Comment by zyxzevn | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by zyxzevn | Hacker News Reader

There are some studies that show that Bacteria also have memories. This shows that the memory can also be stored in other places than neurons.

Some examples:

Bacteria can pass on memory to descendants, researchers discover https://phys.org/news/2018-04-bacteria-memory-descendants.ht...

Collective memory discovered in bacteria https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160307153047.h...

Bacteria become “genomic tape recorders” https://news.mit.edu/2014/bacteria-storage-device-memory-111...

And slime mold (TED talk) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UxGrde1NDA

Two things are interesting about this to me:

First, the fact that bacteria can have memory!!

Second, the fact that this surprises me. Trivially, even for a single cell animal, it is not shocking that it might gain some survival advantage from having a memory of sorts, and that is really not a high bar to jump over in terms of required infrastructure. Almost any sort of very simple memory could be used advantageously.

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