Heroes Not Zombies

This is the season when large flocks of starlings gather, swoop through the vineyards, and, if you’re lucky, create murmurations. They amaze me.

I am enthralled by how many will gather noisily in a single tree, then all at once they go completely silent. A second or two later they take off “as one”.

They make it so clear to me that social behaviour, how we connect, coordinate and collaborate is a fundamental characteristic of Life.

What’s so astonishing to me about these starlings is how they communicate. When they fly in great clouds of hundreds of birds, how do they do that without all crashing into each other? Whatever the mechanism every one of those birds is perceiving the others around them and adjusting their flight speed and direction constantly, moment by moment. I know there’s a whole field of study about swarming because there are many creatures which can do this, but I don’t know if scientists really understand how it’s done.

The other evidence of their ability to communicate clearly and instantaneously in a flock is the noise they make. Noise is probably not the right word. When you hear them gathering in a tree it sounds as if they are all shouting at the same time. You could say they are singing together as in a choir, but it sounds more like mass chatter than song. I’ve no idea how the flock falls silent over a second or two, or why that heralds the onset of mass flight. Whoosh, and they’re off!

We hear a lot about the importance of competition, and I don’t deny that competition is an important part of evolution, but I think we have downplayed the importance of collaboration. It’s time to address that distortion of reality and see just how important collective behaviour, communication and cooperation are to survival and growth.