# s-gst: Lévy flight hypothesis, not only for predation ...

<< When sharks and other ocean predators can’t find food, they abandon Brownian motion, the random motion seen in swirling gas molecules, for Lévy flight — a mix of long trajectories and short, random movements found in turbulent fluids [1] >>

<<  Lévy flights interspersed with Brownian motion can describe the animals' hunting patterns. Birds and other animals (including humans) [2] follow paths that have been modeled using Lévy flight (e.g. when searching for food).[3] >>

<< (..) a growing body of research on generative mechanisms suggests that Lévy walks can arise freely as by-products of otherwise innocuous behaviours; consequently their advantageous properties are purely coincidental. This suggests that the Lévy flight foraging hypothesis should be amended, or even replaced, by a simpler and more general hypothesis. This new hypothesis would state that 'Lévy walks emerge spontaneously and naturally from innate behaviours and innocuous responses to the environment but, if advantageous, then there could be selection against losing them'.  [4] >>

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9vy_flight

[2] - Reynolds, Gretchen (January 1, 2014). "Navigating Our World Like Birds and some authors have claimed that the motion of bees". The New York Times.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/navigating-our-world-like-birds-and-bees/?_r=0

[3] - Sims, David W., Reynolds, Andrew M. et al.  "Hierarchical random walks in trace fossils and the origin of optimal search behavior". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1405966111. Retrieved 16 July 2014.

http://m.pnas.org/content/111/30/11073.abstract

[4] - Reynolds A. Liberating Lévy walk research from the shackles of optimal foraging. Review article. Phys Life Rev. 2015.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25835600/?i=5&from=/26205677/related