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Learning how bird flocks coordinate
Flocking is a typical example of emergent collective behavior, where interactions between individuals produce collective patterns on large scales. I will discuss how by analysing different aspect of this motion based on quantitative data we can learn about the origins of these interactions. Specifically I will show how long range order arrises from short range interactions between a fixed number of birds giving rise to scale invariance of correlations between fluctuations in flight directions. Additionally, we also observe scale free fluctuations in speed that contribute to the maximal correlation across long distances and ballistic information propagation. I will then move beyond a static picture of flocks and show how we can learn the non-equilibrium characteristics of flocks, discussing relevant timescales.