Flocks
Flocking is the behaviour exhibited when a group of birds, called a flock, are foraging or in flight. Computer simulations and mathematical models that have been developed to emulate the flocking behaviours of birds can also generally be applied to the "flocking" behaviour of other species. As a result, the term "flocking" is sometimes applied, in computer science, to species other than birds. This article is about the modelling of flocking behaviour. From the perspective of the mathematical modeller, "flocking" is the collective motion by a group of self-propelled entities and is a collective animal behaviour exhibited by many living beings such as birds, fish, bacteria, and insects. It is considered an emergent behaviour arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination. In nature There are parallels with the shoaling behaviour of fish, the swarming behaviour of insects, and herd behaviour of land animals. During the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Swarm
Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving ''en masse'' or migrating in some direction. It is a highly interdisciplinary topic. As a term, ''swarming'' is applied particularly to insects, but can also be applied to any other entity or animal that exhibits swarm behaviour. The term '' flocking'' or ''murmuration'' can refer specifically to swarm behaviour in birds, ''herding'' to refer to swarm behaviour in tetrapods, and ''shoaling'' or ''schooling'' to refer to swarm behaviour in fish. Phytoplankton also gather in huge swarms called ''blooms'', although these organisms are algae and are not self-propelled the way animals are. By extension, the term "swarm" is applied also to inanimate entities which exhibit parallel behaviours, as in a robot swarm, an earthquake swarm, or a swarm of stars. From a more abstract point of v ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Flock (birds)
A flock is a gathering of individual birds to forage or travel collectively. Avian flocks are typically associated with migration. Flocking also offers foraging benefits and protection from predators, although flocking can have costs for individual members. Flocks are often defined as groups consisting of individuals from the same species. However, mixed flocks consisting of two or more species are also common. Avian species that tend to flock together are typically similar in taxonomy and share morphological characteristics such as size and shape. Mixed flocks offer increased protection against predators, which is particularly important in closed habitats such as forests where early warning calls play a vital importance in the early recognition of danger. The result is the formation of many mixed-species feeding flocks. Mixed flocks While mixed flocks are typically thought to be composed of two different species, it is specifically the two different behaviours of the species ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Flock (birds)
A flock is a gathering of individual birds to forage or travel collectively. Avian flocks are typically associated with migration. Flocking also offers foraging benefits and protection from predators, although flocking can have costs for individual members. Flocks are often defined as groups consisting of individuals from the same species. However, mixed flocks consisting of two or more species are also common. Avian species that tend to flock together are typically similar in taxonomy and share morphological characteristics such as size and shape. Mixed flocks offer increased protection against predators, which is particularly important in closed habitats such as forests where early warning calls play a vital importance in the early recognition of danger. The result is the formation of many mixed-species feeding flocks. Mixed flocks While mixed flocks are typically thought to be composed of two different species, it is specifically the two different behaviours of the species ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Collective Animal Behaviour
Collective animal behaviour is a form of social behavior involving the coordinated behavior of large groups of similar animals as well as emergent properties of these groups. This can include the costs and benefits of group membership, the transfer of information, decision-making process, locomotion and synchronization of the group. Studying the principles of collective animal behavior has relevance to human engineering problems through the philosophy of biomimetics. For instance, determining the rules by which an individual animal navigates relative to its neighbors in a group can lead to advances in the deployment and control of groups of swimming or flying micro-robots such as UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). Examples Examples of collective animal behavior include: * Flocking birds * Herding ungulates * Shoaling and schooling fish * Schooling Antarctic krill * Pods of dolphins * Marching locusts * Nest building ants * Swarming * Stampede History The basis of collectiv ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. B ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shoaling And Schooling
In biology, any group of fish that stay together for social reasons are shoaling, and if the group is swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner, they are schooling. In common usage, the terms are sometimes used rather loosely. About one quarter of fish species shoal all their lives, and about one half shoal for part of their lives. Fish derive many benefits from shoaling behaviour including defence against predators (through better predator detection and by diluting the chance of individual capture), enhanced foraging success, and higher success in finding a mate. It is also likely that fish benefit from shoal membership through increased hydrodynamic efficiency. Fish use many traits to choose shoalmates. Generally they prefer larger shoals, shoalmates of their own species, shoalmates similar in size and appearance to themselves, healthy fish, and kin (when recognized). The oddity effect posits that any shoal member that stands out in appearance will be preferen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Starling
Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. The Sturnidae are named for the genus ''Sturnus'', which in turn comes from the Latin word for starling, ''sturnus''. Many Asian species, particularly the larger ones, are called mynas, and many African species are known as glossy starlings because of their iridescent plumage. Starlings are native to Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as northern Australia and the islands of the tropical Pacific. Several European and Asian species have been introduced to these areas, as well as North America, Hawaii, and New Zealand, where they generally compete for habitats with native birds and are considered to be invasive species. The starling species familiar to most people in Europe and North America is the common starling, and throughout much of Asia and the Pacific, the common myna is indeed common. Starlings have strong feet, their flight is strong and direct, and they are very gregarious. Their preferred h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Boids
Boids is an artificial life program, developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, which simulates the flocking behaviour of birds. His paper on this topic was published in 1987 in the proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH conference. The name "boid" corresponds to a shortened version of "bird-oid object", which refers to a bird-like object. "Boid" is also a New York Metropolitan dialect pronunciation for "bird." As with most artificial life simulations, Boids is an example of emergent behavior; that is, the complexity of Boids arises from the interaction of individual agents (the boids, in this case) adhering to a set of simple rules. The rules applied in the simplest Boids world are as follows: * separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates * alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates * cohesion: steer to move towards the average position (center of mass) of local flockmates More complex rules can be added, such as obstacle avoidance and goal seeking. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Starling
Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. The Sturnidae are named for the genus ''Sturnus'', which in turn comes from the Latin word for starling, ''sturnus''. Many Asian species, particularly the larger ones, are called mynas, and many African species are known as glossy starlings because of their iridescent plumage. Starlings are native to Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as northern Australia and the islands of the tropical Pacific. Several European and Asian species have been introduced to these areas, as well as North America, Hawaii, and New Zealand, where they generally compete for habitats with native birds and are considered to be invasive species. The starling species familiar to most people in Europe and North America is the common starling, and throughout much of Asia and the Pacific, the common myna is indeed common. Starlings have strong feet, their flight is strong and direct, and they are very gregarious. Their preferred h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry. In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties have been called emergentism. In philosophy Philosophers often understand emergence as a claim about the etiology of a system's properties. An emergent property of a system, in this context, is one that is not a property of any component of that system, but is still a feature of the system as a whole. Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950), one of the first modern philosophers to write on emergence, termed this a ''categorial novum'' (new category). Definitions This concept of emergence dates from at least the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Insects
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; In: potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within. Nearly all insects hatch from eggs. Inse ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; In: potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within. Nearly all insects hatch from eggs. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |