colony- like behavior:  the individual is not important.  Humans have a different mind set.  Most humans, value their ideas.  Some of the most well known discoveries of man were found through the strong will of one man to ignore the information cascade.  For instance, Galileo was constantly insulted by others prominent members of society to give up his beliefs on a heliocentric world, even after he had already made significant advances to other areas of science.  All it takes is one man  to break the cascade.