When I was little I would get indignant when the distinction was made between “people” and “animals.” I would pout and start talking taxonomy, informing some puzzled companion that actually, people are animals. When I read papers on intelligence and memory in slime molds last year, I was reminded of my childhood crusade to unite the animal kingdom. We share a common ancestry with slime molds as we do plants and animals. I began reading about emergence theory, and wondered if there wasn’t something to be learned about human intelligence from slime mold intelligence. Research suggested that the intelligence of slime molds was emergent arising from interactions among many simple and unintelligent components. I wondered, might studying the emergent mechanisms of memory and pattern recognition in slime molds elucidate the emergence of intelligence from repeated synapses in the human brain? … I have taken amazing lecture classes, but research clarified my interest unlike any class has. I have learned in class about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the life cycles of stars, the hardly explicable formation of embryo from cell, and been awestruck. But research taught me about myself. My own fears, habits, abilities, and potential were thrown into relief in a new way. It astonished me that I could create new understand with an idea, some single-celled organisms, and a crate of petri dishes. There is nothing I would rather do …

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• Biology