When following the leader can lead into the jaw...(rs to make more accurate movement decisi...)

Dr Ward added: Our experiments examined whether groups of fish could be led by replica individuals of the same species. We explored following behaviour both in a neutral situation and in a potentially dangerous situation where the subject fish had to be persuaded to swim past a model of a predatory fish. That the test fish regarded the model predator as a threat was confirmed by our control experiments, where fish showed a strong aversion to the predator model. Despite this, solitary test fish were prepared to follow a replica leader towards the predator model, suggesting that an isolated member of a social species will pay almost any cost to stick close to a friend. When test fish were in larger groups of 4 and of 8 fish, however, the picture was very different: a solitary replica leader was ignored. Instead, it required 2-3 replica leaders to influence these larger groups.

By adopting this quorum response, where subjects are prepared to follow a leader only when a threshold number of individuals behave in a particular way, animals can reduce the likelihood of spreading non-adaptive following behaviour. Whereas a single, maverick individual may act irrationally in a given situation, it is far less likely that two individuals will act so strangely.

The researchers say that in order to benefit fully from information transfer, animals - and this would include humans - may have to follow quorum rules to filter out maverick behaviour.

The researchers conclude: The reason why this study is important is that while quorum responses have been shown in invertebrates, like ants, bees and cockroaches, this is the first time (as far as we know) that it has b
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