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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Running of the bulls tramples the laws of crowd dynamics

The physics of crowds fails to describe behaviour of pedestrians at a famed bull-running festival.
Bird’s eye view of a bull run in Pamplona.

The bull-running festival in Pamplona, Spain. Analysis shows that the clump of people just ahead of a charging bull gains both speed and density, a pattern contrary to that seen in other crowds. Credit: Ander Gillenea/AFP/Getty

Traditional bull runs — whose participants try to outrun animals charging down a street — defy the dynamics commonly seen in the motion of crowds, researchers have found1.

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Nature 600, 363 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03645-6

References

  1. Parisi, D. R. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 118, e2107827118 (2021).

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