1 00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:06,840 Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain 2 00:00:06,840 --> 00:00:11,400 Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. Individually, a European starling is a 3 00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:15,720 Speaker 1: common blackbird. That's it. Starlings are short and thick, with 4 00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:18,880 Speaker 1: dark feathers and long, pointy bills. If you live in 5 00:00:18,880 --> 00:00:22,040 Speaker 1: North America or Europe, you've seen them, though birdwatchers have 6 00:00:22,079 --> 00:00:25,080 Speaker 1: spotted them throughout most of the world. More than two 7 00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:28,080 Speaker 1: hundred million live here in North America alone, singing their 8 00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:30,760 Speaker 1: chirpy songs and being too many backyard growers and full 9 00:00:30,800 --> 00:00:34,680 Speaker 1: time farmers a bit on the pesti side. Collectively, though, 10 00:00:34,920 --> 00:00:39,559 Speaker 1: starlings transform into something else entirely together in flight, in 11 00:00:39,680 --> 00:00:42,720 Speaker 1: mesmerizing flocks that sometimes number in the hundreds of thousands. 12 00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:47,400 Speaker 1: They are a breath stealing wonder, a pulsating, swooping, harmonized whole, 13 00:00:47,720 --> 00:00:52,040 Speaker 1: seemingly defying the laws of nature while defining nature itself. 14 00:00:52,920 --> 00:00:55,320 Speaker 1: To watch a murmuration of starlings in mid air, and 15 00:00:55,480 --> 00:00:58,520 Speaker 1: that's what the flocking behavior is called, a murmuration, is 16 00:00:58,560 --> 00:01:02,080 Speaker 1: to experience firsthand the power and mystery of the natural world. 17 00:01:03,480 --> 00:01:06,480 Speaker 1: We spoke with Mario Pessendorfer, a post doctoral associate at 18 00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:09,360 Speaker 1: the Cornell lab of ornithology, who's also a research associate 19 00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:13,360 Speaker 1: at the Smithsonians Migratory Bird Center. He said, I think 20 00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:15,840 Speaker 1: that the core feeling is a sense of awe, the 21 00:01:15,959 --> 00:01:19,200 Speaker 1: spatial scale of something that's moving very rapidly, which we 22 00:01:19,240 --> 00:01:21,959 Speaker 1: are utterly unable to do, and the visual patterning that 23 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:24,240 Speaker 1: occurs when a lot of individuals are doing the same 24 00:01:24,280 --> 00:01:30,240 Speaker 1: thing really mesmerizes us. Murmurations spark curiosity, and they spark 25 00:01:30,280 --> 00:01:33,679 Speaker 1: scientists like Pessendorfer to figure out how swarming animals like 26 00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:36,760 Speaker 1: beads and birds and fish can better our own lives. 27 00:01:38,080 --> 00:01:41,560 Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties, famed ornithologist Edmund Sellis suggested that 28 00:01:41,600 --> 00:01:44,560 Speaker 1: birds moving and murmurations were using some sort of telepathy 29 00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:47,480 Speaker 1: to transmit their flying intentions. He wrote in his book 30 00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:51,840 Speaker 1: thought transference, or what in birds they must think collectively 31 00:01:51,920 --> 00:01:54,080 Speaker 1: all at the same time, a flash out of so 32 00:01:54,120 --> 00:01:57,320 Speaker 1: many brains. As the years wore on, we found out 33 00:01:57,360 --> 00:02:01,600 Speaker 1: that that's not quite it. In the scientists studying insects 34 00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:04,920 Speaker 1: and fish and other collective animal behavior positive that group 35 00:02:04,960 --> 00:02:07,840 Speaker 1: movement is more of a stunningly fast response to others 36 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:10,760 Speaker 1: in the flock or school or swarm, rather than some 37 00:02:10,880 --> 00:02:14,240 Speaker 1: innate mind reading ability, or a command from a group leader. 38 00:02:15,720 --> 00:02:18,760 Speaker 1: The authors of paper published in the journal Proceedings that 39 00:02:18,800 --> 00:02:22,480 Speaker 1: the National Academy of Sciences wrote, it's the rapid transmission 40 00:02:22,480 --> 00:02:27,639 Speaker 1: of local behavior response to neighbors that enables such startling synchronicity. 