In this episode, we discussed "the blob", also known as slime mould or by its latin name, Physarum polycephalum. This fungal-like organism is just a single cell but exhibits some extraordinary behaviours, namely pathfinding and route optimisation, that resembles high-level intelligence. We discuss scientific studies that have explored slime mould behaviour, and the comparisons that can be made to animal intelligence.
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An excellent review article about slime moulds:
Slime moulds can solve maze problems:
“Remarkable problem-solving ability of unicellular amoeboid organism and its mechanism” team led by Masashi Aono at Keio University, Japan (2018) https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.180396#d3e2496
"Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design" Toshiyuki Nakagaki at Hokkaido University, Japan (2010) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1177894
Slime moulds habituate to environmental conditions, a form of learning:
“Habituation in non-neural organisms: evidence from slime moulds” Romain Boisseau, David Vogel, Audrey Dussutour (2016)
" Direct transfer of learned behaviour via cell fusion in non-neural organisms” David Vogel & Audrey Dussutour (2016)
"Adaptive behaviour and learning in slime moulds: the role of oscillations" https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0757
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