How do schools of fish and flocks of birds all have such in-sync movements? How do they know which way the others are going to turn, and which speed to move?

Question

This is something I’ve always wondered. They always look so synchronized as if they can read each other’s mind! I’d love an explanation for this.

In: 91

Answer 1

From what I recall, for some kinds of fish, they each follow one buddy really closely and respond to that one fish. In the school, there’s a combination of overlap where several fish might be following the same one or one fish following one fish, who is also following one fish.

But when you scale up all the individual movements of the fish to the entire group, it looks like a synchronized or choreographed movement, but that’s really an illusion, they’re each just doing their own thing. Their thing just happens to be exactly what everyone else is doing.