Suddenly it became popular! The child kept it as a pet, and the parents were shocked...

"I can't keep up with the trend!" Mr. Chu, a science teacher at a primary school in Hangzhou, recently told reporters that students now like to keep a rather new kind of pet - slime mold.

▲Screenshot of online store

Some parents also said that their children wanted to keep slime molds as pets, but they "didn't understand it".

Open the social media platform, this "very niche and unique pet" is also widely discussed. The number of readings of topics related to "slime mold" has exceeded 3.57 million, and the number of readings of topics on "slime mold pets" has also reached nearly 1.45 million. Many netizens have posted photos of their pet slime molds, some share feeding videos and breeding diaries, and some show off the beauty of their slime molds.

1. What exactly is slime mold?

Not only parents, but also many netizens are asking, what exactly is the slime mold that can be kept as a pet?

In fact, slime molds have puzzled scientists. Until the 1970s, people have been arguing about what slime molds are. Some people said they are animals, and some people said they are fungi. In the 1990s, slime molds were classified as Myxomycetes in the Protista kingdom. It is a eukaryotic organism that has existed on Earth for about a billion years.

Slime molds are widely distributed, and there are more than a thousand known species. They are one of the decomposers in the ecosystem.

Slime molds are mainly divided into protoplast slime molds and cellular slime molds.

The representative of protoplast slime mold is the common Physarum polycephalum. In the vegetative stage, it looks like a large mass of veiny mucus, lying on a tree or on the ground in a large area. But in fact, this whole mass is just a huge cell, which can cover up to about 10 square meters, but this cell has a lot of nuclei.

▲Physarum polycephalum

This giant cell uses a circulatory system that looks like a network of veins to distribute nutrients. The cytoplasm flows back and forth rhythmically, and the venous network is surrounded by actin and myosin fibers. The contraction of these fibers drives the cytoplasm to flow, causing the cell to deform and move. However, the speed of this movement is not fast, crawling 1-4 cm per hour, which is almost imperceptible to the naked eye. When you use a camera to record it and speed it up, you will find that the entire slime mold is pulsating regularly like a heartbeat, and surging forward like a tide.

And when the slime mold finds food, this pulsation speeds up, causing more cytoplasm to flow to the area where the food is. But when it enters the reproductive stage, sporangium will form, and the sporangium will mature and develop into a fruiting body.

Unlike protoplast slime molds, cellular slime molds maintain their individual cells throughout their life cycle. A representative example is Dictyostelium discoideum .

▲ Dictyostelium discoideum

When conditions are harsh, such as food (bacteria) shortages, single-cell slime molds that originally lived independently and scattered will secrete a small molecule, cyclic adenosine monophosphate, that has the ability to transmit information, attracting its surrounding slime mold neighbors to gather toward the center.

When they come close to each other, they stick together through glycoprotein adhesion molecules, forming a compact aggregate about 2-4 mm long, and can crawl and move as a whole. But it is worth noting that at this time they are not really "fused" together, but a pseudoplasm composed of independent cells.

2. Pay attention to some issues when raising slime mold

Slime mold is currently a rising star in the laboratory and is often used in various cell experiments, medical experiments and even intelligent robot manufacturing experiments.

Many people have also started to keep slime molds as pets, but be aware that if you don't give them enough food, they will "escape". Don't be surprised if you see the slime molds that were originally grown in the culture medium occupy your table or windowsill.

According to breeders, due to the rapid growth and reproduction capabilities of slime molds, attention should be paid to environmental pollution, because if one is not careful, a terrifying scene may appear in the home.

According to the breeder, when the bedding is changed, some slime molds will remain on the old bedding. However, in order not to pollute the environment, the slime molds on the old bedding and those that have crawled out of the bedding need to be killed with boiling water.

In addition, the breeder also reminded that slime molds may be contaminated by mold and even die. This situation must also be dealt with to avoid affecting human health.

The breeder also reminds that if you don’t have enough knowledge, don’t collect slime molds in the wild to avoid the possibility of mold growth. In addition, you must pay attention to cleaning to prevent the escaped slime molds from polluting the environment once they survive. In addition, slime molds produce spores during the reproduction process, which may cause allergies and other adverse reactions if inhaled by the human body. In short, when it comes to raising slime molds, you can try but you must also be careful.

3.How to cultivate slime mold?

If you really want to raise slime molds, you should learn some knowledge about the selection of slime molds in advance:

1. If you do not have sufficient knowledge about slime molds, it is not recommended to collect them yourself to avoid damaging the environment or affecting your health.

2. Pay attention to cleaning to prevent escaped slime mold from successfully surviving and polluting the environment.

3. Slime molds are relatively easy to raise. Most slime molds are saprophytes and are not very picky about what they eat. They can usually be fed with crushed oatmeal.

4. Feed them regularly and in a timely manner. If you do not give your slime molds enough food, they may crawl out of the culture medium and occupy your table or windowsill.

Source: China News Network, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, People's Daily Online, as Science and Art Research Center