A falcon swoops down to pluck a butterfly from the sky. A baby macaque monkey sleeps in the arms of its mother. An army of wood ants overwhelms a blue beetle.¹

These are some of the stunning images awarded prizes at this year's Natural History Museum wildlife photographer of the year competition. Calming and alarming, beautiful and brutal, they celebrate the endless variety of the natural world.

This year's winner shows a swarm of western toad tadpoles in Cedar Lake, Canada. Sheltered by the lily pads that cover the lake's surface, hundreds of toads in larvalRelating to a form of an insect or an animal such as a frog that has left its egg but is not yet completely developed. form glide through the water as if dancing.

Photographer Shane Gross said he wanted "to see something new and try to photograph it in the best way I possibly can". For Kathy Moran, the head of the judges, his winning image "swirls with light, energy and a feeling of synchronised movement".²

But the photograph is also a glimpse into one of nature's most vital systems: the swarm. Swarms are groups of animals that act collectively by following the same simple rules. There is no central intelligence directing these animals, yet they can perform complicated tasks.

Understanding swarms is transforming science. They can be applied to everything from modelling traffic jams to stopping the spread of infections. And they may be vital for AI, creating complicated systems that run without human oversight.

According to Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist at Cambridge, if society could unlock the power of swarms, we could think collectively like groups of animals. We could even "usher in a utopianImpossibly perfect. The term comes from an ancient Greek phrase meaning "no-place" invented by Henry VIII's chancellor, Sir Thomas More, in 1516, as the name of an imaginary, ideal island. era of human cooperation".³

But teaching machines to run without human control might be dangerous. Military forces are researching how one soldier could control a "swarm of dronesDrones are aircraft flown with no humans on board. They are used for many different purposes. ."⁴ If drones could operate without any human involvement, they might cause unimaginable destruction.

Research into swarms also raises moral and philosophical questions, such as who is responsible for a swarm? What is collective intelligence?

The winning image at this year's wildlife photography awards gives a sense of the secret processes taking place in nature. Tadpoles may not be intelligent, but they can create complex and beautiful patterns. We just have to look beneath the surface.

Is swarm intelligence the key to our future?

Yes: Understanding animal swarms is already used for modelling traffic and pandemics. It could allow us to connect human intelligence and create super-intelligent machines.

No: Group intelligence is a moral as well as a technical question. Armies of machines able to operate without human oversight sounds like a science fiction nightmare.

Or... Technological progress is not the only reason to learn about animal swarms. They can also help us to appreciate the hidden complexity of the natural world.

Larval - Relating to a form of an insect or an animal such as a frog that has left its egg but is not yet completely developed.

Utopian - Impossibly perfect. The term comes from an ancient Greek phrase meaning "no-place" invented by Henry VIII's chancellor, Sir Thomas More, in 1516, as the name of an imaginary, ideal island.

Drones - Drones are aircraft flown with no humans on board. They are used for many different purposes.