41 00:02:28,320 --> 00:02:31,519 Speaker 1: Piasendorfer said, there's two ways that you can elicit large 42 00:02:31,520 --> 00:02:34,440 Speaker 1: group behavior. You can have the top down control, where 43 00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:36,520 Speaker 1: you have some kind of leadership or some kind of 44 00:02:36,520 --> 00:02:39,080 Speaker 1: top down mechanism. A think of a rock show. You 45 00:02:39,080 --> 00:02:41,079 Speaker 1: have the rock star in the front and he starts 46 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:44,200 Speaker 1: clapping his hands and the whole stadium starts clapping. But 47 00:02:44,240 --> 00:02:47,760 Speaker 1: these marmurations are actually self organized, meaning that it's the 48 00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:50,919 Speaker 1: individual's little behavioral rules that make its scale up to 49 00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:54,160 Speaker 1: the large group. In order to understand this behavior, we 50 00:02:54,240 --> 00:02:56,520 Speaker 1: have to go from the local scale what the individual 51 00:02:56,639 --> 00:02:59,280 Speaker 1: is doing, what are the rules that the individual is following, 52 00:02:59,600 --> 00:03:04,519 Speaker 1: to the global scale what is the outcome? In A 53 00:03:04,639 --> 00:03:08,239 Speaker 1: mechanical and aerospace engineer and her team from Princeton collaborated 54 00:03:08,280 --> 00:03:12,440 Speaker 1: with physicists in Italy to study murmurations. Naomi Leonard, the 55 00:03:12,520 --> 00:03:15,480 Speaker 1: Princeton engineer, said, back then, in a flock with one 56 00:03:15,520 --> 00:03:18,280 Speaker 1: thousand two hundred birds. It's clear that not every bird 57 00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:19,919 Speaker 1: will be able to keep track of the other one 58 00:03:19,960 --> 00:03:24,040 Speaker 1: thousand one nine birds, So an important question is who 59 00:03:24,160 --> 00:03:28,800 Speaker 1: is keeping track of whom. The Italian physicists used more 60 00:03:28,840 --> 00:03:31,639 Speaker 1: than four hundred photos from several videos to find out, 61 00:03:31,919 --> 00:03:34,519 Speaker 1: plotting the position and speed of birds as they flocked. 62 00:03:35,480 --> 00:03:38,000 Speaker 1: From that, they built a mathematical model that identified the 63 00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:41,960 Speaker 1: optimal number of flockmates for each bird to track. It 64 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:45,160 Speaker 1: turns out the magic number is seven. Each bird keeps 65 00:03:45,160 --> 00:03:48,360 Speaker 1: tabs on its seven closest neighbors and ignores all else. 66 00:03:49,040 --> 00:03:52,200 Speaker 1: Considering all these little groups of seven touch on other individuals, 67 00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:55,920 Speaker 1: and groups of seven twists and turns quickly spread and 68 00:03:56,120 --> 00:04:01,000 Speaker 1: from that a whole murmuration moves. Although it looks coordinated 69 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:03,760 Speaker 1: on a large scale, the individual birds are concerned with 70 00:04:03,840 --> 00:04:06,360 Speaker 1: only three aspects of their flight and the flight of 71 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:09,720 Speaker 1: those around them. These factors have been described in several ways, 72 00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:13,760 Speaker 1: but they boiled down similarly. They are an attraction zone, 73 00:04:14,240 --> 00:04:16,680 Speaker 1: an area where you're going to move toward the next 74 00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:20,240 Speaker 1: bird over, a repulsion zone, an area where you don't 75 00:04:20,279 --> 00:04:23,120 Speaker 1: fly because you'll interfere with another bird and you'll both fall, 76 00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:27,080 Speaker 1: and angular alignment, meaning that you're following a neighboring bird's 77 00:04:27,160 --> 00:04:31,560 Speaker 1: directional movement. Peasant Doorffer said, depending on how you change 78 00:04:31,600 --> 00:04:34,240 Speaker 1: those three parameters, you can get everything from those barrel 79 00:04:34,240 --> 00:04:36,960 Speaker 1: looking baseballs that you get an ocean fish, to loose 80 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:41,560 Speaker 1: looking insect swarms, to highly highly organized fish swarms and murmurations, 81 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:46,159 Speaker 1: all in those three little parameters. Scientists believe these birds 82 00:04:46,160 --> 00:04:48,960 Speaker 1: flock in the first place to confuse and discourage predators 83 00:04:48,960 --> 00:04:51,880 Speaker 1: through their sheer numbers. With the noise such a flock makes, 84 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:55,800 Speaker 1: and of course it's motion. Some communication between birds may 85 00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:59,760 Speaker 1: be happening to in mmerations, say pointing out good food sources, 86 00:04:59,880 --> 00:05:04,040 Speaker 1: or the birds may simply be keeping warm. What