More than ten years ago, Japanese scientist Toshuki Nakagaki conducted an interesting experiment. In his laboratory at Hokkaido University, he built a small labyrinth, similar to those where rodents are sent to test memory and the rudiments of intelligence.
At the entrance to the labyrinth, the professor placed a small piece of ordinary mold, and at the exit - a cube of refined sugar. Under natural conditions, fungi grow around a circular and symmetrical web of cobwebs, but Physarum polycephalum has behaved very strangely.
Smelling the smell of sugar from afar, he decided to feast on the prey and sprouted his sprouts through the maze. At each intersection, the spider webs of the fungus bifurcated, filling the space of the labyrinth. Those of the appendages that fell into a dead end returned back and found a way in a different direction.
After 4 hours, mushroom cobwebs filled all the passages of the labyrinth, and a few hours later one of them found the way to sugar. In the second stage of the experiment, the scientist pinched off a tiny piece of cobweb from the mushroom that participated in the experiment, and placed it at the beginning of a similar maze with a sugar cube at the exit.
Miracles began immediately after the experiment began. The cobweb instantly launched two branches, which began to grow rapidly: the first paved the perfect path without a single extra turn to sugar, and the second simply climbed the wall of the maze and crossed it in a straight line along the ceiling, wasting no time wandering towards the goal.
The experiment was repeated many times, different mazes were used, but the result was always phenomenally the same. Mushrooms not only memorized the shortest way to achieve the goal at the level of instincts - they made an informed choice, solved the task in a non-trivial way.
And it seems to me that this testifies to the special intellectual abilities of the representatives of the mushroom kingdom. At one time, this experiment made a lot of noise in the scientific world. His results have been published in reputable publications, including the journal "Nature".
But Professor Toshuki is not going to stop there. About a year ago, he proved that mushrooms can plan roads and transport routes much more efficiently than professional engineers.
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The scientist placed pieces of food on the map of Japan, thus marking the country's major cities. Mushrooms were planted in the capital of Japan, which in less than a day recreated an exact copy of the railway network around Tokyo.
The professor never ceases to praise the intelligence of mushrooms, explaining that connecting several dozen points with each other is not very difficult, but connecting them efficiently and most economically is very difficult. Nevertheless, the mushrooms coped with the task perfectly, and not only on the map of Japan.
Later, similar experiments were carried out on maps of Spain and England. This time, the scientists produced accurate models of the highway network, which in some cases contained extensions and changes made recently due to sub-optimal initial planning.
Today, Professor Toshuki continues to work with mushrooms and learn about their amazing intelligence. In his laboratory at Hokkaido University, he is trying to transfer the amazing abilities of mushrooms to a computer model. The scientist believes that the results of his next experiment will help build efficient and fast information networks in the future.