(Video Link)
Two guys are trying to move a honey bee colony without any specialized equipment. One is calm and confident; the other is nervous and uncertain. Judging from the conversation, they've been in situations like this before:
“They’re not stinging you. Have you been stung yet?”
“You also said the skunk wouldn’t spray me either!”
-via Nerdcore
Comments (4)
Very cool - and from what I saw, pretty safe. I mean, *I* didn't want to do it...but still they are all so fixated on the queen, they don't sting.
One sting and it's pandemonium. I guess it is like the lion tamer. It's safe until they eat you.
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.
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?
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!
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Scientist