Murmurations

What do you call a group of starlings? Collections of animals have been given some of the most fanciful, and sometimes unusual, nouns. Therefore, it is little surprise that “What do you call a group of ...?” is one of the first questions asked of scientists studying collective animal behaviour. Tuneful finches are known as a charm, whilst corvids do less well: collections of crows and ravens are known as a murder or an unkindness, respectively. One of the most stunning examples of collective behaviour is the spectacular display of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), the noun for which is a murmuration (Figure 1). These nouns are useful in evoking the powerful imagery of moving animal groups, and enliven the often-dense scientific publications produced by biologists, engineers, physicists and mathematicians on the topic. Given the richness of collective nouns and the recent surge of interest in the mechanisms and evolution of collective behaviour, it is perhaps ironic that there is no agreed collective noun for the different types of moving swarms, schools, flocks, herds and murmurations. Usually scientists studying these systems content themselves with saying that they are studying examples of collective motion.