maybe 87 00:05:04,160 --> 00:05:06,719 Speaker 1: most stunning to mere humans is that these birds react 88 00:05:06,800 --> 00:05:10,080 Speaker 1: so quickly, and do so in such synchronization. If not 89 00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:12,720 Speaker 1: immediately within a couple of flaps of a bird's wings, 90 00:05:13,200 --> 00:05:15,440 Speaker 1: they move almost as one in a type of lock 91 00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:20,440 Speaker 1: step or as it were, block flap. But how birds 92 00:05:20,480 --> 00:05:23,080 Speaker 1: can take in certain information around them and process it 93 00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:26,840 Speaker 1: much more quickly than humans. They see faster than we do. 94 00:05:27,080 --> 00:05:32,560 Speaker 1: They basically have a higher frame rate. Back in Craig Reynolds, 95 00:05:32,560 --> 00:05:35,760 Speaker 1: an m I T trained computer scientists built computer models 96 00:05:35,760 --> 00:05:38,920 Speaker 1: of bird flocking and fish schooling in something he called 97 00:05:39,080 --> 00:05:44,440 Speaker 1: Boyd's These programs provided the basis for lifelike animation in movies, initially, 98 00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:47,960 Speaker 1: and notably a swarm of bats in the Tim Burton 99 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:52,760 Speaker 1: film Batman Returns. In applications to real life, the ability 100 00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:55,960 Speaker 1: to understand the behavioral movements of large groups of starlings 101 00:05:56,040 --> 00:05:59,239 Speaker 1: or bats or bees or whatever, and to program swarms 102 00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:03,520 Speaker 1: of robots and making similar movements has amazing possibilities. This 103 00:06:03,600 --> 00:06:08,080 Speaker 1: is called bio mimicry or bio memetics. An example, Las 104 00:06:08,120 --> 00:06:11,880 Speaker 1: Combres Observatory has twenty two robotic telescopes on seven sides 105 00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:14,600 Speaker 1: around the world that coordinate with each other to function 106 00:06:14,640 --> 00:06:19,559 Speaker 1: as one big telescope. From the LCO website. It's called 107 00:06:19,640 --> 00:06:23,159 Speaker 1: time domain astronomy, which means that we can continually watch 108 00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:26,440 Speaker 1: phenomena in space as they change. When we get to 109 00:06:26,440 --> 00:06:28,960 Speaker 1: see the big picture as it unfolds, we're able to 110 00:06:29,040 --> 00:06:32,880 Speaker 1: learn more, learn it faster, and dramatically increase our understanding 111 00:06:32,920 --> 00:06:36,680 Speaker 1: of the forces that drive the universe. Another example, the 112 00:06:36,760 --> 00:06:40,320 Speaker 1: emerging field of swarm robotics, uses information gleaned from the 113 00:06:40,320 --> 00:06:43,279 Speaker 1: study of starlings that could, according to the vis Institute 114 00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:47,400 Speaker 1: at Harvard Quote, enable new approaches for search and rescue missions, 115 00:06:47,400 --> 00:06:53,480 Speaker 1: construction efforts, environmental remediation, and medical applications. A swarm robotics 116 00:06:53,480 --> 00:06:56,600 Speaker 1: could also have used in military applications, like micro drones 117 00:06:56,640 --> 00:06:59,960 Speaker 1: released from fighter aircraft. A swarm of self driving cars 118 00:07:00,040 --> 00:07:03,360 Speaker 1: working together could help reduce or eliminate traffic jams. All 119 00:07:03,440 --> 00:07:06,839 Speaker 1: from watching, studying, learning, and building on the wondrous flocking 120 00:07:06,920 --> 00:07:11,640 Speaker 1: of this simple bird, Pisendorfer said, as humans who have 121 00:07:11,760 --> 00:07:15,160 Speaker 1: very complicated decision making processes, we're not used to looking 122 00:07:15,200 --> 00:07:18,040 Speaker 1: at simple decision making processes that scale up to what 123 00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:22,240 Speaker 1: looks like complex behavior. These models help us understand these 124 00:07:22,280 --> 00:07:30,400 Speaker 1: types of patterns. Today's episode was written by John Donovan 125 00:07:30,440 --> 00:07:33,040 Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is a production 126 00:07:33,080 --> 00:07:35,320 Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this 127 00:07:35,440 --> 00:07:37,600 Speaker 1: and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how 128 00:07:37,640 --> 00:07:40,120 Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and for more. Podcast from my 129 00:07:40,160 --> 00:07:42,960 Speaker 1: heart Radio as the Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or 130 00:07:42,960 --> 00:07:44,600 Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.