Examining how animal swarms respond to threats

A herd of antelope feeds peacefully on a meadow. Suddenly, a lion shows up, and the herd flees. But how do they manage to do so collectively? Konstanz physicist Chun-Jen Chen and Professor Clemens Bechinger, a member of the Cluster of Excellence "Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior," asked themselves how animals must behave in order to initiate an efficient flight response. In a study using microrobots that act like a group of animals, the researchers demonstrate: A swarm of animals—taken as a whole—completes an optimum flight response, even if individual animals do not notice the threat or they react the wrong way. The study was published on 7 March 2022 in the New Journal of Physics. 

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