Ed. note: This is a repost from facebook. I’ll be reposting a few things to get this blog kicked off. Apologies to those who have already seen it! j.f.
Many of you know about my slightly (ok, entirely) unnatural slime mold obsession. They’re weird, cool-looking, and semi-sentient. And they’re even here in Colorado! I found three or four different species when on the Mycoblitz in August up at Rocky Mountain National Park. They’ve even been used as robot brains. (see http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8718)
A yellow slime mold at Olympic National Park.
Not bad for a giant crawling multinucleate bag of protoplasm. Well, here’s further proof of just how cool they are: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/071
Even slime molds can remember.
So how on Earth is a feat like this possible for an organism that’s never even heard of a neuron? I’ll leave that for us to ponder. . . because no one really knows.
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