{"id":150579,"date":"2022-11-20T10:23:41","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T16:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/physics-study-shows-that-sheep-flocks-alternate-their-leader-and-achieve-collective-intelligence"},"modified":"2022-11-20T10:23:41","modified_gmt":"2022-11-20T16:23:41","slug":"physics-study-shows-that-sheep-flocks-alternate-their-leader-and-achieve-collective-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/physics-study-shows-that-sheep-flocks-alternate-their-leader-and-achieve-collective-intelligence","title":{"rendered":"Physics study shows that sheep flocks alternate their leader and achieve collective intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physics-study-shows-that-sheep-flocks-alternate-their-leader-and-achieve-collective-intelligence.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The collective motion of animals in a group is a fascinating topic of research for many scientists. Understanding these collective behaviors can sometimes inspire the development of strategies for promoting positive social change, as well as technologies that emulate nature.<\/p>\n<p>Many studies describe flocking behavior as a self-organized process, with individuals in a group continuously adapting their direction and speed to ultimately achieve a \u201ccollective\u201d motion. This perspective, however, does not consider the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/hierarchical+structure\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">hierarchical structure<\/a> exhibited by many <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/animal+groups\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">animal groups<\/a> and the possible benefits of having a \u201cleader\u201d guide the way.<\/p>\n<p>Luis G\u00f3mez-Nava, Richard Bon and Fernando Peruani, three researchers at Universit\u00e9 C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur, Universit\u00e9 de Toulouse, and CY Cergy Paris Universit\u00e9 have recently used physics theory to examine the collective behavior of small flocks of sheep. Their findings, published in <i>Nature Physics<\/i>, show that by alternating between the role of leader and follower, the flock ultimately achieves some form of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/collective+intelligence\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">collective intelligence<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The collective motion of animals in a group is a fascinating topic of research for many scientists. Understanding these collective behaviors can sometimes inspire the development of strategies for promoting positive social change, as well as technologies that emulate nature. Many studies describe flocking behavior as a self-organized process, with individuals in a group continuously [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}