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“OFTEN it pays not to be leader of the pack—just ask a racing cyclist or a Formula One driver. Conserving energy by following the leader, a trick known as slipstreaming, can give a rider or driver that extra bit of juice to pull ahead at the very last moment. In the natural world, however, bodies are more likely to be flexible, like a fish’s, rather than rigid, like a car’s. In these systems, as a recent paper in Physical Review Letters reports, it is the leader that enjoys a significant dynamic advantage over the followers.” source...