I have often been entranced by the beauty of a shoal of fish moving as if dancing like a single organism. I also recall a truly incredible display of a flock of starlings above the M40 last year that almost brought the motorway to a standstill. So when the BBC announced a new 2 part series on swarms, I knew that I wanted to catch it - partly to revel in the beauty that I knew the camera teams would have captured, but mainly to learn more about HOW swarms behave and how those incredible effects are achieved. That critical question "why don't fish bump into each other" has haunted me for some time.
"One Million Heads, One Beautiful Mind" was the sub title of part 2 of BBC's programme The title telegraphed the conclusions around collective intelligence. The programme duly delivered some breathtaking cinematography that left me incredulous as to the sheer ‘intelligence’ of the rest of the animal kingdom, and I could not fail but juxtapose the stupidity of us humans. For all our arrogant strutting at the top of the evolutionary tree, mere insects make us look neanderthal. We may be the only animals on the planet to have developed consciousness, but as we have learned language to communicate, politics to organise ourselves, and trade to exchange our skills, we seem to have lost our collective intelligence.
Seven lions are gathered around a water hole in Namibia at dusk. Six are drinking and one is listening. The lion who is on listening duty hears a wildebeest a half mile away. Forty seconds later, the wildebeest is dead, and all seven lions are eating. There was no verbal communication, no argument, no hesitation. No meetings, no politics, no research. The six lions knew instinctively when the listening lion moved that they had to go too. These animals cannot communicate with the same sophistication as us; they do not possess the intellect to organise themselves efficiently, and yet they operate as a team and ruthlessly achieve their objectives.
This everyday story of Mr and Mrs Lion and their extended family; their trials and tribulations, hopes and dreams is often used to highlight how teams in business could operate, if only they trusted each other, respected each other’s roles, and had that most precious of all corporate commodities, a common purpose.
Now we could spend time researching just how the animals, insects, birds and fish communicate and achieve such seamless collective effort. We could analyse what they do that is different to us. Some of us might even get religion in the search. Seeking to learn how the animals do it would be the typical way humans seems to want to make progress these days – looking for the new way, the latest fad, the ‘answer’ that will rescue us. Or we could just acknowledge the stupidity of how we humans currently behave, and focus on the interactions we have with each other as, in fact, mere animals. How much easier it is to simply focus on what WE do wrong.
Humans do 3 things that animals don’t:
1) We rely solely on words, ignoring non verbal communications
2) We never say what we really mean
3) We break our agreements
Cesar Milan, the ubiquitous ‘Dog Whisperer’ tells us that humans are the only animals that will follow an unstable leader!
We talk too much
We are not honest and direct
We say ‘yes’ when we mean ‘no’
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