This study investigates some of swarm intelligence algorithms to tackle a traditional damage detection problem having stiffness degradation or damage in mechanical structures. Particle swarm(PSO) and ant colony optimization(ACO) methods have been exploited for localizing and estimating the location and extent damages in a structure. Both PSO and ACO are population-based, stochastic algorithms that have been developed from the underlying concept of swarm intelligence and search heuristic. A finite element (FE) model updating is implemented to minimize the difference in a set of natural frequencies between measured and baseline vibration data. Stiffness loss of certain elements is considered to simulate structural damages in the FE model. It is numerically shown that PSO and ACO algorithms successfully completed the optimization process of model updating in locating unknown damages in a truss structure.