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Article: Smarter than dirt.(Works in Progress)(behavior of slime molds )(Brief article)
- Article from:
- American Scholar
- Article date:
- March 22, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Phi Beta Kappa Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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You can't outfox natural selection for billions of years without some rudimentary smarts. Now scientists in Europe and Japan are showing that primordial slime molds are clever enough to reveal how animal cells glom together to form intelligent creatures.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In slime molds, individual amoeba cells stitch themselves together into a coagulated mass, often a foot wide. The mass's cytoplasm sloshes back and forth, allowing it to move forward and digest whatever lies in its path.
However, amoebae don't lurch ahead indiscriminately. They pick efficient routes, as a Japanese-Hungarian team proved by urging one through a maze. At ...