Sometimes nature is obvious and it's design, and other times not so much. Patterns cover this
entire planet. And while they may seem like random designs that can actually reveal quite a lot,
based on the work of famous mathematician Alan Turing scientists have created the emerging field
of mathematical biology. And in this next film, we see how scientists are using this technique
to unveil the hidden realm of patterns, with the ultimate goal of harnessing them to save species
across the world. Make sure you stick around after the credits for a short q&a with the filmmakers.
And now from Producer Cristina Ceuca. This is "A Natural Code."
We live in a universe of patterns. Every night, stars move across the sky.
No two snowflakes are ever the same. intricate waves move across the oceans.
The wind creates ripples in sand.
Nature's love for patterns extends into the animal kingdom with a multitude of designs.
All of these patterns seem disconnected. But what if they weren't? My name is Natasha Allison.
This is a story about how we can use maths to understand more about nature.
To try and help endangered species throughout the world.
People have never really thought about how did the animal get its coat markings?
Why does this animal have one coat? Why does that another coat? Can we understand
that? There was one person who wrote a theory that gave us a whole new way of seeing nature,
he was able to see that seemingly different patterns might not be that different at all.
His name was Alan Turing.
Alan Turing may be best known for decrypting German messages
in World War II. Not only did he save many lives, and create one of the first computers,
he helped us understand patterns in nature.
And it was his thinking about mathematics in this kind of way,
that made him behind the first kinds of mathematical biology research.
The whole area of mathematical biology is about understanding nature more using mathematics.
Alan Turing wrote that patterns in nature perform due to the reaction and spread of two chemicals.
These chemicals are called an activator, and an inhibitor.
The activator encourages production of itself, whilst the inhibitor slows the production of the
activator. Showing both some special mathematical conditions for this process to produce patterns,
such as spots and stripes. We could explain this using an analogy of fires and firefighters.
If we imagine a really dry forest, so dry, that fires are likely to randomly break out. We could
prevent this by spreading firefighters across the forest, waiting for the fires to appear.
You can think of the firefighters as the inhibitor chemical, stopping the activating
fires producing more of themselves and spreading out too far. As we predicted,
fires break up. Now if the firefighters spread much faster than the fires, they were able to stop
the production and the spread of the fires. Which leaves burn patches or sparks across the forest.
That's how Turing patterns are created.
One of the things that this theory of cheering, I think tells us his route cheering himself because
it shows just what a far reaching and inquiring and inventive mind he had.
And the sad thing is he he did this work. He published his work in 1952 and he died 1954
tragically had he lived. Where would we know be in terms of our understanding of bio
But we can learn so much more from him.
Researchers have used Turing theory to describe how many things in the world get that pattern.
We can see Turing patterns everywhere. From a zebra stripes to a cheetah spots to the
goosebumps on our skin, it's also been used to understand more about how animals use their space.
For example, in my research, I study how birds move and why they live in the ranges and the
territories that they live in. And instead of chemicals, we look at the location of the animal,
and the things that drive these sensitive chemicals reacting together,
our animal behaviors, such as an animal moving away from scent marks or moving towards its den,
or maybe moving towards prey. If we understand why animals move in a certain way,
maybe we can understand how best to protect them. When humans are changing their habitat, so much
could be used Turing theory to try and help endangered species throughout the world.
When you have an encounter with a shark, if you look at it from the top, you just
look at it, it seems like stars moving through the water just gliding so effortlessly. And it's
it's like looking at a constellation it's just really beautiful patterns of the whale
shark. Very interesting in that they these unique patterns form the sharks individual spot pattern,
and this unique spot pattern can be used to then identify each individual shark.
The whale shark research program is an NGO that works in the Maldives to
consult whale sharks in the area through research and community mobilization.
On our daily whale shark service, we go out on the reef on the south area marine protected area.
We take identification shots from the left side, the right side and the top of the shark.
And then we run it through a software called Atreus which is linked to the database,
and it gives us the closest matches to the shock and then we are able to know which shark we saw.
Once the research team has a picture of a whale shark, they use the spot pattern from the picture
to decide which individual is and they use a mathematical algorithm developed by NASA
to decide the individual based on the distance between all the spots.
So just by looking at these spots, and patterns, we can then
recognize a whole lot more about each individual shot.
Collecting information about each individual whale shark can help with understanding the movements of
the shark, the geographical range of the shark, even information about the lifespan of the shark,
and help create protected areas, these endangered elusive creatures.
