The Urge to Swarm

It's geat when the NYTimes comes through with a terrific article. In From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm, a detailed analysis of how well ants and other swarmers manage to handle congestion greatly differs from the daily disaster we create during rush hour.

To whit:

"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.

Deciphering those rules is a big challenge, however, because the behavior of swarms emerges unpredictably from the actions of thousands or millions of individuals."

When it comes to us humans, swarming behavior does apply.

"In one version of the experiment, each person was instructed simply to stay with the group. As Dr. Couzin’s model predicted, they tended to circle around in a doughnut-shaped flock. In another version, one person was instructed to head for a particular card at the edge of the circle without leaving the group. The players quickly formed little swarms with their leader at the head, moving together to the target.

The scientists then sowed discord by telling two or more people to move to opposite sides of the circle. The other people had to try to stay with the group even as leaders tried to pull it apart.

As Dr. Couzin’s model predicted, the human swarm made a quick, unconscious decision about which way to go. People tended to follow the largest group of leaders, even if it contained only one additional person."

A real pioneer in analyzing swarming behavior was Craig Reynolds, a brilliant programmer who developed a wonderful app called Boids, a program used to generate one of the truly great 1987 CG shorts called Stanley & Stella "Breaking the Ice".

Enjoy