Physarum toybox 1.0: an interactive finger-front model of the vein network of Physarum polycephalum
Abstract
A small, free Python program for playing with the growth of the vein network of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum. Core idea (from the author's experiments): every finger of the growth front leaves exactly one vein, so splitting and fusion of fingers alone produce a network of degree-3 nodes. Added from the literature: Hagen-Poiseuille flow, peristaltic pumping with advected phases (Alim et al.), Murray-law vein adaptation, Tero-type food transport, sweet/bitter/light stimuli and slime-trail avoidance. Place food, walls and stimulus fields, compute and replay runs, and measure nodes, edges, edge lengths, widths and branching angles in a measuring field (CSV export). English and German interface. Windows: install Python, run "pip install -r requirements.txt", start start_spielkiste_en.bat. It is a toybox, not a fitted model: valid for thin, finger-dominated plasmodia. If you use this program or build on its code, please cite this record (doi:10.5281/zenodo.23301638). Code, English translation, figures and paper text were written with the AI assistant Claude (Anthropic) under the author's direction.