Communication is essential for animals living together in functional communities. In flocks of birds, for example, flight maneuvers and the movements of individual animals must be quickly coordinated in order to avoid collisions and control the movement of the flock as a whole. By investigating how this communication takes place in zebra finches, a team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence has found that these birds use both vision and calls to coordinate their flight positions and avoid collisions.  “How birds...