Fish Shoals are Viscoelastic Materials

A fundamental difference between living and non-living systems is that constituents within living systems consume energy. In the natural world, this leads to fantastic patterns and collective behaviors across many lengthscales. This talk focuses on describing these active systems as amorphous non-equilibrium materials by investigating laboratory schools of fish. Using imaging and image analysis techniques, we investigate the structure and rearrangements of fish within a school as a means to probe the mechanical properties of a living material.