When minds align: A neural basis for flocking This week has been one bullshit mathematical revelation after another, things like spinning a top that could have been mastered thousands of years ago, and this one is perhaps half a century behind the technology. All they discovered is that your brain uses a ring-shaped network of neurons to predict which direction you want to go next, instead of using a compass. However, its a fundamental discovery that means we can now model any animal behavior, including humans, according to how the brain does, as both hierarchies and individuals. Animals switch back and forth between the two views, just like we have a conscious and unconscious mind. These should obey the two known types of Drunkard's Walk. Taking a random step in any direction, gets you nowhere fast but, randomly adding several more steps in any direction, starts to get somewhere. This is Push-Me-Pull-You action that becomes greater than the sum of its parts, if the flock has the right harmony in diversity. This is actually another crucial piece of the puzzle for the formula I'm working on.
Interesting. Check out 'murmuration', if you haven't already. I think it involves swifts or starlings in their hundreds and more, moving as if a cloud constantly and quickly changing shape (the cloud rather than each bird lol) and each bird moving to another position in that cloud yet they never collide with each other. I dont know why they do it - or how - but its a fascinating display by bird-brains.
Birds and other animals are much more intelligent than people let themselves believe. Every evening my wife plays see and say with our 27 year old parrot and speed at which the bird learns is amazing. I think for many people the reality of animal intelligence is simply too frightening to acknowledge.
You may be correct. After all, animals generally live in the wild whereas we humans don't. Consequently; I think we're losing the ability to be 'street-wise' and are more vulnerable through our increasing wrappage in metaphorical cotton wool that is a societal construct. I mean; if our streets become 'wild', many/most people can't process that let alone being able to deal with it. I'm thinking how in Europe in WWII, the population of countries adapted to bombings. So, too (1960s-1990s), did people in Northern Ireland (for example), who, when a bomb went off without warning, they 'accepted' it as some kind of 'same shit different day' and went about their 'business' in a different shop/temporary office. Contrast that with incidents in the US, and whether the public can process or deal with (or cope with), them. Thankfully such incidents aren't the norm!! But I mentioned that only to try to demonstrate that we are conditioned to consider something as normal (and civilised), and then we struggle to cope with the 'wild' when something horrendous and out of our comfort zone happens.
Ok, you've triggered a funny visual. So what does your wife let the pigeon see and what does it say? Lol
When my wife lets the see and say toy say “ what doe the duck, horse, Turkey, rooster etc say “, the toy responds with the appropriate sound and then the parrot then says the same sound. She, the parrot, especially loves to make the horse, duck and rooster sounds. but for years when the parrot sees ducks she goes quack, quack, quack and crows she goes caw, caw and seagulls she responds with a seagulls sound, and herons a squawk, squawk. And so on. She has quite a vocabulary of sounds for other birds
I thought this thread was about the process of adding small particles to a surface for the sake of texture. Turns out its a verb, not a noun.
