Karl Zimmer, author of the science blog The Loom, has an article in the Science Times section of the NY Times about animal behavior in a crowd – swarms, herds, schools and gaggles. Does this shed light on human swarming instincts? Do we also play follow-the-leader when it comes to our religious, political and cultural choices?
If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain D. Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult — to the ants.
Americans spend a 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock.
Army ants, which Dr. Couzin has spent much time observing in Panama, are particularly good at moving in swarms. If they have to travel over a depression in the ground, they erect bridges so that they can proceed as quickly as possible.
“They build the bridges with their living bodies,” said Dr. Couzin, a mathematical biologist at Princeton University and the University of Oxford. “They build them up if they’re required, and they dissolve if they’re not being used.”
The reason may be that the ants have had a lot more time to adapt to living in big groups. “We haven’t evolved in the societies we currently live in,” Dr. Couzin said.
By studying army ants — as well as birds, fish, locusts and other swarming animals — Dr. Couzin and his colleagues are starting to discover simple rules that allow swarms to work so well. Those rules allow thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism.
Accidental Blogger 
One response to “Swarming For Food, Shelter …. And Politics?”
If the swarm theory is applicable to humans and their political leanings, one can clearly see that the media pushing the frontrunner status of this candidate or that is an attempt to generate a leader based on the swarm mentality of the crowds, irrespective of the issues that the candidate stands for. Now that’s a useful insight in the current situation, though what can be done to counter it is less evident.
Just the other day, I watched a large flock of grackles whirling and swooping around our neighborhood in perfect synchronism – How do they do it? From Zimmer’s article, it’s possible to figure this out.
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