How This Blob Solves Mazes | WIRED 

That would be the most terrifying thing on Earth if it moved that fast in real-time...

Professor Pringle is a very engaging speaker.

It's not an animal. It's not a fungus. It's not a plant. We have found an alien. They are here...

It looks like a Mustard stain

It looks like a circulatory system without a body.

Amazing. This crazy weird world we live in with its alien like species.

so it's basically a real life Djikstra algorithm ... cool

What if the brain is just an evolved slime mold consumed by early primates?

Absolutely fascinating!!! Thank you for putting up videos on these off-the-beaten-path topics :)

6:55 “I love my husband very much but [...] we did not fuse into a single body.” ...I mean, don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, amirite?

I go here because my friend have a slime mold on their house right now, it's so interesting.

This reminds me of the intro sequence of the The Last Of Us!

This is a really good analogy for finding what to do for your life. It's not a straight line for everyone. Sometimes you need to try all avenues you can. Some paths don't lead anywhere but it's okay. Because you're still searching. And sooner or later you will find it.... Yeah... Be like slime

It's so called 'maze solving abilities' have been known for a long time. I don't know why it's suddenly arrived at the publics attention.

Wow. Seriously fascinating. Great job, WIRED

I love that Wired is making videos about topics like these, fascinating! Also, how environmentally friendly and efficient not to fly out to the people you interview but just Skype - it works fine and I imagine it leaves editors with more time to develop other interesting stories.

Wow.. Quaker Oats.. seems I may have more in common with this organism than at first glance.

So the pretty intelligent slime molds can now run advertisement campaigns for Quaker oats.

LOL one of my suggested videos was "molly and carla make perfect mashed potatoes" on bon appetit. I was coming to make a thoughtful comment about this fascinating video, but then i forgot when I saw those yellow mashed potatoes.

If you could get the cells to generate an electrical signal and connect it to a system could it 'become' an AI and 'learn'

Anyone else think this would be an amazing horror concept for a movie or video game?

This is a blob that solves mazes according to Doctor Pringle. Thank you, Internet. Never change.

I have a slime mold in my yard! I love it! I will name it. I'm going to take a picture of it everyday.

Ma'am. Thank you for this information. Cells operate through survival. It'll be cool to learn that everything started as a blob and then progressed to multicellular as food sources increased.

Fun fact; it prefers a branded American oat rather than organic oats.

6:00 It just sounds like she describes quantum mechanics. Like in the double-slit-experiment when the quantum particle (e.g. light) goes through every possible way and than chooses the best one with the highest possibility. I find this very interesting to compare it as two models. Who else?

This is the beginning of the last of us that is. We all dead man walking

"we dont know quite a lot" LOL, yup

The Creeping Garden is a documentary about these creatures. It’s very interesting and very boring at different times, but overall worth a watch if you’re “into” this subject.

*The Last of Us theme plays*

All I can think of is that blob at the end of prometheus that eats the engineer

Bruh y’all scientists copied the last of us intro credits SMH

Ive always wanted to see Physarum Polycephalum (the blob) in real life!

You can get slime molds in your yard if its been raining a lot. Sometimes it looks like puke, but you poke it, and the inside is black and crumbly.

It looks like a primitive stage of the substance the Zerg build their structures on...well played, Zerg. Well played.

The slime is the way the gods communicate with us

Me watching videos while I’m waiting for my plasmodium to get here:

Good now just engineer the blob to eat plastic. Problem solved

I've seen many of these yellow blobs in my grandparents' house

Is that *_Rimuru Tempest_*

Mom : Oats is healthy for you. Slime mould : hold my beer.

As a programmer its cool to see A* in nature lmao

I love mycology. But I just can't get past that dude, his lack of charisma and his hair.

Not related but I really love her sweater

I've had slim mold growing in my mulch!!! I didn't realize I had such an amazing creature living next to me!

Great interview.

It's venom!

I think it uses its arms to seek where it gets the most energy. Then as an energy saving mechanism it consumes it own arms, and repurposes that energy to seek the more nutrient rich zones. I also think that it uses chemical sense as it’s main way of understanding what’s around it. I want to study this more.

It's actually a city with tiny people living inside.

Optimal path identified when connection to the destination is made.

So basically it uses bruteforce.

physarum polycephalum is my favorite creature. i love them so much, they're so cool. 720 sexes, such a fascinating cool life cycle, they're just awesome

Tem tradução em português? Muito interessante Se em português enviar para acadêmicos

We are PHYSARUM! may be it's venom? xD just kidding

It solves the maze by the brute force method?

What is this blob? THE BLOB IS A SLIME MOLD...

6:20 that's very diplomatic

A symbiote

I imagine quantum computing working in a similar way to how fungi explore a maze.

If only it was red, it could be the Red Weed of 'War of The Worlds'.

