Can you spread yourself from one end of a maze to the other? Carrie Straight 05.25.01 Have you ever heard of a rat being able to run a maze? Well, have you heard of a single-celled organism being able to run a maze? Do you think a little cell could have enough intelligence to find the shortest route through a maze? Some scientists wanted to test whether a single-celled organism could find the shortest route through a maze. They selected the plasmodium of a slime mold (Physarum polycephalum) to test. The plasmodium is a life cycle stage of the mold that is amoeboid (this means that it looks like a one-celled organism that has parts of its body that can extend to help it move and reach food) in structure. The scientists created a very small maze with four different routes available from one food source to another. The scientists measured the total length of each route between the food. Systematic observations revealed that this single-celled organism probed all available routes, and then chose the shortest available route between the two food sources. The amoeboid spread itself between the food sources in the shortest route. This “intelligence” might help this species survive by using the least amount of energy to find food. Nakagaki, Toshiyuki, Hiroyasu Yamada, and Ágota Tóth. 2000. Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism. Nature 407: 470. ©2001 The Aurora Collection, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Site Development by: Interactive Multimedia. Inc.