When scientists talk up learning about transportation networks from nature, it’s often ants that get the praise for being so much more organized and efficient than we humans with our silly gridlock. But a team of Japanese researchers found, for a new study in Science, that you don’t even need a brain to be to a traffic genius. Single-celled slime molds, they found, can build networks as complex as the Tokyo subway system.
The yellow slime mold Physarum polycephalum grows as a single cell that is big enough to be seen with the naked eye. When it encounters numerous food sources separated in space, the slime mold cell surrounds the food and creates tunnels to distribute the nutrients [Science News]. To test how efficient the mold could be, Toshiyuki Nakagaki’s team duplicated the layout of the area around Tokyo: They placed the slime mold in the position of the city, and dispersed bits of oat around the “map” in the locations of 36 surrounding towns.
