Flock members experience gas pressures higher than lone individuals.

Local interactions between flock members in absence of centralized control generate collective dynamics characterized by coherent large-scale patterns. We investigate whether aggregates of individuals like birds, swarms and fishes behaving in concert with their neighbors may modify the physical properties of the fluid medium in which they are embedded. Using the K-Nearest Neighbours algorithm to simulate collective animal behavior, we showed that the occurrence of collective dynamics can modify the physical parameters of the phase space in which the interacting individuals' trajectories take place. This means that lone individuals experience the nearby fluid medium (i.e., the air in case of birds/insects and the water in case of fishes) differently from flock members. In particular, our framework suggests that a bird belonging to a group and acting collectively with its neighbours perceives the nearby atmosphere as denser, compared with an isolated bird.

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Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.

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Declaration of competing interest The author warrants that the article is original, does not infringe on any copyright or other proprietary right of any third part, is not under consideration by another journal, and has not been previously published. The Author does not have any known or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. This research does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by the Author. The Author had full access to all the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. The Author performed: study concept and design, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, statistical analysis, obtained funding, administrative, technical, and material support, study supervision.