Slime Molds: or coming to terms with oblivion...

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygoooooood you guys. Woah. Holy crap. I feel kind of bad about having to tell you guys this, because I take the responsibility upon myself to warn you of impending doom and this seems to have almost slipped by me unnoticed. I mean, I try to be pretty thorough in my coverage of overlooked phenomena that might have doom-bringing potential: I've brought you news about ant invasions, robot intelligence, our existence inside the Matrix, and countless other important revelations about our imminent demise.

But I didn't realize this one was even out there until a few days ago. And every thing I've learned since has been more ominous than the last. This is serious trouble.

Slime Molds. Dude, I can hear you laughing, but trust me, this is no joke. Sure they sound gross and creepy, and trust me they are, but there is something much more sinister going on with these creepy gooey... things. That's what they are, just things. They're not molds. They're not actually fungi of any kind. They ARE slimy. But beyond that nobody knows what the hell they are. They don't seem to fit into any kind of classification of animal, plant, bacterium, or anything else for that matter. There are several different kinds of things called slime molds, and scientists don't even really know if they're related to each other closely enough to be in the same category. Nobody knows what they are.

I guess I can go ahead and admit it to all you hippies out there with sky-high ideals: I like labels. Ok? As far as other life forms go, I like to have a clear label on a weird life form so that if I'm ever confronted by it in a life or death situation, I'll have some basic mooring to which to attach myself as per how it might behave. For instance, if I know I'm being faced with some type of bear as opposed to a dog, then I know that climbing a tree might not help me because some bears can climb trees quite well, but dogs cannot. Likewise, if I know that the terrifying sound coming from the other room is coming from a llama as opposed to a wildcat, I can proceed with less caution because being spat upon is a hell of a lot less scary than being eviscerated. Labels are good.

I would therefore feel a little better about the following facts if I knew what the hell a slime mold was in the first place:

Slime molds (I'm referring to Mycetozoan types here, but Bikont types are probably just as bad in one way or another) start life as amoeba-like single-celled doo-dads (which are in fact NOT amoeba, but it's helpful in picturing the situation. see? labels are good) that go around eating bacteria and pretty much minding their own business, until food runs out. That's when things get weird. When food is running low, the Mycetozoan slime mold amoeba-like doo-dads release a chemical signal that brings all the others near it running (or oozing, I guess) out from their respective woodwork. They join together to, quote, "join up into a tiny multicellular slug-like coordinated creature, which crawls to an open lit place and grows into a fruiting body" according to Wikipedia. The fruiting body grows up into a stalk formed by dead cells which actually sacrifice themselves in order to let the other cells make it to the top (confounding evolutionary theorists along with the rest of us, since why would any living thing sacrifice itself and give up its chance to reproduce?), where they finish their life cycles by sending out spores into the air (hence the stalk - the higher the spores are released from, the farther they'll go), which in turn grow into more amoeba-like doo-dads.

Pretty cool, huh? Except. Wait a second. Here we have a life form that can adopt not only four different forms (I mean, butterflies have been metamorphizing for ages and I'm ok with them - they're purdy), but which also behave in ways similar to that of FOUR DIFFERENT CLASSES OF LIVING THING. I'm probably using the wrong terminology here, but to be honest, after a certain amount of research I got too freaked out to check up on my bio vocab. But think about it: they start out as amoeba-like doo-dads that are NOT actually amoebas. Then they get together to form a SLUG-LIKE conglomeration that behaves like an amimal. THEN, they form into a "fruiting body" very much like a PLANT. And then they release SPORES, very much like a plant or fungus.

What the hell IS this thing? I don't like it at all. I don't trust this shape-shifting doom-monger. Seems to me it could just turn itself into a bat anytime and fly away, or, hell, just turn into a rock if it felt like it and make it through the next ice age intact, only to become a goddamn lion or something and kill the few of us that survive. But, hey, maybe I'm being paranoid. I mean, really, all it does is shuffle around like a slug and then turn into a flower, right? Not much to worry about on the intelligence level, right?

Wrong.

1) Allow me to just quote. This needs no editorializing:

"Japanese scientists claim that amoeba-like organisms have a primitive form of intelligence, following an experiment where a slime mould found its way through a maze."

Yup. My buddy Physarum polycephalum (pictured above - ain't he cute?) is smart enough - somehow, despite the lack of a brain - to find the shortest way through a maze when food is placed at either end.


2) Oh, and also this:

"Single-celled slime molds demonstrate the ability to memorize and anticipate repeated events, a team of Japanese researchers reported in January. The study [pdf] clearly shows “a primitive version of brain function” in an organism with no brain at all." Good old Physarum polycephalum again. "As the cells crawled across an agar plate, the researchers subjected them to cold, dry conditions for the first 10 minutes of every hour. During these cool spells, the cells slowed down their motion. After three cold snaps the scientists stopped changing the temperature and humidity and watched to see whether the amoebas had learned the pattern. Sure enough, many of the cells throttled back right on the hour in anticipation of another bout of cold weather. When conditions stayed stable for a while, the slime-mold amoebas gave up on their hourly braking, but when another single jolt of cold was applied, they resumed the behavior and correctly recalled the 60-minute interval."

Smart little... er, big... amoebas... er, plants... er, slugs... er... WTF!

Well, I might be ok falling asleep tonight knowing that somehwere out there in the woods on a rotting log is a weirdly intelligent but brainless blob of gooey unidentifiable life matter that at least isn't aspiring to any high leve of doom-mongering at the moment.



3) But then. This:

"A bright yellow slime mould that can grow to several metres in diameter has been put in charge of a scrabbling, six-legged robot. ... The Physarum polycephalum slime, which naturally shies away from light, controls the robot's movement so that it too keeps out of light and seeks out dark places in which to hide itself."

Yup. Slime robots. As if this world couldn't get any more insane or terrifying with android battle drones and slime molds operating separately. Oh, no. Not bad enough. We need, and I quote, "autonomous components" to provide energy and biological bases for "autonomous robots." Cause, heck, who doesn't need a robot that can power and move itself even independent of a human-made source of electricity? Who wouldn't want a robot that can feed and power itself and cause unending and unendable destruction by using a slime mold to move and possibly power it?

Holy amoeba-like doo-dads, Batman, am I the only sane person left on this crazy rock? Why the hell are we giving these frenzied, label-bending, unclassifiable monsters access to our technology? Can't we leave them in the woods, quietly plotting our demise where they'd at least take a long time to get to us? Or shall we just go ahead and bring them into our labs, hook them up to advanced robotics, and let them mow us all down? Why delay the inevitable? If there really was a Dr. Evil out there, he'd be right on top of this one.

Dammit.

I'm going straight home tonight and pulling up the covers and... I dunno. Just trying not have nightmares. Seems like the only thing to do.