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Scientists Just Discovered the Secret Behind One of Nature’s Smartest Brainless Organisms

A yellow slime mold can solve mazes and find efficient routes without a brain, and researchers think they finally know how it does it.

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For a thing without a brain, there’s a particular type of slime mold out there that is especially intelligent. According to research detailed by ScienceAlert and published in PRX Life, the bright yellow slime mold Physarum polycephalum can solve mazes, remember routes, and consistently find efficient paths to food without anything even closely resembling a brain or nervous system.

It’s a real oddity. It behaves like something that has a brain that can make choices, and yet, it’s just a blob of goo. Maybe there’s some kind of hidden form of intelligence at work here? Or maybe we’re just projecting human ideas onto it, like how a random collection of objects........

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