WEBVTT - Slime Mold: 0% Mold, 100% Amazing 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know. A production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.400 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:18.960 There's Charles W. Chuck, Wayne Bryant, and this is stuff 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:25.480 you should know. No producer editions, right, it's just just us, buddy, 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.360 We're gonna do it. We're gonna be just fine. Jerry 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.320 took an early vacation for Memorial Day. I know she's 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:34.800 always doing stuff like that. She knows how to live, 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:40.440 and we're stuck with slime mold in her absence. I 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:42.720 like slime mold. I knew you would love slime mold. 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:46.279 Uh yeah, I think it's pretty interesting stuff. It's very 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.159 Josh Clarkey. It is kind of Josh clarky so much 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.919 so that, um, as I was researching this, like I mean, 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:55.120 I just kind of generally knew about slime mold that 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:59.080 it exhibited, you know, some weird level of intelligence here there, 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:01.040 but I didn't know much about it. And then as 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:03.240 I was researching, I was like, I'm kind of into 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.080 slime mold now, like all the different kinds of it. 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.160 I like regressed into like, you know, the nerdy eight 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:11.560 year old I never was. And then you're like, let 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:14.559 me Clark this over to Chuck and see what he thinks. Yes, 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:16.479 uh yeah, I like slime old too. I think it's 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.759 kind of cool. Uh, let's do it, okay, Chuck, I'm 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:24.399 ready al right, everybody stand back because we are doing it. Yeah, 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.000 and I think you could file this. I mean, it's 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:29.720 not an animal, slime mold. I guess we should just 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:32.760 tell you right away. It's not an animal. It's not 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.440 a fungus, even though you would think it's a fungus 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:37.920 if you saw it on the forest floor. And we'll 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:42.440 get to all this stuff, but it feels like an 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.440 animal one of our animal episodes anyway, sort of. Yeah, 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:48.520 I was gonna save the fact that it's not an 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:50.720 animal or fungus or at the very end, but sure 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:52.520 we could do it at the beginning. I get like, 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:54.520 literally in the last minute, they were like, I still 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:56.200 don't know what this is. An animal is it's a 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.480 dog in disguise. You know everything we just told you about. 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:02.480 It's not an animal, it's not even a fungus. And 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.160 then we just go to listener maw. Uh So what 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.840 is it though, besides super ancient as in like maybe 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.680 one of the very first living things. Well, it's a 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.600 protest actually, they figured out and protests seems to be, well, 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:19.320 it's one of the five main kingdoms animal bacteria, plants, 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:23.239 fun guy and then protests and protests are typically single 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:28.440 celled organisms like amba um or protozoans, things like that, 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.000 and they have I don't I couldn't find out exactly 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.840 when they did it, but they fairly recently, I guess 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:39.920 in the history of biology, fairly recently reclassified slime molds 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:44.680 from the Kingdom fun Guy over to the Kingdom Protista. Yeah, 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:48.080 which is interesting because for years they have been studied 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:52.960 by mycologists who are fun fun guys. And they found 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:55.280 out later they were like, you know what, sorry, they 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:58.720 should really go over to the protestologists, and they said, 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:01.480 we kind of like these guys. Can we keep studying 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.799 them since we have been And they said sure. In 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:10.040 the protastologists were superbissed. They were they were. They're still 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.040 actually not over it. They're frequently t peeing the academic 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:16.520 halls of the my collogists whenever they get the chance. 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.680 It's very bitter battle. So um, that is pretty cute 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.160 that they that the fun guy people are are still 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:26.400 studying slime molds even though they're not Fun Guy. But um, 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.600 there's you know, some good reasons why they were originally 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:33.000 considered to be fun Guy. Mostly that they're like these 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:35.960 big kind of clumps, and there's all sorts of different 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.120 ways that they take shape and form depending on the species. 