Paris zoo unveils a slime mould
Please note: the "blob" is a protist, Physarum polycephalum, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum.
Slime mold is interesting. There's one species that, if you assemble food sources in the population densities found in Tokyo, will grow to look very similar to the Tokyo subway system:
Reminds me of "Doctor Diagoras", a short story by Stanislaw Lem. Also known for the "Solaris" novel (adapted by Tarkovsky and Soderbergh)
We expect to find alien lifeforms out there, but plenty of species on Earth remain to be discovered and studied. And rediscovered: finding out we overlooked some particularly interesting/puzzling behavior in apparently boring species, whose research might lead to breakthroughs in genetics, computing, mathematics, etc.
Anyone know what 720 sexes means?
What does it mean that it "has the ability to learn"?
If we talk about similarities to animals it should be mentioned that slime molds actively move.
"In nature, slime moulds actively move around searching for bacteria or fungi, which they subsequently engulf. Slime moulds can achieve speeds up to 5 cm/h" [1]
I’m unable to find more details. Does anyone have anything else on this creature?
How long has this been studied? What is its scientific name? Where did it come from?
Made me think of Bourne: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31451186-borne
So, how would one make this or fungi interact with a raspberry? an array of capacity sensors? camera?
how the hell a organism has 720 sexes?
It probably has no sex at all, and is some king of hemaphrodite orgnanism or something that just reproduces with something more simple like parthenogenesis?
When did Reuters get so sensationalistic? I remember years ago when they were the matter-of-fact news agency that other journalists got their info from and built their sensational articles around.
From TFA:
> This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on display to the public on Saturday, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet it can detect food and digest it.
> The blob also has almost 720 sexes, can move without legs or wings and heals itself in two minutes if cut in half.
Yeah, it's a slime mo(u)ld, we get it. You don't need to get all carnie shouter about it.
Back to my original question, when did Reuters decide their strategic shift into their own souped-up content?
Leaves unanswered the important question: what gender has L'Académie française assigned the French noun for this thing.
My horror film: I have no brain and I must think
And they've named this horrible monstrosity "dang".
I wager you could find similar entities walking around LA.
edit: Or NYC.
Relatable
when will "the blob" finally be given voting rights?
:'(
> an organism with no brain but 720 sexes]
They are showcasing the modern feminist?
Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, I give you, clickbait.
Sounds like your average liberal millennial to me.
Sounds like an Apple perhiperal adaptor hell for reproduction.
Slime mold is an extremely interesting species that can perform computation, even without a nerve system.
> Ateam of Japanese and Hungarian researchers have shown P. polycephalum can solve the Shortest Path Problem. When grown in a maze with oatmeal at two spots, P. polycephalum retracts from everywhere in the maze, except the shortest route connecting the two food sources.
> When presented with more than two food sources, P. polycephalum apparently solves a more complicated transportation problem. With more than two sources, the amoeba also produces efficient networks. In a 2010 paper, oatflakes were dispersed to represent Tokyo and 36 surrounding towns. P. polycephalum created a network similar to the existing train system, and "with comparable efficiency, fault tolerance, and cost". Similar results have been shown based on road networks in the United Kingdom and the Iberian peninsula (i.e., Spain and Portugal). Some researchers claim that P. polycephalum is even able to solve the NP-hard Steiner Minimum Tree Problem.
> As the slime mould does not have any nervous system that could explain these intelligent behaviours, there has been considerable interdisciplinary interest in understanding the rules that govern its behaviour. Scientists are trying to model the slime mold using a number of simple, distributed rules. For example, P. polycephalum has been modeled as a set of differential equations inspired by electrical networks. This model can be shown to be able to compute shortest paths. A very similar model can be shown to solve the Steiner tree problem. However, currently these models do not make sense biologically, as they for example assume energy conservation inside the slime mould. Living organisms consume food, so energy can not be conserved. To build more realistic models, more data about the slime mould's network construction needs to be gathered.
[...]
> Moreover, it has been reported that plasmodia can be made to form logic gates, enabling the construction of biological computers. In particular, plasmodia placed at entrances to special geometrically shaped mazes would emerge at exits of the maze that were consistent with truth tables for certain primitive logic connectives. However, as these constructions are based on theoretical models of the slime mould, in practice these results do not scale to allow for actual computation. When the primitive logic gates are connected to form more complex functions, the plasmodium ceased to produce results consistent with the expected truth tables.