The Slime Mold Faculty's Office Hours

It's yellow and its name is "Physarum Polycephalum", but let's call it - "Bob".

Bob, a slime mold, has joined the faculty at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts as a "visiting non-human scholar-in-residence". Indeed - I kid you not - Bob has an office in the building, with a name plate on the door, and it has office hours. We don't know Bob's title or salary or whether the appointment is tenure-track or not and we are sure neither does Bob... but we can tell you this much, with a high degree of certainty, that Bob doesn't care.

Bob is a plasmodial slime mold. These are single-celled organisms that are neither plant nor animal nor fungus. These slime molds don't have brains or nervous systems. They live in the soil and they fuse to form super-organisms, with a few remarkable traits - they are excellent at finding and distributing resources (i.e., food) and each individual organism looks out for the benefit and welfare of the entire colony.

Yes, you read it right. Each individual organism watches out and works for the advantage of the colony. None of the rugged individualism that we are known for impresses slime molds. The guiding philosophy of a slime mold is not "every mold for itself".

This is what makes Bob unusual.

Bob does something humans do not want to do - i.e., Bob looks after itself the way it looks after its colony, that is, Bob's self-interest is as important to Bob as Bob's collective interest.

In human terms, this means people consider their own well-being as important as the well-being of his and her community, his and her country, and even the world.

Say what now?

Let's get back to why Bob was appointed to a faculty position.

Apparently, slime molds build networks as efficient as subway systems in big cities. So, if Bob finds food (oatmeal) separated in space, Bob surrounds the oatmeal and creates pathways to capture and distribute it.

To test the efficiency of the network, researchers did a test. They created a layout of the area around Tokyo, then placed Bob in place of Tokyo, and dropped oat flakes at locations of the 36 surrounding towns around Tokyo.

Bob, who doesn't have a brain, figured out efficient traffic patterns between Tokyo and these 36 surrounding towns. Bob created a network similar to the existing Tokyo train system, and "with comparable efficiency, fault tolerance, and cost". When Bob finished, researchers say, the network it created looked like the actual Tokyo subway system created by engineers.

All that without a brain.

Bob is not only great for navigation around cities with, but also a good eater. Bob does best on a diet that is 2/3 protein and 1/3 carbohydrate and when Bob is put at the center of a big round plate with diets with different ratios of protein and carbohydrates in the outer circle of the plate, Bob consistently reaches out toward the diet that best matched its needs. No junk food for Bob. It eats what it does well on and chooses its food with clear decisiveness.

For a creature without a brain or a nervous system, it sure has good values and judgment.

It solves difficult problems efficiently, and makes good decisions for self and all.

Isn't that what we want our faculty to be?

Sign up for that office hour.

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