Collective Cognition

Question 1

What two animals display collective cognition

Answer 1

Starling ‘murmurations’
Sardine Shoals

Question 2

Describe Edmund Selous’ view on Starling Flocks and Collective Cognition

Answer 2

they circle; now dense like a polished roof, now disseminated like the meshes of some vast all-heaven-sweeping net…wheeling, rending, darting…a madness in the sky

They must think collectively, all at the same time, or at least in streaks or patches —a square yard or so of an idea, a flash out of so many brains

Question 3

Do starlings have a collective mind

Answer 3

No (but also yes…)

Question 4

What are the three simple rules of Starlings’ Collective Mind?

Answer 4

• Attraction (when a neighbor is inside “zone of attraction”)
• Alignment (when a neighbor is inside “zone of orientation”)
• Avoidance (when a neighbor is inside ”zone of repulsion”)

Question 5

What do individual starlings only respond to

Answer 5

Neighbors

Question 6

What do starlings lock

Answer 6

Central control (the system is self organized)

Question 7

What are the three rules about starlings sufficient for

Answer 7

Generation of very realistic flock behavior in simulations

Question 8

What is the argument for starlings having a collective mind

Answer 8

Interactions between individuals allow a group to function as an integrated sensory, information-processing and decision-making unit

Hence, individuals in groups have access to higher-order computational capabilities

Question 9

What are the 7 reasons for why animals live in groups

Answer 9

• Dilute risk
• Build bigger things
• Raise young together
• Follow those in the know
• Spot danger quicker
• Hunt larger prey
• Save energy

Question 10

Describe collective sensing

Answer 10

Individuals have access to their own information as well as others’
Increases effective perceptual range
Increases effective perceptual range

Question 11

Give an example of an animal that does collective sensing

Answer 11

Visual field reconstruction for individual fish within a shoal is limited but when summed for all fish theres a visual sensory network

Question 12

What can groups function like in collective sensing?

Answer 12

Sensor arrays

Question 13

Describe an example of an animal that uses collective sensing to form sensor arrays

Answer 13

Soaring birds use thermals (rising columns of warm air) to gain height

Detecting where thermals are is not a trivial task, and locating the next one is essential for continuing travel (as in paragliding)

In flocks of white storks, individuals monitor where others circle -> this gives them information beyond their own sensory range
-> the flock functions as a distributed sensor network for detecting thermals

Question 14

What two human oriented fields does collective sensing have applications in

Answer 14

Robotics and sports

Question 15

What is collective memory

Answer 15

The many brains of a collective can also function to hold more (or more diverse) memory than individuals

Question 16

What is the benefit of collective memory

Answer 16

Full information does not have to be stored in a single brain

Question 17

What is experience-pooling in collective memory?

Answer 17

Collective problem-solving through combining different individuals’ knowledge

Question 18

Give an example of experience pooling

Answer 18

• Three-spined sticklebacks were trained on a two-stage foraging task
• Each fish was only trained on one stage (either A. how to navigate to a feeder box, or B. how to open the feeder box)
• Shoals consisting of A and B fish solved the full task faster than shoals of all-A or shoals of all-B fish
• Memory for complete solution can be stored in separate brains

Question 19

Give an example of collective memory in migration

Answer 19

• Normally, bighorn sheep and moose are migratory: they track the seasonal emergence of vegetation across north-western US
• But: translocated populations (those moved by humans outside of their normal range) initially do not migrate, but then gradually begin to do so, and increasingly better track the seasonal emergence of food
• They collectively build up knowledge about environment (over decades)

Question 20

Describe the basis of collective decision making

Answer 20

Not everyone in a group will necessarily agree on what they want to do next, where they want to go, etc.

Who makes the decision?

Question 21

What are two human oriented examples of collective decision making

Answer 21

Democracy (average preferences, take majority opinion)

Despotism (one or a few individuals lead)

Question 22

Describe collective decisions in killer whales

Answer 22

• Killer whale pods tend to be led by females
• Among females, post-reproductive (old) females do most of the leading
• In times when salmon (critical food source) abundance is low, leadership by postreproductive females is especially prominent.
• Old females act as repositories of ecological knowledge, and are called on when times are hard

Question 23

Describe collective decisions in Elephants

Answer 23

• African elephant family groups: matriarchs (old females) also act as “repositories of knowledge”
• Playback experiments show that matriarchs can discriminate calls of a large number of extra-family individuals and initiate defensive behavior if they identify a potentially dangerous intruder

Question 24

Describe the basis a study of collective intelligence

Answer 24

• Visitors at a livestock fair could enter a competition to guess the weight of an ox
• Galton (1907) analyzed the visitors’ guesses statistically

Question 26

What is the many wrongs principle of collective intelligence

Answer 26

Accuracy of a democratic collective decision is a function of group size.

if more individuals contribute to the decision (with similar or equal weight) the accuracy of decision increases

Question 27

Describe collective intelligence

Answer 27

Groups can arrive at decisions more accurate than any given individual “expert” or best guesser

Question 28

What is a pop culture example of collective intelligence

Answer 28

Who wants to be a millionaire:
- “Phone a friend” correct in 65% of cases
- “Ask the audience” in 91%!

Question 29

Describe Collective Intelligence in birds

Answer 29

• Homing pigeons were released from a distant site either alone (solo) or in flocks (groups of 6 birds)
• Solos had to solve the task alone; flocks could solve it together
• Solution accuracy was measured as a “Straightness index” – how close to the shortest possible path (beeline) the birds flew
• Result: Flocks flew more efficient paths than solos

Question 30

Describe Collective Intelligence in fish predator avoidance

Answer 30

• Mosquitofish had to choose between two arms of a Y-maze (one contained a replica predator, the other did not)
• Shoal size varied: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16
• Solution accuracy was measured as the fish successfully avoiding the arm with the predator
• Result: larger shoal sizes were increasingly more accurate (achieved through improved Collective sensing)

Question 31

What do Argentine ant colonies have the ability to do?

Answer 31

solve complex optimization problems – e.g. the “shortest path through a maze” problem

Question 32

Describe the mechanism of Argentine ant colonies

Answer 32

• Individuals explore in search of food
• They lay a pheromone trail as they walk
• Others follow pheromone trails they come across; they also add their own pheromone
• Shorter paths accumulate pheromone more quickly than longer paths as roundtrip is made more quickly on shorter paths
• Positive feedback leads to signal (pheromone) on short path being amplified à shorter path becomes favored
• Pheromone evaporates at a certain rate -> longer trail eventually becomes disused

Question 33

What are the spaghetti towe experiments a demonstration of

Answer 33

Collective innovation

Question 34

Describe the Spaghetti tower experiments

Answer 34

• Groups of human participants were instructed to build as high a tower as they could out of spaghetti and plasticine.
• Every 2.5 minutes one person was made to leave and a new person joined, and the group then began to build from scratch again.
• = Successive generations of “micro-societies” trying to solve the same task

Question 35

What were the results of the Spaghetti tower experiments

Answer 35

Height of tower increased over “generations”
-> Knowledge and skills were accumulating in the micro-societies over time