Slime Mold: Make Good Pets?

Ten Things I Like About... Podcast

Summary: Looking for an easy care but unusual pet? Slime mold might be just what you’re looking for! Join Kiersten as she talks about slime molds as pets.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“Slime Molds: No Brains, No Feet, No Problem,” Science Thursday. PBS. https://www.pbs.org

The Slime Mould Collective, https://slimoco.ning.com

Carolina Biological Supply Company, https://www.carolina.com

Slime Moulds: The University of Warwick, Life Sciences, https://warwick.ac.uk

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

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Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating.

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

We’ve reached the penultimate episode of slime mold and it’s kind of an odd one, although, most of these series has been odd. The ninth thing I like about…well I’m on the fence about whether I truly like this, so let’s say the ninth thing I’m going to talk about slime mold is people keeping it as a pet.

This is may be the most unusual creature to keep as a pet, but I guess you could get attached to this little rule breaker. It seems they might be easy to feed, a few oats can go along way, they don’t need a large space to roam around, and they don’t need a lot of light. Keeping the proper temperature and humidity levels might be the most difficult task, but let’s see what some slime mold pet owners have to say.

The University of Warwick in Coventry, England has instructions on the L Ife Sciences page for how to keep slime mold alive. It’s fairly straight forward. The slime mold they talk about is our old friend Physarum polycephalum, aka The Blob. This is the species most commonly used in laboratory experiments and was the focus of most of the intelligence studies we talked about in the last episode.

According to the Warwick guide to looking after your slime mold, it really is fairly simple. You can keep your slime mold in any waterproof container. They use petri dishes at the university, but any plastic tub is sufficient. It will need a source of moisture, so a damp piece of kitchen towel works just fine. Having a supply of oats on hand is a must, but you don’t need much more than that to feed your slime mold. You can feed it every few days, but be sure that you do, or it might make like Harry Houdini and escape imprisonment.

If the slime mold gets hungry it will figure out a way to slip out of it’s tub and look for the nutrients it needs. It also doesn’t like to hang out on old food, I’m really who does, so when you feed it you want to put it to one side so it moves around it’s enclosure. Exercise does keep you healthy.

If you’re looking for a pet that doesn’t need a lot of clean up, your in luck with slime mold. You’ll need to clean up the piece of substrate it’s living on at least once a week. You can lure it to one side for food and remove the paper it’s laying on with a new piece. This actually does sound kind of fun. When you’ve had enough of slime mold parenthood, you can just let if dry out in the dark and it goes into a sort of torpor. The dried up slime mold in called a sclerotia. It can stay on this state for almost tow years. Then it can be woken up by re-dampening the paper and feeding it oats again. Sounds pretty fool proof to me!

But, just like any living creature, there are problems that can arise. I find it interesting that Warwick University offers a troubleshooting guide to slime mold. Makes it sound like a computer program not a living organism. None the less, it sounds like good advice.

As mentioned before, you may have an escape happen. If you do, they say you can just lure it back into its enclosure with some yummy oats.

If you’re slime mold becomes smelly or moldy, more so that usual I guess, then it may have become contaminated with something. You can coax a bit of it onto a new piece of paper and move it into a new container. The rest of the slime mold and the old container will need to be bleached.

If your slime mold turns brown or gray, remember healthy blobs are typical a yellow color, or becomes runny. I have bad news. It’s dead. You’ll have to start over with a new colony, after an appropriate mourning period, of course.

If your slime mold develops black spots and stops moving. Mazel tov, you’re a parent! Your slime mold was probably exposed to too much light and has moved onto the next stage of its life, making spores. That’s it for this colony of slime mold. You’ll have to start over again.

I take back what I said before, this does seem like a pretty easy pet to have, although on long vacations you’ll need to have a pet sitter. Do they have a slime mold option on Rover?

While doing research for this episode I found a website called The Slime Mould Collective. Mold spelled mould, the European spelling. There were people asking questions about slime mold from all over the world. Could be a good way to bond with someone from across the planet. Slime mold, bringing us together. Stranger things have happened.

If you have other pets, such as fogs to cats, keep in mind that while slime mold is not toxic to them ingestion of the slime mold could cause some tummy troubles. The earthy smell that slime mold produces when it’s healthy might attract your four-legged furry friends, so for everyones sake, especially your carpet, keep your slime mold in a secure space away from your other pets.

There are two ways to obtain your slime mold. You can collect some from your garden or you can order some from online providers. The Carolina Biological Supply Company will ship you a slime mold started kit for about $53 US dollars. This is aimed at the science class so it comes with sclerotia for five slime mold starters, 10 Petri dishes lined with agar solution, and one Physarum plasmodium plate.

Collecting some from your garden will be a lot less expensive, but I’m hesitant to do that. After everything I’ve learned about slime mold intelligence how could I take it out of its natural habitat. For all we know, it could know that it’s no longer living in the wild but stuck in a plastic butter tub in someone’s kitchen. You may be shaking you head right now or laughing out loud, but just think back to the last episode where we talked about all the things slime mold can do without a brain. The next thing we discover about slime could that it has consciousness. I wouldn’t put anything past this amazing little organism.

Thanks for sticking with me to the ninth episode of slime mold, listeners, I may have to revise what I said at the beginning of this episode and say my ninth favorite thing about slime mold is that you can keep it as a pet. I may just go order some right now!

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change.

Join me next week for another fascinating episode about slime mold.

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This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.