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c0lo [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://www.scienceofintelligence.de/press-release-sheep-are-more-democratic-than-you-think/ [scienceofintelligence.de]

Sheep are more democratic than you think

Collective motion brings to mind fascinating images, such as the flocks of birds over a corn field, or schools of barracudas as they move in circles in the water. These motions are also particularly appealing to physicists, as the patterns that emerge lend themselves to mathematical and statistical modeling that can help them better understand this phenomenon. When it comes to sheep, many studies describe the collective behavior in sheep flocks as a self-organized process where individuals continuously adapt their direction and speed to follow the motion and collective decisions of the group – as if the only leading force were the “collective brain” itself. This view, however, does not take into account that animals do not move continuously, or the possible hierarchies existing in many animal groups and the potential benefits of having a single individual lead the way.
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How does this take place?
According to Gómez-Nava and collaborators, when the sheep stop to feed or rest between one collective motion phase and the next, they randomly pick a new group leader for the next round of flocking, thus transferring control to a new individual each time. In this way, individuals take turns being leaders and the flock’s collective intelligence is achieved democratically, over many collective motion phases.
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The non-uniform internal interactions between sheep mean that the Vicsek model [wikipedia.org] cannot be applied to the present case. Therefore, the scientists had to adapt the model differently in order to gain insights about these relationships. Through computational simulations, they found that the group might profit from both hierarchical and democratic mechanisms, despite the apparent incompatibility between these two concepts.. “In other words, the group can benefit from the line formation to navigate complex environments – like a maze – in an optimal way if the group leader has information about the location of the exit. In a way, thanks to the strong hierarchical structure of the file, the group takes advantage of the leader’s private information during one collective motion phase”, said Gómez-Nava. “However, there is also a democratic process resulting from the change of leaders from one motion phase to the next, which provides new benefits to the group, though this occurs over a longer time scale.”

“If the group is in a situation where there are multiple sources of nutrients in different locations, and the individuals of the group have partial information about their location (e.g.: sheep A knows the location of nutrient A, sheep B knows the location of nutrient B and so on…), then the “leader-swapping” process provides the group with the possibility to visit all locations in an optimal way,” said Gómez-Nava.

Original Submission