What slime mold and online shoppers have in common

Slime mold, ants, and Amazon's product recommendation system may be making decisions the exact same way, according to a new study. To come to this conclusion, Bernd Meyer and his team studied the behavior of slime mold--which is not a plant, fungus, or animal, but a loosely organized network of individual cells--and stuck it in a maze. Both pathways led to oat flakes, which is apparently slime mold's favorite snack, but one of the paths was dark and the other was filled with a bright blinking light, which mold hates. The slime mold did the most sensible thing it could: have its cake and eat it, too. Or rather, have its oat flakes and recoil from the light. Paradoxically, the slime mold seemed to perform its tasks better with the interference.