Science has again approached a question that sounds almost mocking: is a brain even needed to be intelligent?
At the center of the dispute is the slime mold Physarum polycephalum — a bright yellow organism that has neither a brain, nor a nervous system, nor neurons.
But it can do things that look suspiciously meaningful.
The slime mold is capable of finding short paths through mazes, laying efficient networks between food sources, and avoiding places it has already visited.
Even more interesting is its "memory." When Physarum crawls across a surface, it leaves behind a thin trail of slime and then tries not to return there again. It turns out that part of the information about its own route is stored literally outside itself.
And here is where the most interesting part among scientists begins.
Some believe that the words "thinking" and "intelligence" are too strong here. The slime mold simply reacts to chemical and physical signals, and complex behavior does not yet mean the presence of a mind.
Others object: if an organism can receive information, change behavior based on past experience, and find effective solutions to problems, why not consider it at least the simplest form of intelligence?
In 2026, new experiments with mazes again fueled the debate. Researchers tested whether the slime mold truly has short-term spatial memory. The results were ambiguous, so there is no final answer yet.
That is why the story published on 8 September 2026aroused such interest: the dispute is now not so much about the slime mold as about the very definition of the word "mind".
Meanwhile, the situation turns out to be rather humiliating for humanity:
the slime mold has no brain, yet it still navigates the maze. 😄
