Comments on: Slime Mold Solves a Maze: Unicellular “Intelligence”

By: andrewdoane

andrewdoane — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:58:57 +0000

Okay, comment posted twice, sorry about that. The first one didn’t show up so I thought it didn’t post for some reason.

By: andrewdoane

andrewdoane — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:58:27 +0000

Slime molds are fascinating. I had one in my back yard about a year ago. I had to throw it out because I was afraid the dogs would eat it, but if I found one as a kid I would have had days of fun experimenting with it.

By: andrewdoane

andrewdoane — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:57:17 +0000

Slime molds are freaking awesome. I had one in my back yard about a year ago and it was just fascinating. If I would have encountered one of those in my experiment-on-everything-you-can-find-in-the-back-yard preteen years, I would have had days of fun with that thing. If you haven’t already, look up slime molds on wikipedia.

By: Idil

Idil — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:37:42 +0000

and those that are asleep and are dreaming may have pretty intelligent dreams… but they’re not conscious.

By: CheeseDuck

CheeseDuck — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:40:07 +0000

Tropism!

By: kid_icarus

kid_icarus — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:23:35 +0000

am i the only one here who wondered if the mold encountered wierd rpg monsters on the way to the end? i know….i am sad……

By: Video Game Dork

Video Game Dork — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:08:39 +0000

I agree with commenters. Also, did it ‘pull back’ from non-nutrient paths, or did the cells in that chain just die off from not being fed?

In any case, it’s just doing it’s thing, growing toward a food source. If you consider that intelligent, then we must consider a whole bunch of things ‘intelligent’, like DNA and virii, various internal organs, all types of plants and stuff.

Putting something in a maze is a poor test for this kind of thing, i think. Why do so many ’scientists’ think maze=smart? bah!

-
Scientist

By: Tempscire

Tempscire — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:40:42 +0000

All it did was pull back the parts of it that weren’t most connected to the nutrient sources, to which it was apparently connected at the start and end of maze. Now, if it had grown from one end to the end to get the nutrients, that’d be impressive.

By: bean

bean — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:52:44 +0000

It didn’t solve the maze, it just expanded to every possible pathway. If it had gone straight from one end to the other, that would’ve been intelligence, possibly.

By: ted

ted — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:08:34 +0000

Silliness.
If a plant is placed in the same maze, with nutrients at one end, it would be intelligent? Its roots would fill out the same maze, and in the end, the root that finds the nutrients would grow the strongest. Same result.

Am I missing something?

By: typo180

typo180 — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:44:59 +0000

Plants can re-orient themselves to get more sunlight too, but I wouldn’t call that intelligence. Putting the slime mold in a maze seems misleading.

By: Scott Wetterschneider

Scott Wetterschneider — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:23:18 +0000

By George, are you saying there is intelligent oil out there?

By: sparge

sparge — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:47:58 +0000

All it’s doing is minimizing its surface area. Even non-living things can do that (think of a droplet of oil immersed in water).

They do bring up the point that people refer to “intelligent materials”, but I think the study does more to show the ridiculousness of that label rather than the actual intelligence of the slime mold. “Smart materials” or “responsive materials” would perhaps be better.