What happened
Researchers found that even highly cooperative ant colonies can fall into a trap where following the shortest path actually slows down the entire group — a problem usually blamed on selfish behavior in human traffic networks. This suggests the paradox is built into how organisms naturally explore and exploit known routes, not a flaw of individual selfishness, which means the problem may be harder to solve than previously thought.
Why it matters
If even perfectly cooperative systems can accidentally make themselves slower by optimizing for individual route efficiency, it means structural solutions to traffic congestion can't rely on assuming better cooperation alone — the trap is mathematical, not behavioral.