Dancers amaze me. Their synchronized movements are awesome. Dancers spend hours and hours learning and rehearsing choreography in order to attain perfection in motion.
This time of year, many birds are migrating. Thousands move in flocks---fluid masses of birds able to pivot and whirl in an instant, without rehearsal, choreography or even warning. This synchronized movement baffled scientists for centuries.
Apparently, the abrupt unison change of direction is useful to avoid predators, but how do flocks do it? While flying at high speeds, does one bird initiate the movement and the rest follow? Is it telepathy?
For years, researchers tried to figure it out and they still aren’t sure, but back in 1984, zoologist Wayne Potts filmed flocks and, frame at a time, analyzed the movements of the individual birds.
Potts’ conclusion was that one bird initiates a maneuver which spreads through the flock in a wave. But it happens almost instantaneously because instead of reacting to its nearest neighbors, a bird is aware of six, maybe seven birds down the line, so it can “observe the maneuver wave and time its own execution to coincide with its arrival” --sort like a dancer would do.
This idea currently has quite a bit of support…and oh, by the way, Potts called it “The Chorus Line Hypothesis.”
