Smarts

C. elegans worm (right) escaping the predatory P. pacificus worm. Salk Institute

Intelligence is everywhere. From whales to worms to plants, smarts is a universal construct.

Depending on the animal, they have to make so many decisions. They choose where to go, what to eat, and whether to make a run for it or stand up to a predator. Even the tiniest, simplest worms make complex decisions, researchers have found.

They discovered that worms can consider many factors when choosing between two possible actions. The complicated process is surprising considering worms have only 302 neurons compared to about 86 billion in people.

“Humans are capable of considering many factors at once to make amazingly complex and rational decisions. But how much of this is uniquely human, and how much of this process can also be achieved with a much simpler nervous system?” first author Kathleen Quach, a postdoctoral fellow in Salk Institute’s Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, tells Treehugger.

“By understanding the kinds of decisions that a worm can make with only about 300 neurons, we can start to separate out which decisions require 100,000 neurons (fruit flies), 70 million neurons (mouse), or the 86 billion neurons humans have. In order to understand how intelligence emerges from increasingly intricate brains, we have to push the limit of what the simplest nervous systems can do.”

Read the entire Tree Hugger article to see how intelligence

is indeed an intrinsic part of life on earth.