If the Interstate System Were Designed by a Slime Mold

I am intrigued by laws and phenomenon which seem to have a power and life of their own. The principles of Darwin's theory of evolution (evolution via random variation and differential survival) which apply to politics, economics and sociology; Pareto distributions which show up in the oddest places, logarithmic scales, etc. See the linked graph for the relationship between length of a species and the time at which reproduction can occur. Why is there a relationship and in particular, why is it characterized by a logarithmic scale. I have no idea, but it is one of those discoveries that gets you thinking deeply.

A neat, but technical article, Evolutionary Entropy: A Predictor of Body Size, Metabolic Rate and Maximal Life Span, describes the interplay of logarithmic scales, body size, metabolism and survival.

Furthermore, entropy characterizes Darwinian fitness, the efficiency with which a population acquires and converts resources into viable offspring. Accordingly, entropy predicts the outcome of natural selection in populations subject to different classes of ecological constraints. This predictive property, when integrated with the macroscopic representation of entropy, is the basis for enormous differences in morphometric and life-history parameters across species.

Along comes If the Interstate System Were Designed by a Slime Mold by Joseph Stromberg showing the capacity of undirected slime mold to mimic the interstate highway system. I have read of this before, but this is the first time I have seen a video version. Neat.