I was going to say hyenas, but that’s taken, so allow me to present you an altogether more different and alien organism. Technically, it’s not an animal, but I doubt you’ll mind.
Pictured above is Physarum polycephalum, also known as the “many-headed slime”, a type of protist, and, specifically, a slime mold. The term “slime mold” doesn’t refer to a specific single group, but it is a broad term for several kinds of eukaryote which behave similarly.
Anyway, Physarum has - astonishingly - a basic form of intelligence, despite having no brain and only comprising a single many-nucleic cell. Here are some of the amazing things this slime can do.
- It can solve mazes. A P. polycephalum placed in a plastic maze will extend forth hundreds of tendrils, exploring all possible paths until it finds one which leads to food. It then retracts all the tendrils leading to dead ends. Moreover, it knows which way is quickest. If there are multiple routes to the reward, it’ll retract the (even slightly) longer one.
- It remembers. When the mold is solving a maze, it leaves behind a trail of slime wherever its tendrils reach. Using this slime, the Physarum avoids the paths it has already taken. This is essentially a creative, albeit rudimentary, analogue to memory - one that is in external, material form.
- It mimics transport networks. A P. polycephalum was placed in a plastic enclosure the shape of Tokyo, Japan. Bits of food were placed where the major transport hubs would be in real Tokyo, and the slime mold - knowing which ways were fastest, created a replica of the city’s rail networks using its tendrils.
- It learns and keeps track of time. A team of scientists - including the one who did the maze experiment, put this slime mold into a long groove, letting it move along the groove. However, every 30 minutes - they decreased the temperature and the humidity (slime molds thrive in hot, moist conditions). The mold slowed its pace to use less energy. After a while, the scientists stopped. Sure enough, the polycephalum kept slowing every 30 minutes, showing it could both learn and keep time.
- It’s a healthy eater. Another experiment had the slime molds in the middle of a circular clock face. At each mark in the clock, a different food was placed. However, some of them were made up of the healthiest ratio of carbs to protein, while others weren’t. All of the slimes selected the optimal foods.
An astonishing organism if there ever was one. So unusual that this creature is so obscure, for it certainly has some amazing stories to tell.