Xbox used to study locust swarms

 Xbox used to study locust swarms

 now with xbox camera. scientist learn how the swarms works.Once upon a time, people thought that swarming creatures such as fish, bees and locusts communicated their movements by "thought transference," or telepathy.

Thanks in part to the work of Princeton ecologist Iain Couzin, now we know better. Couzin's lab is using computer-vision technology and even the Xbox's motion-sensing camera, called Kinect, to try to get a grip on how these creatures maintain their individually but also function so gracefully as a collective.

"Computer vision has been very important to us. This is where you program a computer to see the world for us," he said in an interview last year at PopTech, a science, technology and big-ideas conference held in Camden, Maine.

Among the lab's most surprising discoveries: Locusts in the western Sahara Desert swarm because they're trying to not to be eaten by their cannibalistic buddies.

 Locusts pop up like popcorn at farm

"We just discovered by accident that the locusts were trying to eat each other," he said. "So when it looks like a cooperative swarm, in actual fact it's a selfish, sort of cannibalistic horde. Everyone is trying to eat everyone else and trying to avoid being eaten."

Using tools like Kinect, Couzin's team is able to collect a much more detailed data set about how various organisms behave, which in turn makes it easier to figure out what they're doing and why.

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