Starling Murmuration - The Electromagnetic Connection

[Dotini]

I have a feeling forum members will greatly enjoy the video presented below. I wonder what UW bio-engineering Professor Pollack would make of it?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/ ... ing-flock/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/ ... g-physics/

http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.2242
Abstract: Many of life's most fascinating phenomena emerge from interactions among many elements--many amino acids determine the structure of a single protein, many genes determine the fate of a cell, many neurons are involved in shaping our thoughts and memories. Physicists have long hoped that these collective behaviors could be described using the ideas and methods of statistical mechanics. In the past few years, new, larger scale experiments have made it possible to construct statistical mechanics models of biological systems directly from real data. We review the surprising successes of this "inverse" approach, using examples form families of proteins, networks of neurons, and flocks of birds. Remarkably, in all these cases the models that emerge from the data are poised at a very special point in their parameter space--a critical point. This suggests there may be some deeper theoretical principle behind the behavior of these diverse systems.

^^^Could that deeper principle be electromagnetic?

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

[mharratsc]

Very cool!

[tayga]

Thanks for posting, Steve. I've seen this video several times today and it brings tears to my eyes every time. Surely one of the greatest spectacles in nature.

This single phenomenon prompts the same question in almost everyone. How? You say maybe EM, I say maybe a collective mind and we'll have to wait to find out. Whatever underlies it, though, is unknown and its uncovering will be a huge discovery.

[Dotini]

How? You say maybe EM, I say maybe a collective mind and we'll have to wait to find out. Whatever underlies it, though, is unknown and its uncovering will be a huge discovery.

I don't for a moment doubt that consciousness, collective mind, and electromagnetism could all be bound up together, and maybe even inseparable. The issues demand vigorous investigation.

Respectfully,
Steve

[tolenio]

Hello,

New hypothesis is that birds can see EM fields via cryptocrhome in the retina.

Cryptochrome and Magnetic Sensing

http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/cryptochrome/
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/cryptochrome/Cached - Similar
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
Cryptochrome and Magnetic Sensing. Animal Magnetoreception. Magnetic sensing, perhaps because it is a type of sensory perception inaccessible to humans, ...

If you can see a moving magnetic field line you can dance with it.

Humans have cryptochrome in the eyes, brain and skin and it is the same [CRY1] and [CRY2] found in animls that use it for magnetoreception, so don't write humans off in this arena. It may be possible to learn how to exercise it and make it useful. (see "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye ... zulization" and "visual snow")

The starlings seem to dance just like the aurora borealis, and that may be exactly the dance step they use.

Later,
Tom

[newalexandria]

Thanks, it was the aurora analogy that made it all come together for me. I knew there was something familiar in the motion I'd been seeing, but I couldn't quite get the flavor. The aurora comparison nailed it.

Do starlings ever enter murmurations near to the time and local of a storm? Some high-energy phenomenon is associated with crop circle blow-downs, and I'd love to see if the murmuration patterning changes informatively when storms approach.

Z

[tolenio]

Semiannual Variation of Geomagnetic Activity
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/ ... papers/40/
C.T. RUSSELL AND R. L. MCPHERRON
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics
University of California, Los Angeles, California 90024

Roosting Birds

Several species of birds are commonly referred to as roosting birds. Included among these in Indiana are the blackbirds, starlings and grackles, as well as crows and vultures. These birds flock together during fall, winter and early spring, often forming huge roosts in urban areas. Their presence is often problematic because of potential health, economic and nuisance problems.

[ifrean]

I had the pleasure to be walking out the front door to play with the kids when i came across a starling murmuration right in the field opposite me, the noise and spectacle were inspiring enough for me to get my phone out and video it for future reference. the most intriguing part was that there were cows in the field who were visibly disgruntled with the starlings enmasse settling down around them like a blanket.

beautiful, life imitating reality(or EM)

[phyllotaxis]

I think of aether when I see this. And the synchronized particles within its variable 3-dimensional field of plasmatic electrical connectivity.
And, it did bring a tear to my eye in witnessing it- reminds me too of the sundogs video elsewhere here- where the water particles phased different ways in response to the lightning bolts within the cloud.