"Two coffins. No, maybe three."

It hasn't been posted on their website yet, but I'm hoping New Scientist will feature "A billion brains are better than one," in which Mark Buchanan delves into a topic I'd never even considered before: bacterial communication. I'd always assumed that bacteria are microscopic Yojimbos, beholden to no other organisms. Turns out that's not exactly the case; bacteria can communicate chemically in a process called "quorum sensing"--and, if one Israeli researcher is right, their language is "more than a metaphor."

Read up on the phenomenon at the Quorum Sensing Site, which summarizes it better than I ever could.

As Buchanan writes,

More and more researchers agree with [Eshel] Ben-Jacob's assertion that microbes have the kind of social intelligence previously considered to be the exclusive preserve of the most intelligent animals. Microorganisms recognise the social groups to which they belong, and readily pick out strangers who might pose a threat.

Too bad they can't sense when I'm about to wash my hands.