Clara Moskowitz at MSNBC reports on a study about traffic planning.

Researchers arranged oat flakes to mimic the layout of cities around Tokyo, and then set some slime mold loose.  This mold grows as a large, interconnected network that tries to get the most efficient access to food — in this case, Japan-mimicking oat flakes.

The resulting network of mold ended up looking suspiciously similar to the train network that connects the real Tokyo to its real suburbs.

Apart from the quip Freakonomics makes about whether transportation engineers are as smart as mold, there’s also something to be said for the similarities between what we humans do to our environment and what mold does in its own.

(via Freakonomics)