section_path: Boundary cases/Synthetic organisms
section_name: Synthetic organisms
paragraph_text: Synthetic organisms
  
  Scientists and bio-engineers are experimenting with different types of synthetic organism, from chimaeras composed of cells from two or more species, cyborgs including electromechanical limbs, hybrots containing both electronic and biological elements, and other combinations of systems that have variously evolved and been designed.
  
  An evolved organism takes its form by the partially understood mechanisms of evolutionary developmental biology, in which the genome directs an elaborated series of interactions to produce successively more elaborate structures. The existence of chimaeras and hybrids demonstrates that these mechanisms are "intelligently" robust in the face of radically altered circumstances at all levels from molecular to organismal.
  
  Synthetic organisms already take diverse forms, and their diversity will increase. What they all have in common is a teleonomic or goal-seeking behaviour that enables them to correct errors of many kinds so as to achieve whatever result they are designed for. Such behaviour is reminiscent of intelligent action by organisms; intelligence is seen as an embodied form of cognition.