Are You Smarter Than A Slime Mold?

Slime molds are intelligent, but they are single-celled creatures with no brains.
How is that possible?
↓ More info and sources below ↓

Many thanks to Prof. Andy Adamatzky (UWE Bristol) for slime mold culturing advice.

Special thanks to the following for providing Dictyostelium microscope footage:
Prof. John Bonner (Princeton)
Prof. David Knecht (Univ. of Connecticut)
Prof. Richard Firtel (UCSD)
Prof. Jeremy Pickett-Heaps (Univ. of Melbourne)

References/further reading:

Nakagaki, Toshiyuki. "Smart behavior of true slime mold in a labyrinth."Research in Microbiology 152.9 (2001): 767-770.
Nakagaki, Toshiyuki, Hiroyasu Yamada, and Masahiko Hara. "Smart network solutions in an amoeboid organism." Biophysical chemistry 107.1 (2004): 1-5.
Adamatzky, Andrew. Physarum machines: computers from slime mould. Vol. 74. World Scientific, 2010.

Have an idea for an episode or an amazing science question you want answered? Leave a comment or check us out at the links below!
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It’s Okay To Be Smart is written and hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
Follow me on Twitter: @jtotheizzoe

Music via APM

[TheEvilVargon]

Its okay slime mold, Its okay to be smart

[AnotherGradus]

A missed opportunity to have changed the opening-title animation into "It's Okay to be Slime Mold."

[mfaizsyahmi]

When you say "and as always" I automatically expected "thanks for watching."

[unvergebeneid]

Slime molds are pretty amazing creatures. I've talked to quite a few of them right here in the Youtube comments section and while etiquette isn't their strong suit, they successfully picked up on one to two hundred words of the English language and even managed to string them together in a fashion that resembles a grammar!

[KQEDDeepLook]

Thanks for the a-maze-ing collaboration! It was awesome to share these incredibly intelligent slime molds together.

[besmart]

Does a creature need a brain to be intelligent? Slime molds will make you think twice before you answer… they're pretty a-maze-ing!

[dougthedonkey]

“If the goo can do it, so can we”
Me and the boys forming together to create a spore-releasing stalk

[AmirSatim]

talks to friends: looses all 86 Billion Neurons in Brain

[sieyk]

Why do I want that yellow slime mold as a pet so badly...

[escs]

A damm slime can do a BFS....
Now that I'm thinking, Is there any fungi, slime, or mold that can solve the travelling salesman?

[AlanHowellphotovideo]

Just for reference, this is on par with the speed of learning as a quantum computer.
The very fact that it 'exhausted' certain nonproductive pathways and yet learned from it is just one of the remarkable parts of this demonstration. Considering this mold was only hours old, and in terms of speed and intelligence, let's see a human baby or other 'intelligent' life form solve this maze in literally just hours after their birth lol. There is a reason why fungi are the most successful organisms on the planet, going back over a billion years on this planet.

[EugeneKhutoryansky]

Very interesting information. Thanks.

[freesci]

I want to see a slime mold on a real big maze.

[lethanh]

*That moment when you realizes a slime is smarter than you*

[tvremote]

4:21 missed opportunity to get a rhyme: 'If the goo can do it, so can you' - I'm disappointed in this channel, unsubscribed.

[suhyeonpark]

Its okay to be smarter than a slime mold

[ZygardeHM]

When you are a slime mold cell and you run out of food
Slime: Ey homies time to die

[anarkyah]

this is such a "feel good" video and i love it, natural selection has been the cause of so many problems in our history bc of 'only the strong survive' that it's nice to see that nature also shows how to work together for the better. sadly sometimes, we choose what we want to believe, wether it real or not...

[vojtechjanku]

Overall, I really like this video, HOWEVER
2:02 this suggests that there is one (maybe somehow special) cell that starts the signal, and all the other cells group up around it. That is a centralized way of thinking - there is one cause that makes all the changes and it can be isolated. But the real world systems are often decentralized - there is no one cause, the order rises from interactions between many (same) parts and resulting feedback loops.
I know a bit about this because I'm taking a class about simulating complex systems, and the slime mold coming together was an example of a decentralized system.

[ThePhantomSafetyPin]

I've had the privilege of working with Dictyostelium, they're amazing, cool little guys. I think humans can learn a lot from the tiny things that ooze collectively through the cracks at our feet.