A Systems Interpretation for Observations of Bird V-formations

✍ Scribed by P. SEILER; A. PANT; J.K. HEDRICK

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 211 KB
• Volume: 221
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.2003.3191

✦ Synopsis

Birds in V formations are frequently observed and two main hypotheses have emerged to explain this particular geometry: (i) it offers aerodynamic advantages and (ii) it is used to improve visual communication. Both explanations require a bird to track its predecessor. However, most V-formations observed in nature are small and the distribution of wing-tip spacings has a large variation. This suggests that tracking the lateral position of the preceding bird is a difficult task. Control theorists, when trying to control platoons of vehicles, also noted that predecessor following is difficult. In this paper, we apply a result from systems theory to explain the observations of bird V-formations. The strength of this result is that it does not rely on the details of the bird flight model. Thus we claim that formation flight is inherently difficult for birds.