When I was a kid (that was a long time ago), there was a program on television called Westinghouse Theatre, at least I believe that was the name of it. I liked to look at it, it sometimes ran interesting stories of all different types. On one particular day, it had a story about an inventor. The man had just invented a machine that caused him all sorts of stress. You see, his machine could measure feeling in things that we believe have none. For example, when people were chopping down a tree, the machine would register that the tree was experiencing extreme pain. Rocks that were dropped or thrown would also feel pain, as would insects, worms and almost anything else. Once he found out about this, he became very upset with people that were hurting these things, to the point that I believe he was locked up in a mental institution. So why do I tell you about this old story? Could it be because there just might be a grain of truth in it? I will let you decide that after hearing about the next thing that I am about to discuss.

Science seems to love mazes. Some scientist is always putting some sort of animal or insect into one, to see if they can find their way out. They claim that this is sort of an IQ test for lower life forms. While I don't necessarily believe that this is true, because if there is food at the end of the maze the animal or insect may be able to smell it or sense it in some way and this might guide their moves. Anyway scientists put a one celled animal in a maze. What, you think that this sounds crazy? How could a one celled animal known as a slime mold solve anything? Ah ha, herein lies the tale. A slime mold is known as a Ameboid. It is made of materials known as protoplasm. It has no nervous system, no eyes or legs, but can move. One has to wonder what possessed these scientists, to even try this? Well they did it and the tiny animal responded by finding it's way around the maze. Here is something that most of us hardly even consider as being a life form, after all it is one of the most rudimentary ones on the planet. Now hold on to your hat, not only can it negotiate the maze, but it takes the shortest route around.

This brings up a serious question. Is this single celled animal intelligent? Webster's Online Dictionary describes intelligence in the following way, " the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : reason; also : the skilled use of reason (2): the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)" If we read this definition, we can see that the slime mold has learned. It has learned how to navigate a maze. Is this really true, or could the mold have some sort of sensory perception that allows it to conceive of a straight line to it's food and then navigate by following the strongest scent? Even if it did that, would this account for it being able to navigate a maze? It is kind of scary to think that such a lowly form of life can understand anything. Does this mean that it can feel pain? There are just so many questions that are raised by this discovery. Survival of all organisms is considered their primary function and as such, it is expected that any organisms will demonstrate efforts to save itself. An example of this might be to try and move away from fire. This is almost considered a reaction, rather than a refined thought process. Getting through a maze is a whole other thing however.

I can not help but be fascinated and surprised that such a creature is capable of anything that requires planning and it seems that some planning is required to get through something like a maze. Imagine how hard it would be for a human to accomplish this task if they were blind and couldn't walk. Maybe the human would fail at the task? Does this mean that a slime mold is smarter than a human? I think that I have gone too far with this analogy, but I think you can see what I am getting at and that is that this testing may not mean as much as we think. Obviously a human will always be smarter than a slime mold, even if it can't compete in the maze. So does that mean that these tests are not valid? Not at all. The test give us insight into things that we have never thought about. Imagine how much smarter an ant is than our friend the slime mold. It is a social creature and cooperates with others of it's kind and even gives up it's life for the betterment of the kingdom. or I should say queendom. The ant will try and save itself from danger, but will also die for the good of the other ants.

Could it be that all biological life, no matter how simple, has some intelligence. Wow wouldn't that be some discovery? The scientist that discovered that the slime mold could navigate a maze has stated that, "Clearly, there must be reasons for these systems having survived over all that time, and I believe that the study of these survival mechanisms is a central issue to the science of biology". I believe that his reasoning is that if a creature didn't have some intelligence, that it would have died out. If I am wrong about this, I will be more than glad to make the correction to this article. He believes that the abilities of a creature contribute to it's ability to survive. It begs the question though, how does a creature without a nervous system have a thought process or does it? Is the slime mold self aware? It is thought that it is not and is operating on an unconscious level. It is doing a pretty good job of it, if that is the case. The Scientist goes on to ask the question, if a human is in an unconscious state such as a coma, does that mean that he or she is not intelligent at that moment?

This is an interesting question and one that has been asked in a different way for many years. It is usually asked when people wonder if a person in a coma can really hear them when they talk. This is much the same question, because it queries if their consciousness is still operating at some level that we just can't understand. Maybe studying the slime mode in depth might lead to better understanding of some conditions that are experienced by our bodies, such as the coma mentioned above. By the way, slime mold is a general term and refers to six different groups of Eukayotes. It is beginning to look like we should be studying all biological forms and ignore any preconceived notions that we have about them. If we do this, who knows what we might find out?