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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.
But there is no clear measurement or test that scientists can use, based on the behavior alone, to determine whether it reflects intelligence.
Some researchers, though, have found a systematic way of addressing the question and begun looking into it. This method involves focusing not so much on the behavior itself as the nuts and bolts behind it—a complex system of chemical “signals” that flit both within and among bacteria, helping them decide what to do and where to go.
Researchers have found that this process has similarities to a type of human-made machine designed to act as a sort of simplified brain. These devices solve some simple problems in a manner more human-like than machine-like.
The devices, called neural networks, also run on networks of signals akin to those of the bacteria. The devices use the networks to “learn” tasks such as distinguishing a male from a female in photographs—typical sorts of problems that are easy for humans but hard for traditional computers.
The similarities in the bacterial and neural network signaling systems are far more than superficial, wrote one researcher, Klaas J. Hellingwerf, in the April issue of the journal Trends in Microbiology. He found that the bacterial system contains all the important features that make neural networks work, leading to the idea that the bacteria have “a minimal form of intelligence.”
Bacterial signaling possesses all four of the key properties that neural network experts have identified as essential to make such devices work, Hellingwerf elaborated. The only weak link in the argument, he added, is that for one of those properties, it’s not clear whether bacteria exhibit it to a significant extent. This may be where future research should focus, he wrote.
Cooperation and altruism
The comparison of bacterial signaling with neural networks is not the only evidence that has nudged researchers closer to the concept that bacteria might possess a crude intelligence—though few scientists would go as far as to use that word.
One of the other lines of evidence is a simple examination of bacterial behavior.
This behavior is strikingly versatile, researchers have found in recent years; bacteria can cope with a remarkably wide range of situations by taking appropriate actions for each. For instance, the deadly Pseudomonas aeruginosa can make a living by infecting a wide variety of animal and plant tissues, each of which is a very different type of environment in which to live and find sustenance.
Furthermore, bacteria cooperate: they can group together to take on tasks that would be difficult or impossible for one to handle alone. In a textbook example, millions of individuals of the species Myxococcus xanthus can bunch up to form a “predatory” colony that moves and changes direction collectively toward possible food sources.
Some examples of bacterial cooperation have even led researchers to propose that bacteria exhibit a form of altruism. For instance, some strains of Escherichia coli commit suicide when infected by a virus, thereby protecting their bacterial neighbors from infection.
But until recently, few or no scientists had seriously suggested these behaviors reflected intelligence.
For instance, bacterial “altruism” may be a simple outcome of evolution that has nothing to do with concern for the welfare of others, wrote the University of Bonn’s Jan-Ulrich Kreft in last August’s issue of the research journal Current Biology. Thus he didn’t suggest that any process akin to thinking was at work.
But one commonality among all these behaviors is that they all operate as a result of signaling mechanisms like the ones studied by Hellingwerf.

Courtesy of www.mindpowernews.com