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:42.800 They're different colors. Some of them form kind of net 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:46.280 like honeycomb structures. So the look like dog barf one 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:48.120 of the main ones we'll talk about today looks a 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.720 lot like dog barf. Um. They look like the fungus though, 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:53.360 Like if you're walking in the woods and you saw 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:55.800 this nine out it's in, people would say, well, it's 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.680 got to be some kind of fungus. Yeah, especially because 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.320 if you're staring at them, you would have to stare 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:05.840 at them for about five, six, ten hours to see that. 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.560 They have a huge difference between them and fun Guy. 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:13.080 And they move. They just move so slowly it's not 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:16.000 apparent to the to the naked eye. But if you 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:19.640 if you film these things with time lapse cameras, uh 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:22.039 and speed it up, you can see, oh, they very 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.480 clearly move about from place to place. So, um, that's 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.400 a big differentiator between them and fun Guy. But one 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:30.359 of the reasons they thought they were like funger, that 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:33.800 they were funkers because they produced spores to reproduce, right, 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:38.080 and I mentioned their ancient origins. Uh, they are about 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.599 a billion years old, and like I said, could be 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:44.240 like as soon as there was stuff, it seems like 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:49.240 there was slime mold eating basically eating the bacteria that 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:52.240 breaks down other stuff that dies, and that's what they 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:57.559 feed on. Bacteria, mold, yeast, basically anything that decomposes dead things. 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:02.680 Slime molds in gulf. I think it's it's not called photography. 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:07.280 It's called phigot trophy. Oh yeah, it's a little It's 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:08.360 not how I was going to say it, But what 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:12.920 are we gonna trophy? Yeah, but I think you're absolutely right. Well, 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.360 you know us, it wouldn't be as if we didn't. 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:19.800 Probably both get it wrong, right, But that's when you 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.120 basically surround something and then gulf it and just sort 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:26.520 of like move it into your body just like sort 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.000 of absorb it basically. Yeah, which is another difference between 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.839 slime molds and fungi, because funk i actually break the 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.359 food down and then absorb the broken down nutrients. But 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:39.400 the fact is, if you have things that are decomposing 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:43.040 other things like bacteria, molds, yeast, the things that that 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:47.880 crawl onto or grow on dead people, dead trees, all 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:51.080 that stuff to break them back down into their constituents. 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:53.560 So the fact that those the slime mold feeds on 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.760 other things, it makes it a really important part of 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:59.599 the food web, part of the nutrient cycle, because other 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:03.880 things them along and eat the slime molds. Um. There's 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:06.920 apparently a kind of beetle that has a specialized jaw 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:10.360 that allows it to slurp up slime molds. I think 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:12.839 some kinds of insect larva eat them and then so 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:14.760 it just kind of keeps going. But they're a really 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.320 important part where you just have these microbes that like 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:20.719 the beetle couldn't get to that they're able to basically 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:24.800 get that energy from you know, the bacteria by eating 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.880 the slime mold. Right, and even though other protests can 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:33.640 carry disease, slime mold is quite human friendly. Actually, uh, 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:35.440 you can eat the stuff if you want. There's a 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:38.719 dish in Mexico and some parts of Mexico called Coca 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.919 de Luna, which is exactly what you think it is. 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:46.080 Poop poop of the moon, moon poop, and uh, they 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:48.240 eat this stuff. I even looked online to try and 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:51.960 get a good recipe, but um, it's not on like 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:54.760 the pages of Martha Stewart Living like it's you got 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:56.800 to dive deep into Reddit and stuff like that to 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:01.600 get some good recipes. It seems like almost almost smacks 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:04.360 of urban legend. But I'm seeing it in different enough 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:08.520 forms that I think it's probable that it actually is 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.640 a thing. The thing that scares me is that people say, 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.400 like in some regions of Mexico, it's like, that's not 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:18.520 super specific, you know. True. Uh, and and we pointed 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:21.120 out they weren't animals or plants, but we definitely need 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.720 to point out that slime old is also not mold 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.920 as a protest. That's right. So um. One