Pour nos amis végétariens, une information réjouissante : les amibes - être unicellulaires - sont capables de résoudre des problèmes complexes. En effet, un chercheur japonais à démontrer que des amibes étaient capables de trouver le moyen de sortir d'un labyrinthe.
Les amibes de mes amibes étant mes amibes, il est on ne peut plus cruel de sacrifier - en les mangeants - tous ces merveilleux être unicellulaires qui pourtant pullulent dans l'environnement et dans la nourriture (surtout les végétaux, encore plus les végétaux fermentés), et dont l'intelligence suppose une sensibilité hors du commun.
Reste donc à sucer des cailloux
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Japan Times - Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008
Japanese win Ig Nobel for amoeba study
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Kyodo) A group of Japanese researchers were among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel Prize for oddball science Thursday for discovering that a unicellular amoeboid organism can work out the shortest distance in a maze.
Wacky science: Ig Nobel Prize winners (from left) Atsushi Tero, a researcher at the Japan Science and Technology Agency, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, associate professor at Hokkaido University, and professor Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, receive the prize for cognitive science at Harvard University in Massachusetts on Thursday. KYODO PHOTO
Toshiyuki Nakagaki, associate professor at Hokkaido University, professor Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, and Atsushi Tero, a researcher at the Japan Science and Technology Agency, were among the six joint winners of the prize in the cognitive science category.
The Ig Nobel prizes, awarded in 10 categories, are given annually by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research as a humorous version of the real Nobel Prizes.
The researchers' study was recognized for finding that despite having no brain or nerves, the organism, Physarum polycephalum, can compute the shortest route in a maze — something even humans have a hard time accomplishing.
At a ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre, Nakagaki expressed his thanks for the award, saying that despite conventional wisdom, the unicellular organism is actually smarter than people thought.
Through the study, Nakagaki's group found that when placed in a square maze 3 cm wide, the organism clogs every path by extending itself across. But once food is put at the maze's entrance and exit, it connects the two points in the shortest possible distance.