When I wrote the article on animal leadership for Odyssey magazine‘s October 2012 issue, I researched baboons, bees, elephants, and fish. But the article was too long and one of the four had to be cut in the final, published version. Here is the fish section for your enjoyment – posted with permission from my editor:
A school of fish isn’t much like your school, where the principal makes the rules and teachers decide what you’re going to do all day. No one fish is in charge of where the school goes, how they avoid danger, or what they will eat. Still, someone has to swim in front, and we tend to think of that fish as the leader.
Ashley Ward of the University of Sydney in Australia studies leadership in fish and other sea creatures. “It’s a high risk, high reward position,” Ward says of the fish at the front. He or she will get to the food first, but will also run into predators first.
In an experiment, Ward gave stickleback fish the option of following different kinds of leaders: large or small, fat or thin, and so on. When a fish was alone, it showed only a slight preference for large over small or fat over thin. But something interesting happened when Ward gave the same choice to a group of eight fish. “A slight preference in the individual became a strong preference in the group,” explains Ward.
But even the biggest, fattest, strongest fish can’t tell the whole school which way to go all by herself. Fish tend to follow a quorum rule, which is almost like voting. If one bold fish darts out of the coral just when a hungry barracuda is swimming by, it would be bad for all the rest to just copy her right away. Instead, they wait and see how many other fish make the same choice. Once a certain number—a quorum—is reached, the whole group follows.
Ward’s research has found that some fish tend to be bolder and lead more often, while other, shier fish prefer to hang out in the middle. Which type would you be?
Fishy Experiment to Try
You can test out the quorum rule at home! Two of Ashley Ward’s students did just that. On a regular walk from their research station to the seashore, the path split around an island of trees. It didn’t really matter which way the group went. Each day, these two students walked in front, and picked either right or left. Everyone followed! After the students told the group what they were doing, the very next day everyone stubbornly went the opposite way from their “leaders.” Were these students really each in control of their own choice, or were they still making a decision as a group?
Next time you’re walking somewhere in a group, you can try this. See if everyone will follow you along a certain path. Try it by yourself, and then get a friend in on the secret. Does having two people lead make the rest of the group more likely to follow?