Interesting-Links

Just two of Sydney’s sulphur-crested cockatoos spread the word to all its mates (and theirs). An innovation discovered or introduced at a few nodes can diffuse through overlapping local relationships until it becomes population-level culture.

Humbug damselfish offer researchers a natural system for studying how threat information propagates through a group without every fish independently detecting the danger.

A field demonstration has used a coordinated autonomous drone swarm to intercept another swarm by forming a three-dimensional barrier in its path.

Young chimpanzees develop increasingly distinctive population-specific vocal patterns as they mature. Researchers comparing grunts, whimpers and laughter from two geographically separated communities found that some differences were detectable in infancy while others became stronger during juvenile development.

Cardiocondyla ants can dynamically switch between nutrients supplied by an ancient bacterial symbiont and their own alternative metabolic pathway. This is a strong natural example of graceful degradation and functional redundancy.

Plant roots can detect damage to a neighbouring plant almost immediately and redirect their own growth away from the disturbance.

Three-spined sticklebacks compensate for murky water by becoming more socially coordinated rather than continuing to use the same shoaling rules.

Researchers have developed a way to infer which neighbours an animal is actually responding to directly from collective-movement data. The method tests combinations of interaction distance and viewing angle, then measures how strongly the average heading of candidate neighbours predicts an individual’s subsequent direction.

Glassfish appear to coordinate by copying one nearby neighbour at discrete moments rather than averaging the movements of the whole local group.

Researchers have identified 13 branched-chain fatty acids in cat urine whose relative proportions differ among individuals yet remain comparatively stable within the same cat.