By the Blog Author
Ants swarm to gather food. Bees swarm when creating a new hive. Fish swarm to confuse predators and minimize mortality. Caribou swarm to avoid wolves.
These critters have small brains – too small to organize a swarming strategy. If they aren’t smart – and they aren’t – what are they doing to come up with such a brilliant strategy? None of them grasp the big picture, yet all can act simultaneously for their survival.
Let’s take bees swarming and moving to build a new hive. Scouts go out looking for a new location. Eventually, FIFTEEN scouts will find a particular location. They know each other are present. At the magic number, they all leave together to return to the swarm and tell it where to relocate. The first location to attract fifteen scouts is the "winner" of the new location.
The bee’s rules for decision making:
Seek a diversity of opinions
Encourage a free competition among ideas
Use an effective mechanism to narrow choices (the swarm moves with the first group of 15 scouts to return unanimously approving a particular location)
Another example – pigeons in Washington DC. The birds rest on ledges. Something disrupts them, and suddenly they are all off together in synchronized flight. These pigeons
Avoid crowding nearby birds
Fly in the average direction of nearby birds
Stay close to nearby birds
The bees and birds are using simple, universally-followed, hard-wired survival techniques that don’t require a large brain.
How did I find out about the bird, bee, ant and fish synchronous rules? I was bored! In a waiting room at a medical facility this morning. I picked up a five year old National Geographic and started reading. And I couldn’t put it down.
It’s still on the net – here is the link:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/07/swarms/miller-text
These are generally superior, follower-based, ego-free wilderness survival techniques.
Ants swarm to gather food. Bees swarm when creating a new hive. Fish swarm to confuse predators and minimize mortality. Caribou swarm to avoid wolves.
These critters have small brains – too small to organize a swarming strategy. If they aren’t smart – and they aren’t – what are they doing to come up with such a brilliant strategy? None of them grasp the big picture, yet all can act simultaneously for their survival.
Let’s take bees swarming and moving to build a new hive. Scouts go out looking for a new location. Eventually, FIFTEEN scouts will find a particular location. They know each other are present. At the magic number, they all leave together to return to the swarm and tell it where to relocate. The first location to attract fifteen scouts is the "winner" of the new location.
The bee’s rules for decision making:
Seek a diversity of opinions
Encourage a free competition among ideas
Use an effective mechanism to narrow choices (the swarm moves with the first group of 15 scouts to return unanimously approving a particular location)
Another example – pigeons in Washington DC. The birds rest on ledges. Something disrupts them, and suddenly they are all off together in synchronized flight. These pigeons
Avoid crowding nearby birds
Fly in the average direction of nearby birds
Stay close to nearby birds
The bees and birds are using simple, universally-followed, hard-wired survival techniques that don’t require a large brain.
How did I find out about the bird, bee, ant and fish synchronous rules? I was bored! In a waiting room at a medical facility this morning. I picked up a five year old National Geographic and started reading. And I couldn’t put it down.
It’s still on the net – here is the link:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/07/swarms/miller-text
These are generally superior, follower-based, ego-free wilderness survival techniques.
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