Avian Flight Formations

Heppner, Frank

doi:10.2307/4512025

Cited by 87 publications

(66 citation statements)

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“…If this bears up in future work it will make a very important point. In fact, all previous hypotheses about 'V' formation flight assume a functional advantage: aerodynamics, visibility, communication (Heppner, 1974(Heppner, , 1997. The behaviour present in our experiments seems to suggest instead that even the 'V' formation might be an emergent property.…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 62%

“…But, wanting to count them algorithmically, we stumbled in the definition of the term flock . According to Heppner (1974), a flight flock is a group of flying birds, coordinated in one or more of the following parameters of flight: turning, spacing, velocity and flight direction of individual birds, and time of take-off and landing. However meaningful and accurate from an ornithologist's point of view this definition is, it gives too little information from an algorithmic point of view.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…12 and 1500, 2000 in Fig.13). According to Heppner (1974), the extended cluster formations in nature may simply be bird aggregations in which birds are flying independently toward a common destination. One might be tempted to conclude that this is precisely what we are experiencing here.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For reasons of easier and more fruitful tracking of confined objects (Parrish et al, 1997;Heppner, 1997), fish congregations have been a frequent research theme. On the other hand, bird congregations, for obvious reasons of highly difficult and almost luck-dependent data collection (Heppner, 1997), are among the most widely observed, yet least understood phenomena (Heppner, 1974). According to Heppner (1997), this may be one of the reasons why there is a current of imaginative speculation, and lively controversy in literature on bird congregation structure and internal dynamics.…”

Section: Flocks On the Wingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To help conquer this, Heppner (1974), in his pioneering work, defined the terms (Heppner, 1974). Cluster formations: front cluster, globular cluster, extended cluster (Heppner, 1974).…”

Section: Flocks On the Wingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Simulating flocks on the wing: the fuzzy approach

Bajec

Zimic

Mraz

2005

Journal of Theoretical Biology

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Traditionally the systematic study of animal behaviour using simulations requires the construction of a suitable mathematical model. The construction of such models in most cases requires advanced mathematical skills and exact knowledge of the studied animal's behaviour. Exact knowledge is rarely available. Usually it is available in the form of the observer's linguistic explanations and descriptions of the perceived behaviour. Mathematical models thus require a transition from the linguistic description to a mathematical formula that is seldom straightforward. The substantial increase of the processing power of personal computers has had as a result a notable progress in the field of fuzzy logic. In this paper we present a novel approach to the construction of artificial animals (animats) that is based on fuzzy logic. Our leading hypothesis is, that by omitting the transition from linguistic descriptions to mathematical formulas, ethologists would gain a tool for testing the existing or forming new hypotheses about 'why' and 'how' animals behave the way they do.

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 62%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Flocks On the Wingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To help conquer this, Heppner (1974), in his pioneering work, defined the terms (Heppner, 1974). Cluster formations: front cluster, globular cluster, extended cluster (Heppner, 1974).…”

Section: Flocks On the Wingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Simulating flocks on the wing: the fuzzy approach

Bajec

Zimic

Mraz

2005

Journal of Theoretical Biology

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An ecological approach to language development: An alternative functionalism

Dent¹

1990

Developmental Psychobiology

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I argue for a new functionalist approach to language development, an ecological approach. A realist orientation is used that locates the causes of language development neither in the child nor in the language environment but in the functioning of perceptual systems that detect language-world relationships and use them to guide attention and action. The theory requires no concept of innateness, thus avoiding problems inherent in either the innate ideas or the genes-as-causal-programs explanations of the source of structure in language. An ecological explanation of language is discussed in relation to concepts and language, language as representation, problems in early word learning, metaphor, and syntactic development. Finally, problems incurred in using the idea of innateness are summarized: History prior to the chosen beginning point is ignored, data on organism-environment mutuality are not collected, and the explanation claims no effect of learning, which cannot be tested empirically.

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