of the 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:32.880 one of the really amazing things about slime mold is, um, 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:34.800 there's a couple of different kinds, as we'll talk about 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:38.440 in a second, but one a whole bunch of different 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:41.520 kinds of species. One type of slime mold can get 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.120 really big. I mean, some of them can get up 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:48.040 to the size of like a medium or pizza large pizza, 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:49.880 I guess, depending on whether you're getting ripped off by 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:54.440 your pizza guy. But like twelve inches in diameter. That's enormous, right, 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:56.360 So you're like, well, that's pretty cool. It's a big 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.600 blob of mold. Well, put your sock carters on, because 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.360 I'm about blow your socks right off your feet. Some 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:04.280 of those types of slime mold that are as big 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:08.680 as a pizza are one giant cell. Yeah, I mean, 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:12.040 this is truly amazing. The plasmodial slime mold, which is 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:14.040 I guess you could call it one of the true 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:18.000 slime mold. Is it has all the stuff like as 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:21.800 if it were undergoing cellular division, and all the all 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:25.920 the different nuclei, like millions of nuclei, organelles, cytoplasm, all 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.160 that stuff. But it's just not it doesn't have cell walls. 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.520 It's not individual little cells. It's just it splits and 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.560 lives inside this giant fortress wall. Yeah. It's almost like 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:38.920 if you took all the cells that should have made 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:43.720 this giant blob um up as a multicellular organism and 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:45.760 just kind of broke them open and dumped all the 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:49.160 contents into this blob and then through the cell walls away. 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.880 That's what you would have it's it's interesting, it is, 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:54.679 and it's it's really kind of straightforward if you if 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:56.719 you just hear it. But it's also really easy to 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.640 to just keep going like wait, wait, why why is 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:01.400 it like dead? And how is it like this? What's 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:03.800 going on here? Which is one of those things that 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:06.319 it just it makes slime old. It's its own thing. 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:10.959 And we're still learning about this stuff, you know, every day. Yeah, 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.200 and it I mean it gets there's quite a few 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:15.760 times in here where we're gonna say, and here's where 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:20.040 it gets even crazier. Uh, this isn't super crazy. But 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:23.000 the the other kind of slime mold um or the 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.360 other big broad categories a cellular slime mold, and these 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:31.400 are lots of individual, single celled organisms. But the kind 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:35.120 of knockout fact about them is when they're stressed out, 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:37.280 if they don't have a lot of food around, they 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:42.959 can join up together and sort of look like one 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:46.520 of those plasmodial slime molds. But it's not. It's called 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:51.240 I guess pseudo plasmodial yeah, because it's not a real one. 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:53.480 But it basically says, all right, we're gonna all come 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.440 together to try and find food together. And then when 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:58.040 they do have food, they can be like, all right, 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:01.160 we'll just go along our merryway and split up again, yeah, 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:04.199 which is pretty nuts. They also will come together, um 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:07.520 Apparently it makes it harder for predators like those specialized 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:11.120 beetles to eat them, because those individual slime molds can 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:16.800 be you know, a millimeter in size or smaller. Um, 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:18.760 So it's pretty easy for a beetle to eat that. 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:20.680 It's much harder for a beetle to eat something the 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.880 size of like, you know, a quarter. Right, So they 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.679 actually do come together. They come together to move. They 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:30.000 also come together to reproduce and produce spores. But the 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:34.000 characteristic of this that what makes it a pseudoplasmodium rather 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:38.360 than actual true slime mold, is that they retain their 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.360 cell walls, their individual cells when they come together. They 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.719 just kind of loosely formed together. In a really good 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:48.160 way of understanding what this the cellular slime molds created, 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:51.120 it's kind of like a swarm. Yeah, that's a good 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.840 way to put it, I think. Or what's the god 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:56.680 that my favorite thing when the birds do that, what's 0:10:56.679 --> 0:11:04.560 that called? Uh flock of seagulls haircut? That's it? Uh 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:09.240 uh boy, you threw me there. So these the plasmodium 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:11.679 is covered by a layer of slime, and you're gonna 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:13.280 want to put a pin in this because when they 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:16.880 do move around, they leave behind a little these little 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:21.160 collapse tubules and it looks basically like not exactly like 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:23.280 a snail trail, but sort of like a layer of slime. 