More than ten years ago, the Japanese scientist Toshuki Nakagaki spent interesting experiment. In his laboratory at Hokkaido University he built a small maze similar to those where they run rodents to test memory and the beginnings of intelligence. At the entrance to the labyrinth professor placed a small piece of ordinary mold mushroom, and the output is a cube of refined sugar. In vivo mushrooms grow around a round and symmetrical network cobwebs, however, the fungus Physarum polycephalum led yourself is very strange. 
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Smelling sugar from afar, he decided to feast on prey and sprouted its sprouts through the maze. At every intersection fungus cobwebs bifurcated, filling the space the labyrinth. Those of the processes that fell into a dead end returned back and searched for a path in another direction. 4 hours later mushroom cobwebs filled all the passages of the maze, and through for several hours one of them found the way to sugar. On the second At the stage of the experiment, the scientist pinched a tiny piece of the cobweb from the fungus that participated in the experiment and placed it at the beginning a similar labyrinth with a cube of sugar at the exit.
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Immediately after the start of the experiment, miracles began. Spider web instantly launched two processes that began to grow rapidly: the first paved the perfect path without a single extra turn to sugar, and the second just climbed the wall of the maze and crossed him in a straight line along the ceiling, not wasting time wandering to goals. The experiment was repeated many times, different labyrinths, but the result was always phenomenally the same. Mushrooms not just remember the shortest way to achieve the goal on instinct level – they made informed choices, non-trivial way to solve the problem. And it seems to me that this testifies to special intellectual abilities representatives of the mushroom kingdom. In due time this experiment brought a lot of rustle in the scientific world. His results were published in Authoritative publications, including the journal Nature.
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But Professor Toshuki is not going to stop at achieved. About a year ago, he proved that mushrooms are capable of plan roads and transport routes much more efficiently professional engineers. Scientist put pieces on a map of Japan food, marking in this way the major cities of the country. To the capital Mushrooms were planted in Japan that recreated in less than a day an exact copy of the railway network around Tokyo. Professor not ceases to praise the intelligence of mushrooms, explaining what to connect a few dozen points between them is not very difficult, but to combine them efficiently and most economically is very difficult. By no less mushrooms coped with the task perfectly, and not only on the map of Japan.
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Later, similar experiments were conducted on maps of Spain and England. This time, scientists got the exact models of networks. highways that in some cases contained extensions and recent changes due to suboptimal initial planning. Today, Professor Toshuki continues work with mushrooms and learn their amazing intelligence. In his Hokkaido University labs he is trying to transfer amazing ability of mushrooms to a computer model. Scientist believes that the results of his next experiment will help in the future Build efficient and fast information networks.
Mushrooms Time Japan
