Aquila Children's Magazine aquila-mathsInNature-0517 | Page 3

For a single-celled organism, slime mould is pretty extraordinary. For a start, it keeps its memories on the outside of its body. It solves mazes and can be used to design rail networks. Speaking as someone who has been to university and can barely find my way out of a John Lewis without walking slap bang into a glass door, I’d call that pretty clever, wouldn’t you? Are you sharper than a bread knife in a marshmallow factory? Are you brighter than a quasar in neon cycling shorts? (Just go with it, ed.) Can your brain hold more information than Einstein’s Filofax? Great, then try these on for size. Here’s Brainfeeders! Did you know that Leonardo Pisano – or Fibonacci – as he is better known, came up with his famous sequence while trying to solve a problem about rabbits? No, neither did we. Calculata finds out all about design in nature, here. Prepare to be bedazzled! Polly makes bejewelled spider webs. Make an entirely original Fibonacci fun times filter, binvented (that means invented from things we found in a bin) especially for you AQUILAnauts! You’ll never draw without one again. Jack says he has tamed four ocelots! We’re confused Jack, is that a Minecraft thing or a real life thing*? It is illegal to keep them in the UK. Get up to date with our readers and their apparently death-defying animal training antics on the Over to you page. *We’re pretty sure it’s a Minecraft thing. Use your mad maths skills to save the planet. and I an Can Feline Cadet Chimlin protect his human from the dangerous moonshadows and earn Fee’s respect? Find out in this month’s short story: Shadow Stalker, by Laurence Raphael Brothers. !