Flock

get them in. don't rush them.

drag a stray dog to pen a flock of sheep off a mountain road before the van gives up -- walk them in and they flow, rush them and they scatter

Every animal in a herd keeps a flight zone, a personal space it will move to protect. Step into the edge of it and the animal walks away from you; step in fast or deep and the zone grows, and it bolts. Where you stand against its shoulder, its point of balance, decides which way it goes: behind the shoulder it walks on, ahead of the shoulder it turns back. Both ideas come from livestock handling, most famously from Temple Grandin, and they are why a good sheepdog works the edge of a flock at a walk. A flock follows its own neighbours, so calm pressure on the edge moves all of it, while a rush into the middle sends every sheep off on its own line.

Concepts: emergence, biology, feedback-loops.

An interactive you play with one thumb, on Wundr.