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.400 And you're gonna want to remember that for later on, 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.480 because he's actually kind of served as important little markers. 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:32.120 As a matter of fact, write, write it down. Everybody 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:34.079 will wait until you get a pen, a piece of paper. 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:40.240 Go inside the CBS closest to you. Yeah, yeah, put 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:43.240 on your mask by pen, yep, by a piece of paper. 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:45.679 Pay ten twelve times what you should have paid for 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:49.360 that pen. Really, oh my god. Pin mark up as 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.040 big as CDs. I think the general mark up as 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:54.839 CVS fairly high. They're like, we get him in here 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:56.880 for the aspirin, then we really juice them with this 0:11:56.960 --> 0:12:01.560 ballpoint pen. I hope there's no CBS ads in this episode, 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:03.920 but we'll find out. What is what's a good deal 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:08.120 at a drug store? Is there like a zero? They 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.040 all mark it up? Yeah, everything's marked up because it's 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:14.079 like it's like convenience kind of thing. You sound like 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:16.839 a lot of sound like a grandfather. It's all marked up. 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.160 Back in my day, you just go to a regular 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:24.080 grocery store and buy your pens from the ben factory, 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:27.640 straight from the man who made It's right. Uh. You know, 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.440 when I was little, we would uh for a short time. 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:32.400 I'm not sure why we did this, because it's not 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:34.040 like we lived out in the country and this is 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:36.280 a very old timey country thing to do. We bought 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:39.400 our milk direct from a farm and we would pull 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.040 up and and uh, I would get to walk inside 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.320 this huge walk in cooler, like next to a loading dock, 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:46.080 and I just thought it was like the coolest thing 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:49.360 in the world. Somehow to get that fresh milk. Sure 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.520 didn't they. They back the cow up and it makes 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.040 a beeping sound, and they just scored the milk right 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.600 into the back of your station Wagon's right, they mark 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:01.160 it up first, wash your way home. Uh so where 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:03.000 were we? Okay? If you do see this stuff in 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:06.240 the woods, if you ever hiking along and you see 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:11.400 a big or medium size pizza like yellow blob or 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.560 orange blob, they can be red. They can be white. 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.400 They can be maroon very rarely, they can be black, blue, 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:23.120 or green, but usually it's sort of yellow or an orange. 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.760 And you see that in the forest, you're probably looking 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.520 at a slime mold. Yeah, especially if it's really hot 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:33.360 out and it just rained. Yeah, the the worst thing 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:35.520 in the world for me. You can also see them 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.120 like on your grass too. Apparently if it gets really 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.120 rainy and hot, slime molds will actually come out of 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.320 the woods into your grass and be like, oh, this 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:47.160 is pretty nice, and um, they aren't gonna do any harm. 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:49.640 That's not a problem for your grass. It just looks 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:51.679 kind of gross. It's certainly not gonna hurt you or 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.440 your pets. And then eventually it'll dry up and turn 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:56.880 to kind of a gray or tamp powder and blow away, 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.120 and that means that it just turned into spores and 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:02.960 it just reproduced all over your place. Yeah. I think 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:05.959 maybe we should take a break because right now people 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:10.959 are probably like, dudes, you promised greatness here and so 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:14.800 far it's a little hum drum what So put those 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:18.120 soft garters back on, because when we come back, we're 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:20.280 really going to start knocking them off with some of 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:48.760 these amazing facts Okay, Chuck, we set them up. Let's 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:53.640 knock him back down. So here's one cool fact is 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.720 that slime molds basically can do the equivalent and do 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:02.080 the equivalent of throwing themselves the grenade. Uh. They will 