The results from the Boids algorithm can create madly convincing simulations of birds, dust motes and insects. Anyone wanting to play with the Boids in Blender can download these examples from my Blender teaching resource: https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/blender-par...
One can draw a direct genealogical line between Craig Reynolds's Boids and the VFX program Massive, which was made to simulate the battles in Lord of the Rings. https://www.massivesoftware.com/