 |
| Dictyostelium disconideum start to explore their environment and find their oats. |
 | |||||||||
| These guys have found four oat flakes and are really starting to grow. |
As the slime mold reproduces, it will aggregate and show behavior similar to a more complicated organism in the way it sources its food. But each cell is identical and none of them possess any distinguishing characteristics, yet somehow they form a colony that works together for the greater good.
The slime molds cells are "organizing from below." Sort of how humans formed early cities -- showing emergent adaptability to their environments. The veins of the mold above resemble a city seen from the air.
Steven Johnson commented on this pattern of nature in his book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. I highly recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment