"Attention to all locations! Keep the formation! ”
When people think of geese, they always think of the "human" glyph, or the "one" glyph. At this time of year, the geese move south, and they can always be caught in the sky.
On the evening of October 17, flocks of geese flew over the Nanjing Riverside Bund. The geese are constantly changing various formations in the air, sometimes "human" glyphs, sometimes "one" glyphs.
Many netizens saw this scene and lamented that they had seen the picture in the textbook.
Why do flocks of geese maintain such formations when flying? Is it to be neat and easy to confirm the number? Or is there another reason? In addition to geese, which animals have similar "rules"? Step into the world of animals today!
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > why do geese fly in a "human" glyph when flying? </h1>
Geese are a kind of bird that people are very familiar with, commonly known as hong geese, bean geese, spotted geese and gray geese, generally collectively referred to as "geese".
Geese are known for flying in formations, lining up in "human" glyphs and "one" in a glyph, and some scientists believe that they do this not because of deep ties between individuals, but mainly to save physical strength and complete long-distance journeys more smoothly.
In 1970, The Shaman and Schulenberg used aerodynamic theory to give the first estimate that a "human" formation of 25 geese could fly 71 percent more than a single goose.
In the flight team of the "human" glyph-shaped geese, when the first goose in the front flares its wings, it will form a low pressure area behind it, and the geese immediately behind can reduce the resistance of the air through it, thus achieving the purpose of saving physical strength, just like the person sitting in the back seat of the motorcycle feels.
But the first goose is not so relaxed, they are easily tired. Therefore, when the flight distance is very long, the geese need to change their formation from time to time and take turns to be the head geese.
At present, the secret of the flight of geese has not been completely cracked. The size of the geese' "human" glyph often varies, ranging from 24 degrees to 122 degrees, and most of the time, they choose the "one" glyph, and only 20% of the flight time, they choose the "human" glyph.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="74" > the organizational discipline of the animal</h1>
We all know that human life has a certain degree of organizational discipline, and the same is true for some animals.
Because nature is full of dangers, most animals live in groups. From ants and bees to elephants and whales, many animals live in groups in one or more families.
Those solitary animals usually have unique survival skills, such as spiders, tigers, black-footed cats, etc., and most animals must have a certain degree of organizational discipline to live cooperatively.
So, how do animals become organized and disciplined?
The family is the key to maintaining organizational discipline
In groups of bees and ants, the division of labor is very clear. They have different body structures at birth, so bees have worker bees, ants have worker ants, soldier ants, they all belong to the "class" that does not reproduce, and some individuals in the group are fertile, and they are responsible for reproduction.
This population of some individuals, who have no reproductive rights but only as instrumental humans, is the first characteristic of true sociality.
True social animals refer to a group of animals with a highly social organization.
A nest of bees and ants, both descendants of the same queen or queen, the male is very weak and only responsible for mating. It was impossible for other outsiders to join, and it was a small country with a proper queen in power.
Early biological research suggested that eusocial phenomena existed only in insects. Now some scholars believe that naked mole rats, foxes, etc. can also be regarded as true social animals. But the sociality of the fox is closer to that of a matriarchal society—that is, having a mother and an irregular father.
There are many animals that follow a similar route, such as hyenas, which are also dominated by the largest female, and have the right to give priority to eating and fertility. Hyenas, like foxes, have an irregular father, which is fundamentally different from ants and bees.
Each lemur population generally consists of 2 to 50 lemurs, and the internal rulers are male and female leaders, of which the male leader is elected by the female leader. Female chiefs will normally kill all the young beasts that are not born to them to ensure that their offspring have the best chance of survival, and they will also banish or kill the female beasts that give birth to offending their young beasts. So most of the foxes in the same group were the queen's siblings or children.
This matriarchal social structure favors allowing males to co-care for their cubs in tougher circumstances (because each of them may be the father of a child), and this pattern was also the case in early human life.
Recent studies have found that their different tones of call represent different signals, which is a relatively complete language system in the animal kingdom, which can be said to be the result of their evolution after long-term social life.
Rely on strength to make the rules
In contrast, a herd of deer and sheep is just multiple deer living together, they will not have a clear division of labor, and herbivores are not involved in the problem of prioritizing eating, but when fighting for reproductive rights, it is necessary to produce the strongest male in a group through duels to give priority to the females.
The advantage of this kind of hegemony is that although their sociality is not as high as that of ants, they do have a stronger and more advanced ability to continue to survive in nature than the sociality of ants, because they have the ability to go against society - anti-sociality.
Many swarms of mammals, such as wolves, macaques, gorillas, cattle, horses, etc., will have males in their own flocks competing for dominance. The winner is the boss, and in the future, other individuals must obey it. For example, after the wolves are assembled, the wolves will lean down and show respect and obedience to the head wolf. When the leader is angry, the lower wolf will also show his neck to the leader to show submission.
Expert of this article: Zhu Guangxi, popular science writer, member of Beijing Science Popularization Association