In 2012, filmmakers Sophie and Liberty took a canoe trip on the Shannon River in Ireland. You can see their approach to a fog-enshrouded island in the still frames at the start of this video, and then they encountered sometime breathtaking in motion:
(Via Vimeo Staff Picks.) It still amazes me that simple rules of individual agents (all one bird knows is to avoid predators and not collide with other birds) can create such complex (and beautiful) emergent behaviour. On a similar note, tracing the paths of indvidual birds create their own distinct patterns:
(via FlowingData). We'll be back on Monday, but if you're out and about this weekend, take a closer look at the birds in flight. You might see them in a different light.
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