One example would be in helping us create marine protected areas for the whale sharks,
the South area marine protected area has been
created with the use of data collected mostly through photo identification.
We can use this data the team collected to be able to write a mathematical model, which will
help us predict the whale sharks population in the world, which at the moment, we don't even have an
estimation for we could find out more about why the whale sharks prefer to swim according to
different variables that the team collected, such as temperature, wind speed, or current direction.
All of this from being able to identify them
using that beautiful pattern. And it's not just the well short research program.
Organizations are now running projects of jaguars and zebras to identify individuals
using their patterns. Thanks to Turing patterns in nature are beginning to reveal their secrets.
He's shown us how to create patterns we see in nature.
And we've seen such an interesting way of using them. If identifying individuals using
that pattern, has already had such a positive effect on the conservation of whale sharks
by creating the marine protected area, what else can we do? How much more
does Turing's theory have to give? And where else can we use it to understand more about our world
Now what inspired this film? Let's talk to the filmmakers.
Kriss Ceuca. I'm the filmmaker from "A Natural Code."
I'm Dr. Natasha Ellison, and I'm a mathematical ecologist from the University of Sheffield.
Finding the idea for a natural code was mostly Natasha, because this brilliant,
brilliant introduction into mathematical ecology has everything to do with Natasha.
So, yeah, I was very lucky to meet Kriss. I've been studying this kind of mathematics for a
while now. And I always wanted to place to show it to the general public. And when I met Kriss,
she was so interested and she had so many ideas about how to make this film,
bring whale sharks into it, for example. It's all Kriss' idea.
So yeah, I got really lucky that that we were able to make this together. And Kriss was so creative.
So it began when I was studying my masters in mathematics. And I came across a paper by Alan
Turing, which the film mentions, and lots of other scientists have been studying it for years. And,
and I think this whole thing attractive about animal patterns isn't the leopards and zebras
and things that really, really makes us want to know more about them. And because I was a
mathematician, and there was mathematics behind this, it was just so interesting.
I know, it's even if it's a 10 minute documentary, it involved a lot of people collaborating, to be
able to tell the story. So we collaborated with a visual artists as well, for the patterns that
were created, they are actually touring patterns that you can see on the screen for the visuals,
we also included some of the underwater footage that we filmed in the Maldives
with the whale sharks, they were done in collaboration with the Maltese
whale shark research program, that they are working tirelessly from the boat every day,
with volunteers. And with citizen science as well. They've developed an app that was based,
similar to the NASA algorithm to identify the stars to identify individual whale sharks. So
that was an amazing collaboration that we were able to do because it was in a way, showing how
science communication can- and science- can can help endangered species around the world.
Something I'm working on now is is a project with primary schools. So that's ages, age,
like nine to 10, where what we're trying to sort of show they're about Turing patterns,
in the hope that you know, when they get into the high school, and when they go on to study,
if they do that, they'd be interested in doing maths, and then, you know,
we can push that sort of research area forward. So I guess that's one of the most
important things that the film is inspiring younger people into these kind of areas.
For me, I have another wildlife bill project coming up. So it'll be
shorter, a longer version of it'll be about 20 to 30 minutes. And it'll be about
like Transylvania forest. It'll be about deforestation and habitat loss.
And also plants to like recover from that. So how are young people involved
into reforestation projects in Transylvania, that's, that's the new project coming up.
As a scientist, who you know, has, I have limited filmmaking experience or anything, nothing? Well,
I've not made a film before myself. But finding people like Chris to promote your research and
be able to creatively show people, your ideas of science is really important. You know, I could
have sat down for months and months and learned it myself. But that's, that's not helpful. It's
helpful to go and seek out filmmakers and seek out people that you're going to be able to work with.
And as Chris mentioned, in a previous answer, to collaborate with people,
these collaborations are really important. If there's like any advice for upcoming
science communicators or filmmakers, is I think, remember why you're doing it. So every time
you think maybe you you've lost your way or you don't know how to do it or how to save better or
why is it even worth it or everything is just remember why you started it and what what's
your passion for it because that's, I think your biggest tool into science
communication is like people are going to see your passion for the subject and they want to,
they want to they they will want to learn more just because they will see that drive and passion
in your eyes so just always go back to your inner self when you when you don't know which way to go.
Doesn't this just make you want to get outside and discover patterns in the nature around you?
Thanks for watching Seeker Indie's premiere have "A Natural Code." It's stories like these that
can inspire more discoveries, more adventures and new ideas that may one day help save our planet.