Natural-Intelligence

A new framework proposes that moving animals can coordinate through the fluid disturbances they leave behind. Fish, birds, insects and microorganisms continually modify the water or air surrounding them, creating wakes, pressure gradients and other flow structures that neighbours can sense or exploit.

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.

Researchers studying Bengalese finches found that learned birdsong develops statistical structure resembling properties of human language. Young birds segment continuous song into recurring chunks by tracking how predictably syllables follow one another, while frequently used chunks become disproportionately common and short.

This study uses a conditioned escape response to follow how information propagates through schooling fish after selected individuals respond to a threat cue.

An RFID study of stingless bees found that seemingly minor environmental cues strongly affected how reliably returning foragers identified their own colonies.

Researchers used a closed-loop biohybrid system in which robotic agents interacted dynamically with schooling fish, allowing them to probe how individuals respond to neighbours rather than merely observe naturally occurring schools.

A theoretical model of flying insect swarms proposes acoustic interaction as a local communication mechanism, with each insect attracted toward a weighted mean field generated by nearby swarm members.

A mathematical model of the dawn chorus shows how synchronized singing can emerge without central coordination. Each simulated bird has its own threshold for beginning to sing, determined by increasing ambient light and the amount of nearby birdsong it hears.

Male sperm whales produce exceptionally powerful slow clicks that may remain detectable across roughly 70 kilometres of deep ocean while maintaining remarkably precise intervals of five to ten seconds.

Longhorn crazy ants cooperatively transporting awkward loads through mazes reveal a striking scaling effect: larger teams solve geometrically difficult problems much more effectively than smaller ones, even when the physical burden per ant is held constant.