Re:Elephant learned to use a hose as a shower. Then her riva...
by FeepingCreature on Tuesday November 12, 2024 @05:34AM
(#42114371)
Water also can solve mazes. That doesn't mean it's conscious any more than slime molds are.
It can solve mazes. [0]
"They remember, anticipate and decide." [0]
They practice primitive agriculture: "they carry, seed and prudently harvest their food" (though no cultivation - what dummies!). [1]
And here's the kicker: "P. polycephalum ... spends most of its life as a single cell containing millions of nuclei, small sacs of DNA, enzymes and proteins." [0], but "When prey bacteria become scarce, Dictyostelium discoideum amoebae aggregate by the tens of thousands and produce a multicellular migratory slug that becomes a fruiting body in which about 20% of cells die to form a sterile stalk. The stalk aids the dispersal of the remaining cells, which differentiate into spores in a spherical structure called the sorus ..." [1]
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11811
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09668