Intelligent Bacteria?

Special to World Science

Bacteria are by far the simplest things alive, at least among things generally agreed on as being alive. Next to one of these single-celled beings, one cell of our bodies looks about as complex as a human does compared to a sponge.

A colony of Paenibacillus dendritiformis bacteria, which some researchers say can organize themselves into different types of extravagant formations to maximize food intake for given conditions. According to some, this reflects a bacterial intelligence. (Courtesy Eshel Ben-Jacob, Tel Aviv University, Israel)

Yet the humble microbes may have a rudimentary form of intelligence, some researchers have found.

The claims seem to come as a final exclamation point to a long series of increasingly surprising findings of sophistication among the microbes, including apparent cases of cooperation and even altruism.

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