The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups andsocieties has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the lastdecade. This kind of coordination often permits group-living species to achievecollective tasks that are far beyond single individuals capabilities. Inparticular, a key benefit lies in the integration of partial knowledge of theenvironment at the collective level. In this contribution we discuss variousself-organization phenomena in animal swarms and human crowds from the point ofview of information exchange among individuals. In particular, we provide ageneral description of collective dynamics across species and introduce aclassification of these dynamics not only with respect to the way informationis transferred among individuals, but also with regard to the knowledgeprocessing at the collective level. Finally, we highlight the fact that theindividuals' ability to learn from past experiences can have a feedback effecton the collective dynamics, as experienced with the development of behavioralconventions in pedestrian crowds.
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