from the all-of-us-are-smarter-than-some-of-us? dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
In a group of animals, who deals with new information coming from the environment? Researchers have discovered that the answer lies not in who, but in where: information can be processed, not only by individual animals, but also in the invisible connections between them. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of scientists provides evidence of information processing occurring in the physical structure of animal groups. The study demonstrates that animals can encode information about their environment in the architecture of their groups and provides rare insight into how animal collectives are able to behaviourally adapt to a changing world.
For behaviour to be of any use, it needs to be modulated according to what's happening in the world around us. We see this in ourselves when we respond to a sudden noise: in a crowded street in broad daylight we might not notice the noise; but in an unfamiliar alley in darkness it might send our hearts racing. This context-dependent modification of behaviour -- known as behavioural plasticity -- has been very well studied in individual animals. What is much less known is how the process occurs in animal groups.
"When we start looking at how groups respond to their environment, it introduces a possibility that does not exist when you look at individual animals," says senior author Iain Couzin who leads the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz, one of the University of Konstanz' Clusters of Excellence, and the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz. "When you form groups, you suddenly have a network system where social interactions exist, and we wondered whether this invisible architecture was in fact contributing to how groups can respond to changes in the environment."
Matthew M.G. Sosna, Colin R. Twomey, Joseph Bak-Coleman, Winnie Poel, Bryan C. Daniels, Pawel Romanczuk and Iain D. Couzin. Individual and collective encoding of risk in animal groups. PNAS, 2019
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @12:12PM (1 child)
Countering the obvious stupidity of collectives would be FAR more worthwhile than inventing a "hidden intelligence" where only its inverse was ever observed.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 26 2019, @07:54PM
The intelligence is still well hidden. But it's not hard to understand the theory of its existence. Whatever there is is still overwhelmed by primal urges, which shows more strongly in the crowd, where the individual can put aside personal responsibility and be free!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @12:25PM
Obviously, the hidden intelligence of all stupid collectives is hiding invisibly in corresponding sacral buildings.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @01:59PM (3 children)
This news was publised yesterday by other news sources.
There must be twenty or thirty stories in the queue that this hopped right over.
Clearly there is some behind-the-scenes politics going on and it's not a straightforward first-in, first-out kind of queue.
Keep that up and I will quit reading this site.
(Score: 4, Funny) by gtomorrow on Thursday September 26 2019, @02:17PM (1 child)
No, please! We're all begging you, Mr Anonymous Coward, sir! PLEASE DON'T QUIT READING THIS SITE! PLEASE!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @02:43PM
Ok, but only because you begged pitifully.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @03:16PM
Where is the RTFM mod when I want it? (I'm logged in, posting as AC).
This will have to do instead -- see https://soylentnews.org/faq.pl [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:26PM
... the last one I met was coming off this really bad breakup with Rick Sanchez.
(Score: 2) by NickM on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:41PM
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !