Algorithms inspired from natural phenomena are seem to be efficient to solve various optimization problems. This paper investigates a new technique inspiring from the animal group living behavior to solve traveling salesman problem (TSP), the most popular combinatorial optimization problem. The proposed producer-scrounger method (PSM) models roles and interactions of three types of animal group members: producer, scrounger and dispersed. PSM considers a producer having the best tour, few dispersed members having worse tours and scroungers. In each iteration, the producer scans for better tour, scroungers explore new tours while moving toward producer’s tour; and dispersed members randomly checks new tours. For producer’s scanning, PSM randomly selects a city from the producer’s tour and rearranges its connection with several near cities for better tours. Swap operator and swap sequence based operation is employed in PSM to update a scrounger towards the producer. The proposed PSM has been tested on a large number of benchmark TSPs and outcomes compared to genetic algorithm and ant colony optimization. Experimental results revealed that proposed PSM is a good technique to solve TSP providing the best tours in most of the TSPs.