Movement ecologists study how animals move in ecosystems together with other individuals of the same or other species. When animals appear to move together, ecologists often assume they’re interacting, e.g. a predator follows prey, or social animals follow each other. A new study by a team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), Technische Universität Berlin, and the University of Potsdam suggests that’s not necessarily the case: Through movement simulations in various modelled landscapes they found they may not be interacting but rather responding independently to same physical environment.