You Don’t Need a Brain to Learn

Researchers at Toulouse University have found out through research that slime moulds, some of the most basic single celled organisms on the planet, have the ability to learn new material, remember it, and most astonishingly, pass that information on.

Slime moulds exist as single cells, but can also fuse with other slime mould cells to create a large single celled mass, but containing multiple nuclei. The scientists carrying out the research found that slime moulds could learn specific routes from A to B, and then when conglomerating with other moulds, they could pass on that information, and the daughter super-cell could use that information to follow the same route at the same speed.

This is incredibly fascinating, and should certainly interest any students applying for Biological Sciences or Natural Sciences (B). Archaeology and Anthropology students will have to study the perspectives on human evolution, and this article is a great insight into how single celled organisms may have started the process into evolving into more complex organisms.