There is a very important notion from The Sciences of the Artificial book by Herbert A. Simon, that the visible (to an external observer) behavior of an ant (its tracks, if you wish) is not due to its supposed intelligence, but mostly due to the obstacles in the environment.
Most of the models mimic and simulate (very naively) that observable behavior, not its origin.
When people cite "the map is not the territory" they mean this. Simulation is not even an experiment. It is mere an animation of a model - a cartoon.