Can you guess what is the jelly-like creature in the video?
It's a living creature, but neither plant nor animal. It is not a fungi either.
Earlier this month, the Paris zoological gardens showed a Physarum Polycephalum better known as a "Blob," a unicellular organism neither plant, mushroom nor animal, capable of learning despite its lack of neurons./VCG Photo
This is slime mold, an astonishing organism that may remind you of the alien creature "Venom" who attaches itself to Tom Hardy in the sci-fi blockbuster movie. The slime mold doesn't live on humans or animals, so you are totally fine, but it's as cool as Venom: it can do many things without having neurons, eyes or brains.
Despite looking like moss, the creature is not a plant. It can grow, crawl and move. /VCG Photo
The slime mold is a category containing over 900 species. It can live as a single-cell organism, but it can also become a multicellular structure when gathering together, and can move as a whole body. When separated, they even find a way to "reunite."
The slimy yellow organism can be found in moist forests, dead trees, or even your garage if you fail to clean it regularly. /VCG Photo
Some slime molds appear to be a disgusting slimy "jelly", but some are pretty cute. Slide to take a look at some adorable slime molds:
The primitive organism does not have organs. But it is able to move around, change body shape, find food, detect chemical matters in the surroundings, and even learn.
The cute little creature is "smart." /VCG Photo
Scientists in Japan did an experiment: they grew slime mold in a flat wet dish, placing the mold in a central position representing Tokyo and oat flakes surrounding it corresponding to the locations of other major cities in the Greater Tokyo Area. As the slime mold avoids bright lights, light was used to simulate mountains, water and other obstacles in the dish. The mold first densely filled the space, and then thinned the network to focus on efficiently connected branches. The network strikingly resembled Tokyo's rail system, which was the shortest way to cover the whole area.
The slime mold can extend and cover a whole area, and shrink to find the shortest cut. /VCG Photo
This research won 2010 Ig Nobel prize. A few years later, a Hungarian team showed that slime mold was able to find the shortest way through a maze. Now, the slime mold is used in lab approximations of traffic network of many countries.
"I am not fish eggs!" /VCG Photo
How can the slime mold be so "smart" even without a brain? Scientists have different explanations but at least they agree on one thing: primitive intelligence has origins in the simplest cells.
(Cover image is a stillshot of the video)
(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at nature@cgtn.com.)