No Leaders, No Plan! So Why Do Animal Swarms Look Smarter Than Us?

In forests, oceans, and even underground, animals have been observed to act in ways that seem surprisingly coordinated despite the fact that no single animal is in charge. In this regard, scientists have been forced to reconsider the true meaning of intelligence in the natural world. Swarms of ants, schools of birds, and schools of fish have been observed to solve problems that even a single animal may find difficult to solve.

According to research featured on Earth.com, collective intelligence is achieved when these simple interactions add up to coordinated group behaviors that allow animals to adapt and survive in their environments better than they may have been able to individually. Thus, this is a form of intelligence that is no longer contained within the brains of individuals but is instead contained within systems where many individuals make decisions.

According to EurekAlert, this is because such systems have been able to achieve efficiency without any centralized control.

How Ants Solve Problems Without Thinking

One of the most obvious examples of collective intelligence is in ant colonies, in which thousands of individual ants are able to work together to find food and transport it in a highly efficient manner.

Each individual ant is able to follow pheromone trails laid down by other members of the colony, effectively strengthening those paths that are more efficient and discarding those that are not, which eventually culminates in finding the shortest path to food.

As mentioned in the aforementioned report from Earth.com, "this is because individual ants are only responding to local interactions, yet as a collective, they are able to optimize their decisions in a continuous manner."

A study, as reported by Phys.org, revealed that "locusts are able to respond to coordinated visual cues from nearby individuals, in a manner that is dependent on movement rather than random motion."

This is a significant discovery, as it reveals that older assumptions about what is happening in a swarm are incorrect, and that individual members of a swarm are not simply following the crowd.

Fish Schools and Honeybees

Another example of how collective intelligence works in real time through constant interaction is in fish schools. A study published by ScienceDaily reveals that species such as rummy nose tetras coordinate movement through rhythmic coupling, where each fish responds to the movement of adjacent members.

Honeybee swarms represent perhaps the most developed form of collective intelligence, in which groups are able to make decisions that mimic learning behaviors. Bees will search for possible locations to build nests and communicate through waggle dance to eventually reach a consensus.

Why This Matters

However, the comprehension of how animal swarms function is important beyond the study of wildlife and can have significant effects on fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and even environmental management. The adaptability and efficiency of decentralized systems in responding to stress and solving problems make them good models for technologies that don't need centralized control.

As scientists continue to understand and observe these patterns and systems, the concept of intelligence may even change and evolve to something that is no longer contained within the brain.