That is a beautiful example of group mind/hive soul in action. I could watch that for hours!

Thanks!

Truly breathtaking.

Thank you for sharing this.

Wow, truly amazing! Birds are so awesome.

I live on the Monterey Bay and where now not so much, but in reading accounts of the early settlers here in The Ohlone Way, the sea birds were described as being 'like a hurricane' when they took off from the water.

The Shearwaters still swarm like this, but they are pelagic so it's hard to spot them unless you're way out on the water. Also, Alfred Hitchcock's, The Birds was based on a night here in Santa Cruz when the Shearwaters lost their sense of direction and were swarming over land and smashing into houses and cars. Must have been a sight to see then!

Wow, just wow! amazing video thank you for posting this. It is fall here in Canada and the Canada Geese have begun their annual trips south. Although nothing like the video or swarming, I do enjoy watching these large birds flying in perfect V formation. To think that collectively they just know what to do and when to do it. Nature is a wonder.

Ive always found it quite stunning that even the smallest bugs have enough intelligence to not fly into objects and so on. Their brains are microscopic but they still make decisions... ive never seen a animal who doesnt know how to take in their surroundings and determine what is dangerous, no matter how small.



[edit on 7-11-2009 by Copernicus]

This is something that greatly fascinates me. Not just birds, similar behavior is also observed elsewhere in nature, such as large schools of fish, swimming underwater.

I wonder if the concept could be applied, in future to the development of self-driven cars.

Think this a great exsample of nature all being one.

amazing footage.

G

What strikes me sometimes, is when some people underestimate the intelligence and nature of our very own creatures that we have built our technological foundations upon.

The creatures such as swarm of birds, locust of ants and so forth are an continuous every day empirical Artificial Intelligence research and method used in variety of fields; civil, medical, physics, space, astronomy and many more to list.