Xref: utzoo comp.ai:7881 comp.ai.philosophy:198
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!noose.ecn.purdue.edu!stable.ecn.purdue.edu!muttiah
From: muttiah@stable.ecn.purdue.edu (Ranjan S Muttiah)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Bird flight as an emergent property
Message-ID: <1990Oct23.170118.27104@ecn.purdue.edu>
Date: 23 Oct 90 17:01:18 GMT
Sender: news@ecn.purdue.edu (USENET news)
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Lines: 16


	Here are some observations that were triggered on reading a
simulation about bird flight on one of the BBoards (Alife ?).

----
	It seems that some flock of birds fly in random formation and
then suddenly converge together, and then continue almost in random flight
and then again converge etc.  I was puzzled about whether there were
"leaders" in the flock that the other followed or whether the birds were
just forced into the streamlines of the air ?  If the birds were indeed
following a few leaders it seemed to me that they would also have similar
wing beating patterns.  It is really an interesting question of whether
birds  (in flight) show intelligent behaviour or are just purely constrained
by the physical laws of flight (wind streams etc).

Any comments ?