HOW CAN SINGLE CELLS BE SMART LIVELY ANIMALS?
Get a cheap microscope and some paramecia from a long-lasting mud puddle. Watch their antics. They nose around in the detrius looking for food. They seem to display the low-level intelligence of insects, brine shrimp, or even a mouse or hamster. Yet they have no nervous system! What the hell. How can they do what they do? Something at the subcellular level must take the place of fast-acting muscles. And something else must serve as a nerve network which lets the blob of protoplasm function like an “animal.” Where is Paramecium’s brain? Could it be nano-mechanical? What if living things figured out how to make Quantum Computers from proteins, or perhaps from arrays of single metal ions suspended in the center of proteins? I think microbiologists are misled by considering Amoebae as the conceptual prototype for a single cell rather than Paramecium. An oozing blob of jelly is one thing. A fast moving propellor-driven animal which acts like a mouse is something entirely different, and need
