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.
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10 Responses to “Real Slime: Orange Bacteria”

  1. Except for a possible allergic reaction to the spores, it is not known to be a risk to humans.

  2. Is that slime or any slime like that dangerous to humans?

  3. Linda Griffith says:

    eww

  4. Julie Treat says:

    Really yucky looking.

  5. Michelle Stevens says:

    Awesome! It looked really cool. I never knew that it could go through a maze.

  6. Irenio and Deena Mateo says:

    Awesome

  7. Julie Wine says:

    *wow, not waw

  8. Luila Barber says:

    eww!

  9. Pamela Szczech says:

    gross

  10. Faith Wilson says:

    gross