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To test their idea, they used two kinds of cells: the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, or “Dicty” for short, and mouse pancreatic cancer cells.

Dicty cells were especially of interest because of their tendency to break down the chemical yellow brick road as they travel it so that the right path is always before them.

With this tendency to “gather string” as it moves along, Dicty was an exemplary candidate for maze solving—a “chemotactic prodigy,” as Tweedy puts it.

Tweedy and his colleagues found that Dicty lived up to its reputation, rapidly solving a complex maze in an hour that could take the tortoiselike pancreatic cancer cells several days.

Dicty, the prodigy protist, not only solved this maze but also managed to use its self-generating gradient skills to find a shortcut.