Matthew Sims at Aeon Magazine:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some people took up baking, others decided to get a dog; I chose to grow and observe slime mould. The study in my partner’s flat in Edinburgh became home to two cultures of Physarum polycephalum, an acellular slime mould sometimes more casually referred to as ‘the blob’.
I began a series of experiments investigating how long it would take for two separated cell masses from the same bisected Physarum cell to stop fusing with one another upon reintroduction. Hours turned into days, and days into weeks, and, due to time constraints, the experiment eventually fizzled out around six weeks. This, however, was only the beginning. Over that following year (unbeknown to our unsuspecting neighbours), I conducted several more experiments. Although none of them were published, each inspired new philosophical questions – which to this day continue to shape my thinking. One of the core questions was: what can the behaviour of slime mould teach us about biological memory?
more here.
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