There's a price for blindly following those in front of you. Take army ants for instance. These aggressive insects have a dangerous tendency to commit mass suicide just because they're following the leader.
This bizarre phenomenon - in which ants circle around and around until they all drop dead of exhaustion - is called an 'ant mill.' More colloquially, it's often referred to as an 'ant death spiral.' It happens when a group of army ants separated from the main foraging party lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle.
(via Look At This...)
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