{"id":239298,"date":"2026-06-19T02:23:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/how-do-flocking-birds-and-schools-of-fish-move-new-research-offers-crystal-clear-answer"},"modified":"2026-06-19T02:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:23:17","slug":"how-do-flocking-birds-and-schools-of-fish-move-new-research-offers-crystal-clear-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/how-do-flocking-birds-and-schools-of-fish-move-new-research-offers-crystal-clear-answer","title":{"rendered":"How do flocking birds and schools of fish move? New research offers crystal-clear answer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xdEEN3J5Wgk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Flocking birds and schools of fish are a familiar sight. While previous research has uncovered the broad dynamics driving these movements, their underlying intricacies remain a mystery. Now a study by a team of New York University mathematicians offers new insights into these phenomena. It reveals that flocks and schools behave in ways similar to a soft crystalline material, with individual birds and fish serving as \u201catoms\u201d that are evenly spaced in a lattice-like formation.<\/p>\n<p>The findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/tp8s-76vr\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> in the journal <i>Physical Review Fluids<\/i>, offer detailed insights into the hydrodynamic and aerodynamic interactions crucial in aerospace and automotive engineering, robotics and energy harvesting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur findings offer a new way to understand how animal collectives coordinate movement and respond to their environment,\u201d says Christiana Mavroyiakoumou, a researcher at NYU\u2019s Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science at the time of the study and now a fellow at Oxford University\u2019s Mathematical Institute. \u201cMore specifically, lines of birds or fish behave like an elastic material with regularly spaced individuals held together by flexible, or spring-like, bonds\u2014akin to soft crystalline substances in which atoms are arranged in an orderly, repeating pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flocking birds and schools of fish are a familiar sight. While previous research has uncovered the broad dynamics driving these movements, their underlying intricacies remain a mystery. Now a study by a team of New York University mathematicians offers new insights into these phenomena. It reveals that flocks and schools behave in ways similar to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,48,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-particle-physics","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239298","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}