Check your subscription status, update your details and more. Fish pay attention to one influential neighbour in virtual reality Observing interactions between real and virtual rummy-nose tetra fish shows that, within a group, each individual takes cues from only one influential neighbour A virtual reality tailored to fish reveals that each animal may be paying attention to only a single, most influential neighbour. This finding may shed light on how animals move as groups without becoming overwhelmed by all the activity and interactions around them.
Fish form schools, milling about seamlessly and acting as a collective. But how does a single fish know what to do? Guy Theraulaz at the University of Toulouse in France and his colleagues attempted to answer the question by using virtual reality (VR) to better study interactions between five rummy-nose tetra fish (_Hemigrammus rhodostomus_).
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