Ants

I see two ants crawling - walking - towards one another. They meet and pause for a few moments, perhaps slightly longer than usual. How do I interpret, or understand, this?
Were I to see two humans meet, I would speculate about whether they know each other, are old friends, etc, depending on how long they remain together (if they are too distant to for me to see gestures and hear voices). With the ants, I cannot posit any self-awareness. Even if the ant has some sort of information, or message, to convey, I must think of this in purely functionalist terms. The ant has not been given a task - rather, this is simply something that ants do. And this in turn must be conceived instinctually. Can we make an analogy with breathing, or the beating of the heart? Or would this conception force us to consider an ant colony as a single organism (and if so, what is the problem with this)?