Self-assembling dragons from charismatic birds

Agents able to move in 3 spatial dimensions or "birds" have been shown to give rise to various kinds of ordered phases whereby either some spatial order or some kinematic order or a combination of both would emerge by tuning parameters controlling the rules with which these agents move and interact. In this study we ascribe to each bird a certain degree of charisma related to its rank in a given hierarchical social structure. We investigate the case where such birds follow a rule where they would tend to go where other birds they look up to seem to be gathering. As a consequence, birds at the bottom of the hirearchy would tend to follow any neighbouring group of birds whereas birds at the top of the hierarchy would not follow any other bird. By combining this new hierarchical rule with more traditional rules of avoidance and stochasticity we report a range of parameter values where such birds self-assemble into a directional 3D structure which bears a resemblance to the dragons of Asian mythology. We finally probe the stability of these structures against various models of predators.