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For a long time, nobody understood slime molds.

To be clear, no one really understands them now either, but scientists now know

that these pulsating piles of jelly found on rotten logs in the forest are not fungi, but are,

in fact, more closely related to amoebas. And though there's nary a neuron in a slime mold's entire gelatinous body, they seem to be able to solve relatively complex problems.

There are over 900 species of slime molds living in the soils, leaf litter, and rotten logs of this planet, and other appropriately damp and humid areas, like maybe your

bathroom. Researchers have found a slime mold cast in amber, dating back at least 100 million

years, that remains entirely unchanged from one you could find today. A slime molds in general,

though, have probably been squishing their way around Earth for around a billion years.

It's possible that they're one of the first multicellular-ish organisms created by single cells joining and working together.

Slym molds are a really diverse group. They can appear in any color, except true green, being that

they lack chlorophyll. Some, called cellular slime molds, live mostly as a single cell, but may

collect with others in a swarm in response to chemical signals, like a food shortage, or got to procreate

now. Others, called plasmodial slime molds,

spend their entire lives as one humongous organism enclosed in a single membrane. These are what

happen when thousands of single cells meet up and fuse together. Either way, once the cells of a slime mold are in a collective,

they can network and share resources. Slime molds can form up in the shape of delicate lattices or

bulbous masses. They can remain microscopic or form collectives 10 feet long or longer. Now, that's about three meters.

Given the motivation of, for example, finding food, those collectives are capable of crawling

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