slime mould
edyong | January 21, 2010
In a Japanese laboratory, a group of scientists is encouraging a rapidly expanding amoeba-like blob to consume Tokyo. Thankfully, the blob in question is a "slime mould" just around 20cm wide, and "Tokyo" is represented by a series of oat flakes dotted about a large plastic dish. It's all part of a study on better network design through biological principles. Despite growing of its own accord with no plan in mind, the mould has rapidly produced a web of slimy tubes that look a lot like Tokyo's actual railway network.
The point of this simulation isn't to reconstruct the monster attacks of…
edyong | December 18, 2008This post is part of a celebration of the 2-year anniversary of open-access journal PLoS ONE.
Gathering in large numbers is usually a good way of protection yourself against predators, and it's no surprise that mass defence is a common strategy in the natural world. But it doesn't always work. There is one hunter that has found a way to use group defence to its advantage. It allows its prey to gather in large numbers and then freezes them in place with a chemical weapon, providing it with a bountiful banquet to eat at its leisure. It's called Dictyostelium caveatum.
D.caveatum is a member of…