" . . . behavior is not, what an organism does itself, but to what we
point. Therefore, whether a type of behavior of an organism is adequate
as a certain configuration of movements, will depend on the environment
in which we de- scribe it. " (Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela: El
arbol del conocimiento, 1984) "A thorough analysis of behavior must
result in a scheme, that shows all regularities that are to be found
between the sensorical input and the motorical output of an animal. This
scheme is an abstract representation of the brain. " (Valentin
Braitenberg: Gehirngespinste, 1973) During the 70ies, when
Biomathematics (beyond Biomedical Statistics and Com- puting) became
more popular at universities and research institutes, the problems dealt
with came mainly from the general fields of 'Population Biology' and
'Complex Systems Analysis' such as epidemics, ecosystems analysis,
morphogenesis, genetics, immunology and neurology (see the first series
of Springer Lecture Notes in Biomathematics). Since then, the picture
has not considerably changed, and it seems that "a thorough analysis of
behavior" of single organisms and, moreover, of their mutual
interactions, is far from being understood. On the contrary,
mathematical modellers and analysts have been well- advised to restrict
their investigations to specific aspects of 'biological behavior', one
of which is 'biological motion'. Until now, only a few Conference
Proceedings or Lecture Notes have paid attention to this important
aspect, some of the earlier examples being Vol. 24: 'The measurement of
biological shape and shape changes' (1978) or Vol.
