#collective motion

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Schooling at Scale

Relatively simple visual and hydrodynamic signals are enough to make digital fish school in ways that resemble living ones. Here, researchers look at what happens when well-behaved schools of fish get too big. (Video and image credit: H. Hang et al.)

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Strata of Starlings

Starlings come together in groups of up to thousands of birds for the protection of numbers. These flocks form spellbinding, undulating masses known as murmurations, where the movement of individual starlings sends waves spreading from neighbor to neighbor through the group. One bird's effort to dodge a hawk triggers a giant, spreading ripple in the flock. (Image credit: K. Cooper; via Colossal) Read the full article

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Crowd Vortices

The Feast of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain draws crowds of thousands. Scientists recently published an analysis of the crowd motion in these dense gatherings. The team filmed the crowds at the festival from balconies overlooking the plaza in 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Analyzing the footage, they discovered that at crowd densities above 4 people per square meter, the crowd begins to move in almost imperceptible eddies. (Image credit: still - San Fermín, animation - Bartolo Lab; research credit: F. Gu et al.; via Nature) Read the full article

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

"The Art of Flying"

Like schools of fish, starlings gather in massive undulating crowds. Known as murmurations, these gatherings are a type of collective motion.  (Video and image credit: J. van IJken; via Colossal) Read the full article

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Herding Sheep

Flocks of birds, schools of fish, and herds of sheep all resemble fluids at times, and physicists have been trying to recreate their collective motion for decades. Many of these models simplify the animals into particles that follow simple rules based on the direction and speed of their neighbors. (Image credit: E. Osmanoglu; via Physics World) Read the full article

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Aerial Sheep Flow

I may never get tired of drone videos of sheep herding. They are mesmerizing to watch and full of so many characteristics of flow. Like a compressible fluid, the herd squeezes together as it passes through a gate, then spreads and decreases density as it reaches the pasture. (Video credit: L. Patel; via Colossal; submitted by Florian T. and Matevz D.) Read the full article

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Starlings Over Rome

Each winter millions of starlings migrate to Rome, where they form enormous murmurations in the sky above. The ephemeral and amorphous displays are driven by each bird responding to its neighbor's motions. But the slight delay in individual responses gives the flock as a whole a wave-like, fluid appearance. (Video credit: BBC Earth) Read the full article