flocking behaviour

Many animals including birds and sheep exhibit flocking behaviour; that is they appear to move as an almost fluid whole. In Starlings this is called a murmuration, in fish shoaling, and for many insects swarming. The emergent behaiour arises because of many local interactions, each bird, animal or insect is aware of its neighbours and seeks to avoid bumping into them whikst alsos taying close; some have an idea ow ehere they woudl like to go or avoid, perhaps becasue they have spotted a good food source or a preditor. These many small interactions lead to the overall flocking behaviour. This can be modelled mathematically for biologists to understand the animals and also to be used in CGI for films. These behaviours can also be used as an inspiration for computational swarm algorithms, which use large numbers of indivdiually simple computational agents to tackle complex problems.

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