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Flocking dynamics

Sheep lead the way

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 1402–1403 (2022)Cite this article

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Experiments with small flocks of sheep show intermittent collective motion events driven by random leaders that guide the group. A model reveals information pooling capabilities, suggesting a mechanism for swarm intelligence.

Collective animal motion appeals to physicists because of the new types of statistical and dynamical systems that can emerge in the biological world, where interactions are not constrained by the limitations of physical forces. Although mostly lacking conserved quantities and optimization principles, the resulting collective behaviour is expected to help increase group fitness, which often results from some form of information pooling among individuals that helps improve collective decisions. As they report in Nature Physics, Luis Gómez-Nava and colleagues have now found simple interaction rules that lead small groups of sheep to intermittent collective motion1. Sheep switch between grazing and moving in a line spearheaded by random individuals, thus benefitting from the efficiency of hierarchical leadership while combining the information of different individuals over several collective motion events.

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Fig. 1: A flock of sheep.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and ESAM, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Cristián Huepe

  2. CHuepe Labs, Chicago, IL, USA

    Cristián Huepe

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  1. Cristián Huepe
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Correspondence to Cristián Huepe.

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Huepe, C. Sheep lead the way. Nat. Phys. 18, 1402–1403 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01744-3

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