Paris Zoo’s Mysterious Brainless Blob Learns and Eats Oatmeal. Slime molds are among the world’s strangest organisms. They move, eat, and somehow they learn and remember all without a brain. They are classed as a type of amoeba. As single-celled organisms, they have neither neurons nor brains. Plasmodial slime molds always live as one huge cell containing thousands of nuclei. Mysteriously, they learn about their environments and adjust their behavior accordingly. These bizarre creatures have surprised and puzzled scientists for decades. Physarum polycephalum is a yellow-hued slime mold, a group of organisms that are not, in spite of their name, fungi. Slime molds also aren’t animals, nor are they plants. Experts classify them as a protist, in this case, a single-celled organism with millions of nuclei that creeps along forest floors in search of bacteria, fungal spores and other microbes. It can detect and digest these substances, but it doesn’t have a mouth or stomach. The Paris Zoological Park grew its organism in petri dishes and fed it oatmeal, which it seemed to like. Zoo staff have dubbed it the “blob.”
It is a biological conundrum—and a wonder. More: https://bit.ly/2BqtIY0
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