Young Naturalists
Stranger than Science Fiction
Weirdly wonderful, slime molds are worth a closer look.
Catherine Winter
Slime molds seem like beings from a science fiction story. They creep across the forest floor like sheets of mucus, eating as they go. Then they stop traveling, ooze onto a dead log, a leaf, or a blade of grass, and transform.
Their new shapes are spectacular, beautiful, and weird. They may look like a cluster of shimmering balls, each perched on its own stick. They may look like a row of orange insect eggs, a clump of dark red honeycomb, cones full of pink cotton candy, or bouquets of skinny, brown corn dogs.
Some of those shapes have earned slime molds funny names, like moon poo, dog vomit, and wolf’s milk. If you’ve got sharp eyes and a special magnifying tool called a hand lens—and you know where to look—you can spot them in the woods, and maybe even in your backyard.
