Flocking

July 29, 2021 8:36 PM

The flow of sheep from above. More aerial photography from Lior Patel.
posted by clawsoon (15 comments total)

Sheep are basically slime mold. I had no idea!
posted by hippybear at 8:45 PM on July 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Someone please do the hard math and explain how sheep behave just like turbulent flow through a pipe or something.
posted by geoff. at 8:52 PM on July 29, 2021

Amazing view. I've never seen footage moving through a suburb before.

As a kelpie owner, the dogs are the true heros in these stories. Endlessly circling and moving the herd.
posted by greenhornet at 8:53 PM on July 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

Oh, is this where we talk about the Lamb trailer again?
posted by kaibutsu at 9:58 PM on July 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

The hierarchy of sheep is matriarchal so the flock goes where the camp mother tells them to go.
posted by Narrative_Historian at 11:48 PM on July 29, 2021

So, those folk behind the sheep. Are they sheeple?
posted by Thella at 12:06 AM on July 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yes that's true but you can nudge the matriarch to go where you want. Nudge, not shove. It's like diverting the Ki rather than trying to stop it in Aikido. We have 16 sheep which we mostly make doing our bidding. We don't have a dog, so I guess we are our own true heroes. After 25 years of learning [and a complete change in the cast except for me], I can almost make them respond to a quizzical eyebrow, but my super-gaudy red-and-yellow candy-striped herding stick is more emphatic. And ritual repetitive actions make it easier for all parties. BobTheSheeple
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:18 AM on July 30, 2021 [6 favorites]

Someone please do the hard math and explain how sheep behave just like turbulent flow through a pipe or something.

Clearly we must start by assuming a uniform, spherical sheep.
posted by each day we work at 2:16 AM on July 30, 2021 [4 favorites]

Overall I really liked this but the feeding scenes creeped me out!
posted by obfuscation at 4:33 AM on July 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Sheep are basically slime mold.

aren't we all ...
posted by philip-random at 6:37 AM on July 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

See, and my favourite thing was the end when they're flowing into the feeding yard and forming flowers around each of the feeding troughs, it was like watching flower petals fall off a tree, except in reverse.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:42 AM on July 30, 2021

To each their own! I think because of the scale and viewpoint, it had a vibe of bugs of some sort feasting on scraps of meat or something, and that’s what squicked me.
posted by obfuscation at 8:22 AM on July 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

This has been around forever but if you've read this far down the thread, your interest in sheep and sheep-herding is likely more than passing.. that good ol' clip of choreographed herding with LED lights
posted by elkevelvet at 9:06 AM on July 30, 2021 [7 favorites]

Someone please do the hard math and explain how sheep behave just like turbulent flow through a pipe or something.

As far as I can tell, enough discrete things moving in roughly the same direction in a semi constrained environment will act like water moving through a pipe. Automobile traffic does it, for example.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:33 AM on July 30, 2021

elkevelvet thank you very much. I came in here for a break from the delta variant thread, and I quite got it.
posted by aniola at 5:33 PM on July 30, 2021