Atlantic Herring

Atlantic herring schools coordinate through lateral line organs - sensory systems detecting water pressure changes that enable fish to sense neighbors' movements without visual contact. This allows coordination in dark or turbid water, synchronizing thousands of fish through pressure waves rather than sight.

The lateral line system demonstrates non-visual collective coordination. Fish respond to water disturbance before they could see the movement causing it, enabling faster collective response than vision would allow. Information travels through the school as pressure waves, creating reaction speeds exceeding individual perception.

The business parallel applies to market sensing through indirect signals. Companies often detect competitive moves through market pressure changes - pricing shifts, talent movement, customer behavior - before direct observation reveals strategy. Organizations with sensitive 'lateral lines' respond to market disturbance before seeing its source.

Herring also demonstrate that school shape communicates state. Relaxed schools are loose and amorphous; threatened schools become dense spheres or tornadoes. External observers can read school state from shape. Company culture and health similarly manifest in observable patterns - organizational 'shape' reveals internal state.