Birds!

Roma Termini. Flocks and flocks... Those crazy birds are European Starlings—or in Latin—Sturnus vulgaris. Due to the warmer weather (global warming) they are migrating further north thus now inhibiting Rome. For about two years a study was conducted regarding their flying patterns and the similarities with human behaviour—as an example—investors trends and market research. As it turned out, the birds did not interact with all the birds “within a certain distance, as most models had assumed, but rather with a fixed number of neighboring birds—usually six or seven”. This could be similar to human behaviour as “Jean-Philippe Bouchard, a theoretical physicist who works with a Paris hedge fund, remarked: ‘people are extremely influenced by their neighbors, by fashions and fads’”.

Regarding the sound of the flock—the European Starling does not sing—it “murmurs”.

An interesting fact about the European starling is that the bird is not native to North America. It was introduced there by a group of individuals who wanted every bird mentioned in Shakespeares plays to live in the new continent. About 100 birds were set free in Central Park, New York in 1890 and presently the European starling numbers more than 200 million birds all across the continent.

Sources
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22birds.t.html
http://www.eternallycool.net/?p=997
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/European_Starling.html