This type of slime Physarum Polycephalum is called the “many-headed slime”. This slime likes shady, cool, moist areas like you’d find in decaying logs and branches. Slime (or slime mold) is a word used to define protists that use spores to reproduce. (Note: Slime used to be classified as fungi.)


Real slime lives on microorganisms that inhabit dirt, grass, dead leaves, rotting logs, tropical fruits, air conditioners, gutters, classrooms and laboratories. Slime can grow to an area of several square meters.


Slime shows curious behaviors. It can follow a maze, reconnect itself when chopped in half, and predict whether an environment is good to live in or not. Scientists have battled with the ideas that at first glance, slime appears to be simply a “bag of amoebae”, but upon further study, seem to behave as if they have simple brains, like insects.


Slime can be either a plasmodial slime, a bag of cytoplasm containing thousands of individual nuclei, or a cellular slime which usually stays as individual unicellular protists until a chemical signal is released, causing the cells to gather and acts as one organism.
[am4show have=’p8;p9;p27;p54;p78;’ guest_error=’Guest error message’ user_error=’User error message’ ]


Slime feeds by surrounding its food completely and secreting enzymes to digest it. If the slime dries out before its finished eating, it will form a hard tissue shell to protect the dormant slime until the weather turns wet again. The cool part is that the slime will continue searching for food once it hydrates and softens up. When slime can’t find food, it will begin the reproductive phase. Spores form from the mitosis phase and are spread by wind currents. Spores can remain formant for years if the conditions are unfavorable.



Scientist have discovered that physarum polycephalum (orange slime) seems just as intelligent as some insects! A team researchers set up a maze (made of agar) and found that the slime found the shortest possible path to the food.


Another team of scientists are working on bio-computing devices, which use slime instead of semiconductors. The scientists found that slime reacts consistently to certain stimuli. (If they poke it here, it moves to the left…) This team is also figuring out how to precisely point and steer slime using light and food sources.


What this means is that you’ve got a creature that will always emerge from a maze the same way when dropped in at random, is direction-controllable, and always reacts to stimuli the same way. Sounds like the inner workings of a computer, doesn’t it?
[/am4show]