Physarum Screensaver - 4K Ultra HD - No Music

Physarum polycephalum is an amoeba with diverse cellular forms that has been shown to exhibit characteristics similar to those seen in both single-celled organisms and insects with advanced levels of social organization. For example, when grown in a maze with food sources located at two distinct points, physarum polycephalum demonstrate the ability to find the shortest route connecting the two points. Moreover, when presented with multiple food sources, the amoebae are capable of forming transportation networks between the sources. For example, when food was arranged to represent Tokyo and surrounding towns, the amoebae created a efficient network similar to the Tokyo train system.

In this simulation, amoeba-like agents interact with the environment using simple rules. Each agent occupies a single pixel and is oriented in a specific direction. Each agent also is capable of detecting the presence of other agents at a certain distance within a certain angular range. At each time step (video frame), if no amoeba is detected at the destination pixel, it will first leave a trace of chemo-attractant in its current pixel and then move to the destination pixel. Otherwise, if the destination pixel is occupied, the amoeba will stay in its current location after randomly changing its orientation. These simple rules allow the physarum to form complex, beautiful patterns, and by modulating the rule parameters, we can get a variety of different patterns.

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