Replaying Last of Us and this comes across my feed... Good job, algorithm.

This is literally an scp

Me and the boys when its level 5 biohazard abord the station

Clearly a superior being. "Don't blame me; I voted for [slime mold]!"

The blob is smarter than me

My guy needs new hair.

Their bodies didn't fuse, but their souls fused... Marriage...

It looks like the world's most amazing booger!!!!

That's just Yellow Venom with reduced steps

Fascinating. Where can I eat them?

Quaker oats! Uhoh, I think I'm a slime mold

The information it’s passing through expansion & contraction could be calcium. Could someone elaborate in more detail. I’m very interested !

What's with these skype interviews. Same format all the time.

Let’s alter it genetically and teach it war so we can have fungi death matches. Set two dishes in a maze and let them find each other and consume each other. Then let’s inject it into things let’s get umbrella with it yea let’s start the foundation and bring in some D class. YEA!!! Sorry my gamer brain is a little excited

Probably shouldn't have watched this while eating peanut butter.

How long will it live?

It looks like the clearish stuff the squirts out of the mustard bottle first *mustard precum*

She is so happy talking about it it makes me happy

5:45 But isnt this what we are doing? Our brains learn how to create paths for how to do things, right? When we search space with our eyes, we are mapping all the possible solutions and then we decide to go act after these processes are done, unless we do things on automatic -- which is learned behavior.

Its a *fusion*! I didn't know it was a real thing!

this is basically bfs pathfinding. that's awesome

The fact that I knew what this was (I go to a specialized STEM school and some kid did a project on it and I had to review it) it’s fun to actually know what someone’s talking about while watching videos.

Isn't this the thing used in the last of us?

Physarum solves mazes the same way I solve Rubic's cubes; take it apart and put it back together solved!

Does Physarum have predators? Defences?

This mans hairline tho

Yo i have my friend here meet my no brain but intelligent fungus which I feed him different kind of nutrients wirh oats.

Now give it eyes

*considers studying slime molds*

I need this blob to solve my issue with life direction.

Organisms like this make us question the fundamentals of science, including our fundamental understanding of how the world operates. We can't really categorize since it's too diverse. Creepy

When it comes to the maze . It READS THE ENTIRE MAZE /// THAN CHOOSES THE SHORTEST ROUTE . IT HAS SIGNS OF INTELLIGENCE . WHY WOULD IT CHOOSE THE SHORTEST ROUTE ??? .IS IT GOING STRAIGHT FOR FOOD / ENERGY / SUSTANANCE ???? IMAGINE USING YOU THIRD EYE . YOU HAVE TO FEEL YOUR WAY THROUGH YOUR WORLD BECAUSE YOUR BLIND . THE QUICJEST WAY TO GET THE MOST INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR SURRONDINGS IS TO FEEL THE ENTIRE AREA THAT YOU ARE IN / LETS SAY ENTIRE ROOM FOR THIS EXPERIMENT . NOW THAT YOU HAVE A COMPLETE INVENTORY / READ OUT OF YOUR SURRONDINGS /// YOUR THIRD EYE KNOWS THAT SAY TENTACLE 22 IS TOUCHING FOOD AND TENTACLE 67 IS TOUCHING WATER WHILE TENTACLE 14 IS EXPERIENCEING SUN LIGHT OR AIR , WIND , BREEZE . NOW ALL OTHER TENTACLES THAT ARE NOT TOUCHING ANYTHING THATS OF INTEREST WILL STOP RECIEVING ENERGY AND THAT ENERGY WILL BE REDIRECTED TO THE TENTACLES THAT ARE EXPERIENCING THE GOOD STUFF. AND NOW YOU KNOW HOW IT DETERMINES WERE TO GO AND WHERE NOT TO AND IT CAN ONLY DO THIS BY FIRST TOUCHING EVERYTHING TO GET A READ OUT / A MENTAL PICTURE IF YOU MAY / BUT I DONT KNOW HOW YOU WOULD CLASSIFY THIS AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN AN ALIEN THAT COULD POSSIBLY EVOLVE UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS AND TAKE HUMANS OUT OF THE GAME...........😎

The blob is smarter than me smh

can i use the video for my short film?

You call this amazing? The slime grew, spread out and ran into the food. If you spilled a quart of water or mercury at the same starting point, it would also "Find" the food. Get over yourself.

That was nice of you to introduce us to your cologist, Matt.

Thought of a blob out of the blue brought me here. Cool! 🤘🏼

Everything in nature will be found in something else ware. A mushroom that tastes like sea food. A plant that looks like a bug. Or a bird or a monkey. That is what it looks like.

I have one of these growing in my worm bin. It looks like it is the same species as this.

This is not so much as "solving" as it is "brute force"... similar to how some AI algos use brute force, then reinforce positive outcomes...