Can Our Genius Slime Mold Smell?

After we showed our genius slime mold solving a maze, people wondered if it was smelling it's way through the maze to the oats, so we put it to the test!

[ManaGoober]

everyone gangsta till jerry breaks out and starts a new dominant species

[yxjou]

Jerry knew where the oat flakes are. He is just pretending in order for you guys to let your guards down.

[ApofisRaxionNecros]

The phrase “a sample of Jerry” is surprisingly unnerving.

[Dallas_SilverStar]

Jerry after becoming a super organism: "I'll spare you father, giver of oats."

[sledgedragon]

Jerry uses the process of elimination to find food in the mazes. He kind of works like a missle. He knows where he is because he knows where he isn't.

[eleanor]

For those curious, Physarum Polycephalum's is the result of something you can think of as "spatial memory". It grows out in every direction, and if it doesn't find food in a spot it covers the spot in a chemical that tells the slime mold not to grow there again. By marking all areas without food, the organism is able to efficiently map itself in the best way to get what food is there

[jay-tlun]

Notice Jerry "reaches" all around him in a very dense pattern after finding an oat.
I'm guessing after Jerry finds an oat he uses that extra energy to search the immediate area in case there's more of that food close by, then after he cant find anything more, begins his long range journey once again.

[yusranayab]

Maybe Jerry can't grow over the walls that are in the maze and simply grows around them to look for a clear path without the wall. It didn't exactly solve the maze because it's movement were quite haphazard as if it was looking for a way where there wasn't a wall that it would not be able to grow over, a behavioural pattern which you confused with it trying to "solve" the maze. It didn't "solve" the maze, it was simply looking for a way not blocked by a wall and hindering it's path like an obstacle, which is why it grew wherever it found space to grow without any obstacle (wall) blocking it's way.

[yeezusthewise]

“The weakest stand I’ve ever encountered had to be ‘Survivor’.”

[Da_Demon-tqyh]

“Hey, what pet do you have?”
“Oh I have a dog, you?”
“Oh I have an Amoeba”
“wtf”

[PurpleShadowRizzard]

Jerry seems like the kind of guy who will show his kind creators benevolence when he inevitably becomes intelligent and takes over

[Autonomous_Don]

“Look we said everything is conscious we didn’t say everything was intelligent”
-Hermetics

[ohwow]

Bro just single-handedly put the world into an apocalyptic threat named Jerry 💀

[irinaluchianova]

jerry has more braincells than the entire twitter community

Edit: I just found out that old comment and I'm dying rolling

[NiffirgkcaJ]

It's kind of funny to see people be very confident about their wrong answers. 😹

[denvernow]

Venom: "Where's that damn cereal!"

[demeter-the-great]

*To anyone wondering how Jerry does this:* Jerry knows where he is by knowing where he isn’t. By subtracting where he is from where he isn't, or where he isn't from where he is (whichever is greater), he obtains a difference, or deviation. His sensory subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive Jerry from a position where he is to a position where he isn't, and arriving at a position where he wasn't, he now is. Consequently, the position where he is, is now the position where he wasn't, and it follows that the position where he was, is now the position where he isn't.

[justamanofculture]

"Sometimes to confuse the enemy, one must confuse themselves first."

*Art of War - Confused Sun Tzu*

[Cibbic]

"Sup, my name is Qvuielahutriyupijunioplatas but you can call me Jerry".

[Me-wxmt]

He could probably feel his way through using the walls, if you are paying attention you can see another part of jerry goes through a completely different part of the maze on the other side, so I think that might’ve just been luck