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:05.200 sacrifice themselves to save others. And these are things without 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.840 a brain or a central nervous system. Like, it's not 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.000 like they think, I'm feeling empathy today for my fellow 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:14.720 mold and so I'm gonna save everybody because I've come 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:17.960 across some infectious bacteria. But what they do is they 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.360 come across it, they engulf it, and then they say, 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:25.640 let me go, and they cut themselves off from the pack, 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.800 from the swarm and detach themselves and die of that infection, 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:34.000 but save the rest of the group. And um, my 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.960 heart will go on place in the background as they 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:42.440 get further and further away, exactly. That's that's altruism, Yeah, 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:44.640 which is pretty amazing considering, like you said, they don't 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.840 have a brain or anything like that. So how how 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.520 are they doing this? We'll get to that later. So 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:55.240 what about tell everyone about the uh dicti stelli um 0:15:55.680 --> 0:16:00.920 disc discoitus disc discoides. Okay, that's one of my favorite 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:04.840 words now disco Whiteyscau's disco in it. So that this 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:09.840 was this is a kind of um cellular um slime mold, right, 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:12.120 So it's made up of a bunch of different individual 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:16.880 organisms that come together. And when they come together they 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.280 practice altruism to some degree as well, because some of 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.400 them will basically be like, Okay, I'm dead, now I'm dead. 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:27.200 I'm gonna turn into a bundle of cellulose fibers, and 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:30.840 that cellulose is going to connect with other slime mold 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:34.600 cells that have died and turned into cellulose and come 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.800 together and form a stalk. And then the top of 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:41.120 the stalk, a bunch of different um slime mold cells 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:43.960 they're called slugs when they're individual like that, will climb 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:47.000 up the stalk and then they'll turn into spores. And 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:48.880 then in that way they're sticking up out of the 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:52.280 ground and a passing animal will come and they'll stick 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:55.560 to it and it'll get a ride to greener pastures. 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:58.080 But to do that, some of them have to die 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:02.240 to form this talked to to let the spores grow 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:05.280 on top of which is pretty amazing itself. It is 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.280 uh And you know we mentioned that they move. You know, 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:10.280 they're not. They don't just sit around and wait for 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:14.080 someone to drop a pepperoni near their pizza shape and 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:16.600 the woods so they can eat it. They gotta go 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:19.560 where the food is. And they either moved by these 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.879 little appendages that like little feet like appendages. Those are 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:26.359 the cellular slime olds, the individual single celled organisms that 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:30.239 can come together, or and this is crazy, the the 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:33.439 other kind. They move as one big mass because you know, 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:35.440 there's no cell wall going on, so they just sort 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:39.800 of expand and contract the cytoplasm to kind of gush 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.240 their way along the ground very slowly. Yeah, which is 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:46.520 really neat to see because when they're especially when they're 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:48.920 searching for food, which is basically all they're ever doing. 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:51.600 Everything that they do is either to get away from 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:55.760 some noxious stimuli or to go toward food. Usually to 0:17:55.800 --> 0:18:00.760 go toward food. It sounds like us it basically I 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:04.520 don't like that, but I like that smell. I'm gonna 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:09.360 go toward that. So um. They make these amazing kind 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:12.000 of they look almost like sea fans, you know what 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:15.000 I'm talking about That they look very fractally and they 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:17.600 just kind of they fan out. Is the best way 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:19.960 to put it, when they start to go look for food, 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:23.120 and when they do find food, they start moving toward it. 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:27.280 It's the cell walls contract and that cytoplasm goes that way, 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:29.720 and next thing, you know, over a very long period 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:35.080 of time, five days later, the the slime mold has moved. 