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How do birds navigate? They have no rules of the road, no signposts, no lane markers to guide them. They wheel around in packs--expanding, contracting, making sharp turns on impossible angles--all going somewhere, together, but where?
I once saw a run-in between flocks. They were heading straight for it, I could tell, but neither was prepared to veer off. They merged in a flurry of wings: two scatterplots colliding, feathered points of data with no line of best fit. The birds around the edges stayed the course; there was a churning at the centre while the others sorted themselves out, and then they all flew on together, paths maybe slightly altered, but really, who could tell?
I once saw a run-in between flocks. They were heading straight for it, I could tell, but neither was prepared to veer off. They merged in a flurry of wings: two scatterplots colliding, feathered points of data with no line of best fit. The birds around the edges stayed the course; there was a churning at the centre while the others sorted themselves out, and then they all flew on together, paths maybe slightly altered, but really, who could tell?