Imagine that you cannot see or hear and have no sense of smell, taste or touch. Imagine that you have no arms or legs or mouth. Imagine that you have no brain. How would you find food? How would you survive?
On his blog, Matt Russell tells the story of how bacteria manage to survive and thrive despite not having any of the basic tools that we would consider essential for living. It’s a story of survival against the odds that can perhaps teach us something about ourselves.
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SelfAwarePatterns 
Thanks ‘SAP’, I did a little reading on the subject a while back after watching the Bonnie Bassler TED Talk – pretty amazing.
More microscopic amazingness:
‘Amoeba agriculture’
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/29468/title/Amoeba-agriculture/
‘Amoebic Morality’
http://www.damninteresting.com/amoebic-morality/
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Thanks amanimal. The second one, which I just tweeted, was fascinating. Is amoeba morality any less moral because it’s more obviously mechanistic?
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Here are the details:
‘The cooperative amoeba: Dictyostelium as a model for social evolution’, Li/Purugganan 2011
Click to access Li_2011_TrendsGenetics.pdf
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Thanks! As always, I’m amazed by how much information you’re able to find out there.
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Wow, fascinating. I didn’t know such complex behaviour could occur. And thank you for the reblog, Mike!
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