"Collective responses of flocking sheep to a herding dog"Jadhav, VivekCollective motion in animal groups has considerable attention in recent years, with numerous studies aimed at characterizing the underlying local interaction rules. It is hypothesized that a major factor in the evolution of collective motion is predation pressure because it offers anti-predatory advantages. Yet, research examining the interactions between prey and predator in context of collective motion remains limited. Indeed studying collective escape phenomena in the field is a challenging task as predator attacks are unpredictable and rare events. Moreover, obtaining trajectories of the predator and individuals within the group during such attacks is extremely complex. To overcome these challenges, we investigate collective escape phenomena through the responses of a flock of sheep to a herding dog. This offers us the opportunity to study the impact of a controlled threat on the collective group movement. In our study, using Ultra-Wideband (UWB) tags attached to each individual, we collected high-resolution spatiotemporal data from 14 sheep chased by a dog. Employing the UWB data, we analyzed the collective responses of the flock to the dog and we focused on the way information propagates within the flock. Lastly, we develop a model to determine how the interactions between individual sheep and between sheep and the dog affects the way information spread within the flock and determine its collective movements. Our findings indicate that in response to the interactions with the dog, information predominantly propagates from the front towards the rear of the flock. |
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