LOWER ANIMALS is a bad misnomer. Every year evidence accumulates to support the idea that frogs, plants, earthworms, slime moulds, bacteria, and a host of "simpler creatures" are indeed smart in unexpected ways. View in LinkedIn
CAN WE COMMUNICATE with another smart being? We can move a rat tail or another human's hand by thought alone. How about a smart slime mould? Can we talk to a tree frog? I will focus on the humble slime mould as an example. View in LinkedIn
"MICROORGANISMS ALSO CHATTER, and our ability to understand the routes, mechanisms, and purposes of these communications may have profound effects on human health, industry, agriculture, and the environment. Bacteria communicate and coordinate their activities through chemical signals that either diffuse through the extracellular environment or remain cell associated." https://lnkd.in/degbvNw View in LinkedIn
SLIME MOLDS. "Although P. polycephalum often acts like a colony of cooperative individuals foraging together, it in fact spends most of its life as a single cell containing millions of nuclei, small sacs of DNA, enzymes and proteins. This one cell is a master shape-shifter. P. polycephalum takes on different appearances depending on where and how it is growing." http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brainless-slime-molds/ View in LinkedIn
SLIME MOLDS solve the traveling salesman puzzle and other feats of smart behavior. Can we tap into the thinking of this beastie? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brainless-slime-molds/ View in LinkedIn
MAZE SMART FUNGUS. "One species in particular, the SpongeBob SquarePants–yellow Physarum polycephalum, can solve mazes, mimic the layout of man-made transportation networks and choose the healthiest food from a diverse menu—and all this without a brain or nervous system. "Slime molds are redefining what you need to have to qualify as intelligent." http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brainless-slime-molds/ View in LinkedIn
TOKYO RAILWAY NETWORK. "Inside laboratories slime molds have effectively re-created Tokyo's railway network in miniature as well as the highways of Canada, the U.K. and Spain. When researchers placed oat flakes or other bits of food in the same positions as big cities and urban areas, slime molds first engulfed the entirety of the edible maps. Within a matter of days, however, the protists thinned themselves away, leaving behind interconnected branches of slime that linked the pieces of food in almost exactly the same way that man-made roads and rail lines connect major hubs in Tokyo, Europe and Canada.” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brainless-slime-molds/ View in LinkedIn
