Birds, fish and bacteria often gather into groups or swarms. This so-called collective behaviour requires all group members to continuously and reciprocally adapt their movements. It can be a challenging task, however, for researchers to ascertain the specific environmental stimuli that individuals respond to within the context of their group; in addition to optical and acoustic information, flow resistances or chemical messengers can also play a role. By designing experiments with artificial microswimmers, physicists at the University of Konstanz were able to show that the formation of stable groups requires only few skills: forward visual perception over large distances and regulation of the speed according to the number of perceived individuals. In addition to providing more insight into collective phenomena, their findings can also be used for research on autonomous systems. The results of their study were published in the current issue of the journal Science.