[ed. ...complex choreography of signals in some species that allows 20,000 individuals to form a single sluglike body, sounds like Congress]
by Carl Zimmer
Most of the aliens that come out of Hollywood don’t really look alien at all. They may have pizza-size eyes or roachlike antennae, but their oddities are draped on a familiar humanoid frame.
If you want to find life forms that truly seem otherworldly, your local forest is a much better place than your local cineplex. It is home to creatures that are immensely old, fundamentally bizarre and capable of startlingly sophisticated behavior. They are the slime molds.
Slime molds are a remarkable lineage of amoebas that live in soil. While they spend part of their life as ordinary single-celled creatures, they sometimes grow into truly alien forms. Some species gather by the thousands to form multicellular bodies that can crawl. Others develop into gigantic, pulsating networks of protoplasm.
While naturalists have known of slime molds for centuries, only now are scientists really starting to understand them. Lab experiments are revealing the complex choreography of signals in some species that allows 20,000 individuals to form a single sluglike body.
The pulsating networks that some slime molds form are giving other scientists clues to solving difficult mathematical problems. In 2000, Japanese researchers placed Physarum polycephalum — the name means “many-headed slime mold” — in a maze, along with two blocks of food. It extended its tendrils down the corridors of the maze, bending around curves, reaching dead ends and then backing out of them. After four hours, the slime mold was feasting on both blocks of food.
Andrew Adamatzky, a researcher at the University of West England, has been watching slime molds since 2006, finding inspirations in their growth for designing computer software. He has made electronic music using molds, and a favorite hobby is challenging them to build highway systems. In 2010 he and his colleagues placed a slime mold in the middle of a map of Spain and Portugal, with pieces of food on the largest cities. The slime mold grew a network of tentacles that was nearly identical to the actual highway system on the Iberian Peninsula.
“If some countries started to build highways from scratch, I would recommend to them to follow the slime mold routes,” Dr. Adamatzky said.
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photo:Steven L. Stephenson
