Posts

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

Bacterial “zorbing” is a newly discovered form of collective social movement where spherical, biofilm-like microcolonies of Flavobacterium johnsoniae “walk” and migrate together across surfaces.

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.

Collective animals can communicate indirectly through the fluid disturbances their own movements leave behind. This extends stigmergy beyond persistent structures such as ant pheromone trails or termite construction.

Dodder vines may function as biological communication bridges linking otherwise separate plants through direct vascular connections. Cuscuta forms haustoria that penetrate host tissues, but those connections carry considerably more than water and nutrients.

Bumble bee colonies can reorganise from a queen-centred hierarchy into a more decentralised social network when the queen disappears. Researchers tracked more than 80 million interactions in matched queenright and queenless Bombus impatiens colonies.

Reptiles use surprisingly adaptable acoustic signals to identify individuals, synchronize group behaviour and modify messages when environmental conditions change. Male gharials produce distinctive underwater pop sequences that appear to encode individual identity, while crocodilian and turtle embryos vocalize from inside their eggs, helping siblings synchronize hatching and nest departure.

A minimal flocking model shows that a directional change initiated by one agent can propagate across an entire group at approximately constant speed through asymmetric local interactions alone.

Act I Part 1: The Game with No Player The adaptive-emergent blog has over 100 posts on swarm and natural intelligence: communication even though some of these describe the most basic microbial life.