Smart behavior of true slime mold in a labyrinth.
Even for humans it is not easy to solve a maze. But the plasmodium of true slime mold, an amoeba-like unicellular organism, has shown an amazing ability to do so. This implies that an algorithm and a high computing capacity are included in the unicellular organism. In this report, we discuss information processing in the microorganism to focus on the issue as to whether the maze-solving behavior is akin to primitive intelligence.
Nakagaki
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Research Institute for Electronic Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. nakagaki@es.hokudai.ac.jp
D000818:Animals; D018782:Maze Learning; D010804:Physarum / Q000166:cytology / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology*