The different types of manoeuvres conducted by prey aggregates were scrutinized and classified by Pitcher & Wyche 9. This leadership concept was extended by Rands et al. Later, Radakov 1 coined the terms “waves of agitation” and “streams of agitation”, which were used to describe how Breder’s leader fish was able to transmit information to the rest of the shoal. Breder 5 in his widely acclaimed book on collective motion in fish wrote of a possible concept of a leader fish, which has more enterprise or vision than the other fish in the shoal and asserted that the behaviour of this leader fish decides the behaviour of the shoal. The physics behind this behaviour, however, is highly debatable with research ranging from experimental observations on a flock of birds or a shoal of fish to numerical work under a multitude of conditions 1, 2, 3, 4. Such behaviour can be observed all around in nature from human beings to fish to even micro-organisms. This adversity might have been a possible reason for organisms to develop co-ordination, which has been termed as collective behaviour or collective consciousness. One such scenario is that of the presence of a predating species in the vicinity.

Similar content being viewed by othersĭarwin’s theory of evolution speaks of adaptability of organisms to adverse conditions in order to ensure survival. The role of these factors in affecting survival rate of prey is given due coverage. The rate of information transfer is studied as a function of co-ordination and the size of the influence zone and the source strength is studied as a function of escape acceleration activated on the agitated prey. The success of any escape manoeuvre is dependent on the rate of information transfer and the strength of the agitation at the source of the manoeuvre. This study strives to understand the penalty on the collective motion due to the restraints employed by the rigid walls of the confinement and the predator’s hunting tactics. The regimes observed at differing levels of co-ordination segregated by quantification of global order parameter are found to be in agreement with the extant literature.

A novel individual-based combination of Vicsek model and Boids flocking model is used for defining the self-propelling action and inter-agent interactions. The state of motility when alive and passivity on death has been accounted for. Both the predator agent and prey agents are considered to be self-propelled particles moving in a viscous fluid. One such hunter-hunted pair is considered in this context and coordinated escape manoeuvres in response to predation is studied in case of a rarely examined confined system. In nature exists a properly defined food chain- an order of hunting and getting hunted.

Predator vs prey answer key