The collective behavior of animals is fundamentally different from the behavior of individual individuals. A flock or population has a property that is still incomprehensible to us, which is usually called "a single will", or an "imperative impulse" to which individual individuals obey. Observing flocks of migratory birds or clouds of locusts, in a single impulse following a strictly defined route, scientists still cannot answer the question - what drives them?
Locust swarms unmistakably find their way through sands and deserts to green valleys where food is available. This can be explained by genetic memory or instinct, but it's a strange thing: if a separate individual is removed from the flock, it immediately loses direction and begins to randomly rush in one direction or the other. An individual does not know either the direction of movement or its purpose. But how, then, does the pack know this?
Studying the annual flights of birds, scientists have put forward a hypothesis that their movement is directed by old and experienced individuals. Think of the wise goose Akku Knebekaise from Niels's Travels with Wild Geese. This hypothesis was not in doubt until the Japanese ornithologist Professor Yamamoto Huro-ke found that migratory flocks did not have a leader. It happens that during the flight, almost a chick is at the head of the flock. Of ten cases, in six young birds fly at the head of the flock, emerging from an egg in summer and having no experience of flying. But having fought off the flock, the bird usually cannot find the right direction.
Some scientists believe that fish, too, "get smarter", being in a flock. This is confirmed by experiments in which the fish, in search of a way out, had to swim through the labyrinth. It turned out that groups of fish choose the right direction faster than swimming alone.
French researcher Louis Thoma, who has studied termites for many years, writes: “Take two or three - nothing will change, but if you increase their number to a certain 'critical mass', a miracle will happen. As if having received an important order, the termites will begin to create work teams. They will begin to stack one on top of one another small pieces of whatever they come across, and erect columns, which will then be connected by vaults. Until you get a room that looks like a cathedral. Thus, knowledge about the structure as a whole arises only when there is a certain number of individuals.
The following experiment was made with termites: partitions were installed in the termite mound under construction, dividing its builders into isolated "teams". Despite this, the work continued, and each passage, ventilation duct or room, which turned out to be separated by a partition, fell exactly at the junction of one with the other.
Instincts - aside
"The swarms of locusts," wrote the famous French explorer Remy Chauvin, "are huge reddish clouds that descend and take off as if on command." What is this irresistible impulse that drives all this dense, multi-ton mass that cannot be stopped? It flows around obstacles, crawls over walls, rushes to the input and uncontrollably continues to move in the chosen direction.
Vole mice and lemmings are just as unstoppable during their sudden migrations. Having met a moat on the way, they do not go around it, do not look for another way, but overwhelm with a living wave, filling to the brim with swarming bodies, along which hundreds of thousands of others continue to move non-stop. Trampled, crushed, suffocated in a deep ditch, before perishing, they do not make the slightest attempt to escape, forming a bridge for those who follow. The strongest survival instinct is suppressed and completely muffled.
Researchers have repeatedly noted that during the migration of South African gazelles, the lion, overwhelmed by their stream, was powerless to get out of it. Feeling not the slightest fear, the gazelles moved directly to the lion, flowing around it like an inanimate object.
Nothing too much
The "will of the population", which puzzles scientists, is manifested in something else. Usually, as soon as the number of individuals begins to exceed a certain critical number, animals, as if obeying an unknown order, stop reproducing offspring. For example, Dr. R. Laws of Cambridge University wrote about this, for many years he studied the life of elephants. When their population grows too much, then either females lose the ability to reproduce, or the period of maturity in males begins much later.
Corresponding experiments were performed with rabbits and rats. As soon as there were too many of them, in spite of the abundance of forage and other favorable conditions, an inexplicable phase of increased mortality began. For no reason, there was a weakening of the body, a decrease in resistance, illness. And this continued until the population was reduced to optimal sizes.
In addition to academic interest, the question of where the signal that influences flock behavior and population size comes from is of great practical importance. If it was possible to unravel its code, it would be possible to successfully deal with pests that destroy the crop: the Colorado potato beetle, grape snails, rats, etc.
The phenomenon of the war years
The law of self-regulation mysteriously maintains a balance in the population of females and males, although the biological origin of male and female individuals is equally probable. However, if there are few females in the population, females predominate among newborns, if there are few males, then they begin to be born. This phenomenon is well known in the human community, demographers call it "the phenomenon of the war years." During and after wars, there has been a sudden increase in male newborns in countries that have suffered male casualties.
An example of the transition from quantity to quality?
IN AND. Vernadsky introduced the concept of "biosphere" - the aggregate of the entire mass of living beings inhabiting the Earth. This totality should be considered "as a single integral planetary organism." The famous French paleontologist and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin also saw the biosphere. This, according to him, "a living creature that has spread across the Earth, from the very first stages of its evolution, outlines the contours of a single gigantic organism."
Many scientists agree with this, for example, the famous German physicist G. T. Fechner believed that the Earth should have some kind of unified collective consciousness. Just as the human brain consists of many separate cells, the consciousness of the planet, he believed, is composed of the consciousness of individual living beings that live on it. And this consciousness should be as different from the consciousness of individual individuals as the brain as a whole is qualitatively different from the individual cells that make up it.
It has not yet been possible to prove that the "superorganisms" inhabiting the Earth form a kind of aggregate of the next, higher order, as well as to refute this hypothesis. Its indisputable advantage, however, is that it not only explains to a certain extent the “will” of a particular population, but also offers a model for such a perception of the world in which there are no friends and foes, where all living things are interconnected, interdependent and harmoniously complement each other. friend.
Nikolay BEL03ER0V
Secrets of the XX century №15 2010