Science Friday, HHMI/Tangled Bank Studios

If you're aiming to glean insights on how animals retain and use knowledge, you might think staring at a pulsating yellow splat on a dead log isn’t very productive. These are slime molds, often avoided amorphous, brainless blobs. The single-celled organisms that ooze around forest detritus lack a nervous system—and don’t even have a centralized brain! Yet, for biologist Audrey Dussutour, researching primitive slimes has led to surprising discoveries about the evolution of learning and collective behavior that she's been pondering her whole life.

After devoting much of her higher education towards understanding the collective decisions of ants, she was asked to adapt her research to slime molds. Her initial findings showed that despite lacking centralized coordination, the molds optimized their energy and movement to pursue the most nutritious foods—far better than ants and humans. This preternatural behavior was all it took for Dussutour to become consumed by the mold.