At Mind Matters News: One-celled life form uses early “computer” to stand in for brain

Researchers found that that’s how Euplotes eurystomus controls “legs” in a sort of walking pattern

One unexpected thing that the computer has done is given us some insight into how life forms that are utterly different from ourselves manage to do things. For example, there is an analogy between the way ants think and computer programming. That helps us understand how an anthill can be organized in a very complex way without any individual ant ever seeing the big picture — or needing to.

In the same way, a single-celled organism uses an “internal ‘computer’” to walk without needing a brain

(And it is all supposed to have happened with no intelligence or design.)

Takehome: The researchers suspect that other single-celled life forms also use something roughly like early computing methods as an alternative to a brain.

You may also wish to read: The intelligence birds and bees naturally have — and we don’t. An exploration of the stunning findings in Eric Cassell’s new book, “Animal Algorithms.” Cassell observes that it would take deep thought and sophisticated design techniques to build a robot to accomplish what the bees, ants and termites can do.

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