This video cuts off rather unexpectedly, but it still is amazing.
Swarm behavior, or swarming, is a collective behavior exhibited by animals of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving en masse or migrating in some direction. As a term, swarming is applied particularly to insects, but can also be applied to any other animal that exhibits swarm behavior. The term flocking is usually used to refer specifically to swarm behavior in birds. From a more abstract point of view, swarm behavior is the collective motion of a large number of self-propelled entities. From the perspective of the mathematical modeller, it is an emergent behavior arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination.
The standard collective noun for a group of birds of any type is a flock. For a number of individual birds, there exist collective nouns particular to the type of bird. Many of these collective nouns are fanciful and not in common use in English. The book A Mess of Iguanas... A Whoop of Gorillas by Alon Shulman is a good reference for the collective nouns and their etymology. James Lipton's book An Exaltation of Larks is devoted to these collective nouns, many of which originated as hunters' terms and have been in the language for centuries. A flock of starlings is a murmuration.
The standard collective noun for a group of birds of any type is a flock. For a number of individual birds, there exist collective nouns particular to the type of bird. Many of these collective nouns are fanciful and not in common use in English. The book A Mess of Iguanas... A Whoop of Gorillas by Alon Shulman is a good reference for the collective nouns and their etymology. James Lipton's book An Exaltation of Larks is devoted to these collective nouns, many of which originated as hunters' terms and have been in the language for centuries. A flock of starlings is a murmuration.
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