The way i see it is this:
Imagine that you have a yard 2x2meters and you add 2000 small red pessaries that are magnetically charged. They may all have the same charge or half of them positive, half negative. Now lets say they all start moving at 20mph at random directions initially. And then you step back and enjoy what you will see.
Yes, the patterns will remind us of the birds. Yes there will be quorum sensing because the trajectory of an individual pessary will be influenced by all the others.
Just take the example of iron filings lining up all in the direction of a magnetic stimulus. This is a very specific
mathematical physical response to a very specific physical stimulus.
The question is this:
Is anything really emerging inside the shapes they form, or is it just paredolia?
No, the response does not require decision making from memory, it requires only a specific (deterministic) chemical response in the recipient of the stimulus.
Maybe its the fact that there is too much of counter-intuitive information happening in front of our eyes that keeps us amazed.
IMO, we expect to see intelligence associated with ability to quantify or qualify. This is the human use of mathematical values and functions. But intelligence is not required at all. All that is needed is a specific response to a specific stimulus. The choice is based on chemical information.
The response is not based on choice at all. It is a completely autonomous function of either this or that, which already goes back down to quantum superposition which resolves in a single deterministic outcome.
IMO, this is the fundamental excellence of consistent (deterministic) mathematically quantifiable and qualifiable properties and potentials. It applies at all levels of physical sensitivity, conscious or not.
It is a physical chemically mathematical response to external stimulus. When a stimulus has two fundamental properties of quantity and quality any chemical system will have a different response to each type of stimulus, at which time the system assumes mathematical functionality and we achieve a type of "quorum sensing", which needs not be consciously intelligent at all, but constitutes a "quasi-intelligent" mathematical function (input-->process-->output).
A Lemur can count as fast as any human and sometimes the Lemurs's response time is even faster than for humans.
The reason is that a Lemur does not count 1,2,3,4,5,......, it counts "more" or "less" of "this or "that" and responds to a purely impressionistic input of quantity and quality. A form of quorum sensing.
A brainless single celled slime mold uses quorum sensing to solve mazes and design shortest routes to food. It also responds to heat and cold and to timed sequences. These are all unconscious functions, but the results are clearly mathematical in essence.
Bonnie Bassler demonstrates the mathematical results of chemical communication in quorum sensing in primitive bacteria. Which is entirely acceptable at an evolutionary scale. Bacteria are the oldest living DNA based biological organisms in existence.
Like other organisms, bacteria use double-stranded DNA
as their genetic material. However, bacteria organise their DNA differently to more complex organisms.
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/images/2329-bacterial-dna
This phenomenon is already present in all simple chemical reactions. Chemicals respond differently to different chemical inputs, and IMO. That constitutes a mathematical chemical function.
Robert Hazen observes that
evolution and natural selection already starts at the chemical polymer level.
Some mutated polymer patterns are more efficient than other mutated polymer patterns and natural selection does the rest.