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.840 And actually slime molds um if you don't they like 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:41.840 they they're totally fine living in peatree dishes for as 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:44.159 long as you want them to um, as long as 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:47.199 you feed them. If you stop feeding them, they'll just 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:49.520 get out of the peatree dish and start looking for 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:53.960 food elsewhere, so they'll they'll escape. Yeah, but I mean again, 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:56.240 it's not like you're just sitting there watching this thing 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:59.080 crawl out of it's petrie dishes. You leave overnight and 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:01.040 you forget to feed the thing and you come back 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:04.080 and it's half of it is out onto the table 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.040 or something like. It's something like a bread out of 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.040 gremlins kind of you. And I think you said they 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.760 moved about a millimeter an hour, but some of them actually, 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.280 if they're really cooking, can go about an inch and 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.159 a half in an hour, which that's really fast. I mean, 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.239 it doesn't sound fast. But when you're talking about what 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.520 we're talking about, it is pretty fast. Yeah, um, and 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.160 I saw that a couple of places. Most people cite 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:28.640 something like a millimeter an hour. I can't remember which 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:31.000 one goes that fast, but yeah, I mean, you can't 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:32.920 see it moving when you're staring at it, but over 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:36.119 time you can for sure. You know, if you're just 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:39.760 really patient and you can lock in on something, you 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:43.280 might be able to see that. So when they started 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:47.280 figuring out in the early two thousands, of Japanese researchers 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:49.359 were some of the first to like really study slime 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:52.280 molds as as showing some sort of intelligence. They figured 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:55.600 this out from you know, from watching these things actually 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.879 move about and when you when you film them and 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:02.760 um that like high speed and then replay it, you 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:06.359 can see their movements are deliberate in a lot of ways. 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.600 They're they're not just blind dumb movements where they happen 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:14.840 on to um food. They clearly consense food somehow or 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:18.480 some way, and they spread out um and they seemed 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:21.000 to spread out and again in a really deliberate way. 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:25.439 And so some some researchers started to um test slime 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.439 molds to see what they were capable of. One of 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:32.000 the first one one of the first researchers was a 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:37.560 Japanese scientist named toshi Yuki Nakagaki, and UM, I think 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:41.880 so too, and Dr Nakagaki, which is even better. Um 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:44.359 built a maze, like a pretty simple maze, but in 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:47.720 actual three dimensional maze and a good sized peach tree 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:51.480 dish put um what what has come to be known 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:57.280 as probably the smartest size slime mold, Farium polycephalum, which 0:20:57.320 --> 0:20:58.840 is kind of like the rock star of the slime 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.440 mold world these days, put a psarium in it and said, 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:06.639 go to town, go find your little favorite oat flake treat, 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.400 which is their their favorite food. Yeah, And the key 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:12.880 here is is there were four different routes to two 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.679 different endpoints where this food was. It wasn't just like 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.240 there's only one way to solve this maze. And so 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:23.080 they put the little oat flake at these endpoints, and uh, 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:25.480 the microorganisms that grow on the oat flakes is what 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:27.800 they're after. That's not like they love oatmeal or anything 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:31.680 like that. And so he put them there and studied them, 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:37.480 and over the course of hours, these things basically learned 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:41.800 to get to that food in the quickest fastest way 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:46.120 every single time. Yeah, like it could, it could conceivably 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:48.879 get to it, like you said, four different ways, but 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:51.359 that fast way was the way that it would. Just like, 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:54.359 that's impressive. That that's definitely not worthy. You can write 0:21:54.520 --> 0:21:57.600 multiple papers on that kind of study. And so another 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:01.720 Japanese researcher came along and said, hold my sack, a 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:06.159 researcher name at Sushi Taro from Okkaido University. Did you 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:10.359 like that? Yeah, that's good? And um Dr Tiro said, 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:12.639 all right, what about this? What if we take some 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:16.679 oat flakes and basically make a general map of the 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:21.120 neighborhoods in Tokyo and see what the slime old does 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:22.959 with that? Put a little slime old in a petrie 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:24.879 dish with these oat flakes that kind of mimic the 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.440 neighborhoods of Tokyo, and watched to go I think over 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.880