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I’m fairly sure it was blue tits not starlings, Jemima. But I agree that flocking is a really important way of seeing organisational behaviour:Allan Wilson says accelerated evolution takes place intragenerationally in certain species when three characteristics are present: * Innovation – the capacity to invent new behaviour * Social propagation – the capacity to transmit skills through direct communication rather than genetically * Mobility – the capacity to move around as individuals, to come together into flocks, and to move as a flock.Craig Reynolds, thinking about the steering behaviours of a boid (a computer simulation of a single flocking creature),concluded that three factors are at play: * Separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates * Alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates * Cohesion: steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates