This ball of slime is so smart, it is always learning new things

This photo from the documentary film The Creeping Garden shows a mysterious plasmodial slime mold. A new study finds that slime molds seem to exhibit a form of learning. Photo: 108 Media

You don’t need a brain to learn something new – not if you’re a slime mould, anyway.

Scientists who watched Physarum polycephalum search for food found that the slime mould could learn to ignore certain chemical threats.