In nature, everyone has seen certain creatures acting collectively, such as the dense and busy ant mounds near their nests, the starlings sweeping across the sky like black clouds, or the silver torus rolled up in the ocean. bream - what scientists call a biological cluster. These creatures are very lively together, and the cluster contains a huge number of individual members. However, these members are not chaotic in their actions. It seems that the members have a good understanding of each other. They perform their duties but can maintain coordination with each other. become an organic whole with complex functions. Not only is it breathtaking, but it also embodies a certain "wisdom" of nature.
For a long time, scientists have been trying to understand this "intelligence" of clusters, such as how tiny individuals form unified clusters and how individuals maintain their "formation", but have not found a suitable method. Until the late 1980s, advances in observational and computer technology allowed scientists to track the individual behavior of multiple members of a cluster at the same time, and then process massive amounts of statistical data with powerful software. The secrets of the cluster have since been revealed, and this "revelation" will also bring rich rewards to mankind in many fields beyond the scope of biology.
Self-coordinated Boid
In 1986, computer graphics expert Craig Reynolds first tried to figure out the truth about clusters with a computer. At the time, Reynolds was thinking of ways to create realistic animal special effects in TV and movies, and he came to the park to observe the birds circling in the air. When the birds are tired from flying, they will fall on the tree to rest together. After being disturbed, they will take off again in unison. There is no leader in the flock, they just keep an eye on their fellows and follow some rules to coordinate each other's actions. Reynolds modeled these rules mathematically, developing a computer program that simulates a flock of birds. In the program, the creature Reynolds created was called a "boid"—a typical New York accent for a bird. He first used a computer to make a boid and make the boi d flap its wings flexibly, and then reproduced dozens of boi ds until they were in groups. The boids will move according to three simple rules: each boid avoids crowding into nearby neighbors; each boid flies according to the average heading of the nearby local cluster; and each boid follows the average position of its nearby neighbors.
Reynolds' boid can realistically represent the unpredictable movements of a flock of birds, and if a boid is intentionally moved to a certain location, such as towards food or a new place to stay, the program can also simulate a bird. The group changes with it. Following the same procedure, the boid is replaced by a bat, which is the swarm of bats used in the movie "Batman Returns". The clusters generated by Reynolds' simple algorithm were so real that biologists concluded that real clusters of organisms behaved from a simple set of rules similar to that of boids -- although each of the different organisms formed clusters and coordinated clusters The way is different, but the basic rules are a kind of self-coordination similar to the boid.
Apocalypse of the Hive
In general, insights into clusters often come from computer and graphics experts like Reynolds, a case in point being Dr. Kevin Pacino, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at The Ohio State University who worked with Colleagues worked together to make a high-resolution movie of the bee colony. They do this by transporting colonies to unfamiliar places, such as Appledore Island, off the northeastern coast of the United States, where there are no suitable trees for the colonies to build their nests. There, they let the bees colonize on their own until a comfortable nest box was developed.
Pacino's team found that in new environments, bee colonies were able to quickly build their hives by dividing labor and cooperation: Pathfinder bees fly faster than other bees, and they first set out to search for a suitable new hive location, and when they found the one they wanted After building a new nest site, the pathfinder bees will dance a special dance to express and spread the good news. When other bees see it, they will chase and follow them to the nesting site. Then, the worker bees use the beeswax secreted by themselves to build the nest, and tens of thousands of worker bees carry out the nest building project in an orderly, united and cooperative manner.
The U.S. military has long been working on developing swarms of robots, but most robotic swarms are programmed to receive commands centrally. In order to simulate a natural swarm, each small robot needs to independently obtain hints and clues from the swarm, automatically coordinate with its surroundings, and adopt the algorithm that bees instinctively find and build nests. In this way, let a group of small aircraft search for targets and attack the enemy, and they can automatically judge according to the environment and adjust their work at any time. Such group intelligence will be daunting.
Bacterial colonies and cancer
But when it comes to clusters, it seems that some of the smallest life forms, bacteria, are the most complex. As strange as this may sound, these microbes do colonize, and they combine to form "defense walls" or "passage lanes."
Professor Escher Jacob of Tel Aviv University in Israel found that whenever a bacterial colony moves, there are always some bacteria rushing ahead like explorers. They are responsible for clearing the way and then marking the boundary. Later, the bacterial army will follow this boundary and move forward. This may sound like ants, which use pheromones to mark their routes, but bacteria are actually more advanced than ants. The pheromone of the ant cannot be changed, but the message left by the bacteria can change - when the front encounters different situations, the information released by the bacteria changes immediately. What’s more, as the bacterial army travels, bacteria will continue to stay on both sides of the road as sentinels, and if the colony is in danger, they can send chemical signals to their neighbors within the border. As a result, this bacterial avenue is like a "defense wall", which firmly guarantees the safety of bacterial clusters.
Furthermore, Jacobs observed that a bacterial community consisting of diverse modular units, each with more or less different communication patterns, can be viewed as a community of people with different dialects. Effective communication in this community of communities requires the ability of each individual to understand a wide variety of dialects. Although the "bacterial language" does not have a high-level advanced grammar, it has a high degree of plasticity and can cope with different communication modes of the same bacterial community.
The intelligence of bacterial colonies is intriguing scientists in unexpected fields. Google invited Prof. Jacobs to discuss how bacterial communication could be applied to social networks, where new links are often hampered by language barriers and thus mired in difficult situations. If you learn the communication skills of bacterial clusters, this problem will be solved.
Perhaps most exciting is the medical application of bacterial colonies. Cancer cells use the same basic mechanisms as bacteria to navigate the body, and it even uses the same molecules as bacteria to communicate. Once you understand how bacterial communication works, you can take action against cancer cells.
Although we humans are not a species that completely rely on social life like bees and bacteria, various large-scale gatherings always appear from time to time. If the management is not good, there will inevitably be crowded and stampede tragedy. The stampede tragedy on the Shanghai Bund on the last night of 2014 is because of The human cluster has not been effectively relieved. So, by learning the actions of species that are better at flocking, we can benefit from their collective intelligence.
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