For the first time, non-human researchers are issuing policy advice on everything from the proposed border wall between the US and Mexico to the positive correlation of environmental hardship with material affluence.
The Plasmodium Consortium at Hampshire College, Massachusetts, is a policy research institute composed of “visiting non-human scholars” – members of the species Physarum polycephalum, one of the more common types of slime mould. A minor celebrity in philosophical circles, slime moulds are neither unicellular nor multicellular, but .
They move very slowly, via decentralised protoplasm tubes. Despite having no central nervous system or brain, they are excellent at solving complicated computational problems, such as finding their way through mazes. They are also and can appear faintly , like a creature in a 1950’s movie.
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Non-human scholars
Presented by experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, curator Amy Halliday and biology professor Megan Dobro, the consortium has been showcasing the policy decisions arrived at by these “scholars” in conjunction with students and the local community.
Scenarios constructed around urgent social questions were modelled in petri dishes, often utilising slime moulds’ favourite food, oat flakes, and their strongest deterrents, salt and light. Keats summed up the findings in a series of letters addressed to appropriate federal and international bodies, all stamped with the official seal of the consortium.
In the border control scenarios, two countries were represented by slime mould snacks, one protein-based, the other a carbohydrate. In the first scenario, a Plexiglas wall was erected between the “countries”. In the second, a “controlled border” was set up using a light source. In the third, an intermittent light source represented an “erratically controlled border”. In the final part, there was no formal border.
In his missive to the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, Keats writes that “unconstrained slime molds…thrive[d] in the open border zone, suggesting that borders may be especially vital regions”. Mr Trump: the slime moulds say don’t build that wall.
Another scenario models the opioid crisis in the US using valerian root, which distracts slime moulds to the point of starvation. Pure valerian root is placed at the centre of a petri dish, with concentric circles featuring diminishing amounts of the root mixed with escalating amount of nutrients. The final ring is pure nutrient.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the recipient of Keats’s letter on this matter, will no doubt be thrilled to read that “Confronted with a binary choice between a highly-addictive chemical and a nutritionally-balanced meal, slime mold populations will consistently choose the former, with consequences that can be fatal. However when presented with a chemical gradient between the addictive substance and nutrients – equivalent to availability of gateway drugs in a human environment – slime molds show a distinct tendency to migrate from the former toward the latter, but not from the latter to the former.”
The bottom line is that “gateway drugs” shouldn’t be considered dangerous, but rather as potential off-routes for addicts.
Provocations not experiments
Clearly these scenarios are meant to serve as provocations rather than technical experiments. The pronouncements of the “scholars” are witty, but not jokes. The conclusion of the border control scenario – that the US government should “replace current national barriers with parklands” – seems ridiculous only until we remember that historically, the chief centres of cultural and economic development were port cities, where cultures interact with the least governmental inhibition.
My favourite scenario tackles the thorny and topical issue that “material affluence and environmental hardship are positively correlated”. I don’t imagine anyone will be surprised to discover that slime moulds are leftists.
The project continues: Hampshire College’s Center for Plasmodial Research will host more visiting “scholars” into 2019. Current and forthcoming projects include an exploration of food deserts – areas where communities struggle to get access to healthy ingredients – and an on-going study to redraw a local bus route, threatened by recent cut-backs.
Any future slime mould historians will be adding these “results” to earlier engagements. Back in 2010 Toshiyuki Nakagaki and researchers at Hokkaido University saw slime moulds recreate the Tokyo subway system, and in 2013, used them to find shortcuts through IKEA stores.
I may even have “data” of my own to contribute. Hampshire College gave me a DIY slime mould kit, featuring Physarum polycephalum, oat-flakes, and salt. In a small petri dish in my apartment, my kit is even now working out the best way for me to get to the grocery store.
The is at Hampshire College to 9 March. The Center for Plasmodial Research will host “visiting scholars” of Physarum polycephalum slime mould up to 2019
