Letters from the February 3, 2007, issue of Science News
By Science News
All together now
It is not only the scientific literature that documents the unexpected “doughnut” pattern in swarms (“The Mind of the Swarm,” SN: 11/25/06, p. 347). Italo Calvino’s fictional Mr. Palomar observed (rather more lyrically) about the flocking of Roman starlings, “Finally a form emerges from the confused flutter of wings, advances, condenses: it is a circular shape, like a sphere, a bubble, the balloon-speech of someone who is thinking of a sky full of birds … ” (Mr. Palomar, 1985, Harcourt Brace).