Starling Murmurations

Starling Murmurations

Watching a murmuration on a winter evening can be mesmerizing. Like in this video, you can hear the murmur of thousands of birds as they move in seemingly choreographed flight.

A murmuration has no leader or flight plan, and the complex patterns we see are the result of relatively simple decisions made by individual birds. Each bird watches its neighbors and adjusts its velocity and direction to stay together and avoid collisions.

Biologists believe murmurations are primarily anti-predator behavior -- there is safety in numbers and an undulating flock can confuse predators which have trouble focusing on an individual bird. There’s also an advantage to joining a large flock of warm bodies that will communally roost and modulate the overnight temperature.

Murmurations, and the rules followed by individuals within them, has inspired mathematical swarm intelligence algorithms, including one called the starling murmuration optimizer (SMO). These algorithms are being used to solve a variety of engineering and other challenges, including managing large numbers of network-connected smart devices, improving health care, and enabling real-time mental stress monitoring.

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