Some slime molds.

[NNadir]

Creatures that don't conform. Lucy Jones, Emergence Magazine.








I was directed to this article by my Nature Briefing email feed this morning.

The article will probably appear at this link tomorrow.

[Clash City Rocker]

1. Is that what they make Trump supporters out of?

[NNadir]

3. No. Unlike Trump supporters, they are beautiful and apparently essential to life in many ways.

[Warpy]

7. No, it's a lot smarter than they are. Exhaibit A:

&t=110s

[cstanleytech]

8. The Trump supporters are not as advanced on the evolutionary ladder.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

Beautiful.

[erronis]

4. They are a powerful group of organisms that cross lots of our normal classification boundaries.

They can adjust from single-celled to multi-celled cooperative organisms and take a lot of forms.

One thing I didn't realize until just looking this up, they can also exhibit some characteristics of other animals including neural systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold#Similarity_to_Neural_Systems



I'm in awe of nature. I'll include the homo-sapiens in this collection, but no reason to raise them above any other organism, including the slime-molds (from whom we may have evolved - thanks grandparents!)

[Ocelot II]

5. Found this one in my back yard growing on wood mulch -

it's called Dog Vomit slime mold, Fuligo septica.

[NNadir]

6. I guess beauty is the eye of the beholder. Some other photos of the same species may be found here.

Biolib

Apparently these organisms go through some spectacular morphological changes in their life cycle.