The Paris Zoological Park is home to Physarum polycephalum, better known as "the blob," a unicellular organism capable of learning despite its lack of neurons.
Stephane De Sakutin/AFP via Getty Images
A brainless, bright-yellow organism that can solve mazes and heal itself is making its debut at a Paris zoo this weekend.
At least so far, "the blob" is more benevolent than the ravenous star of its 1950s sci-fi film classic namesake.
Time-lapsed videos of the blob show a slimy organism rapidly multiplying in size. How fast exactly? The blob can sprint about four centimeters per hour, according to the Paris Zoological Park
The blob is neither animal, nor plant. And although Physarum polycephalum — Latin for "many-headed slime" — is classified as a type of slime mold, scientists now consider the creature unrelated to fungi.
This species has been around for as many as 1 billion years, but its mysterious nature has attracted new fame thanks to the unveiling on Saturday of an exhibit dedicated to the single-cell organism at the Paris zoo.
Despite having no mouth or stomach, the blob can detect and digest food. Oats, in particular, are a blob delicacy. It also boasts more than 700 different sexual types, a reproductive strategy to prevent the organisms from mating with each other.
The slime mold, which lacks a nervous system, is capable of advanced decision-making, learning and long-term memory storage, according to Audrey Dussutour, who studies unicellular organisms with the French National Center for Scientific Research.
"It can find its way through a maze, it can construct efficient transport networks, sometimes better than us, actually," Dussutour said in an interview with NPR's Weekend Edition.
In one remarkable experiment published in Science, researchers in Japan found that a slime mold managed to configure itself into a near-replica of the meticulously designed Tokyo rail system when introduced with an oat-flake model of Tokyo and its surrounding metropolis.
Cut the blob into two, and it can regenerate itself within two minutes, according to the zoo.
Through fusion, two blobs with the same genetic makeup can merge into one organism, and share their respective knowledge.
Its enemies include light, drought, salt and caffeine. But, Dussutour said, "If you train a slime mold to ignore caffeine for example, it can transfer this knowledge to another clone."
The MonoRacer 130E Fully Enclosed Motorcycle Aims to Redefine Personal Mobility Elena Gorgan The idea of making something that would be halfway between a bicycle or motorcycle and a car is not new; after all, the advantages of such a vehicle would be many for a large segment of the market. In the Czech Republic, inventor, fabricator and full-time pilot Arnold Wagner has been making one such vehicle since the late ‘80s. Since 2009, with a new partner, he launched the PERAVES CZ company, and they’ve been putting out these cabin-motorcycles dubbed MonoRacer since then. They probably haven’t sold more than a couple of hundred of them (90 of which were made before the 2009 partnership), but that could change as early as this month. As it turns out, PERAVES CZ has made an electric version of the MonoRacer, called the MonoRacer 130E, and it is now in the process of receiving EU-certification. The MonoRacer 130E is an electric motorcycle with a fully enclosed cabi...
I would like to ask any of my Canadian friends what they think of Trudeau's response to the impending tariffs imposed on Canada by Trump. I mean, I hope most Canadians would be MORE outraged than to simply suggest......... to forgo Florida orange juice and Kentucky bourbon He said: “It might mean checking the labels at the supermarket and picking Canadian made products. It might mean opting for Canadian rye over Kentucky bourbon , or forgoing Florida orange juice altogether. “It might mean changing your summer vacation plans to stay here in Canada and explore the many national and provincial parks, historical sites and tourist destinations our great country has to offer.” https://www.newsbreak.com/the-independent-517119/3787648131075-trudeau-tells-canadians-to-forgo-florida-orange-juice-and-kentucky-bourbon-after-trump-s-aggressive-tariff Is this a joke? (I guess I will have to forgo Jack Daniels and I am sure that Trump will reverse the tariffs based...
Comments
Post a Comment