(via Myco-heterotrophic Plant (Thismia Calcarata) | Photo From Th… | Flickr)

Back when I asked for some concepts in September on my Instagram, @ sammithyst suggested a mon based on Petrie duals, a term in topology that refers to a loop of edges that can split a 3D shape in half in a certain way. Although that was incorporated into the design of this mon (skew polygon "teeth on each dish"), the name reminded me of Petri dishes.

Petri dishes are shallow dishes with a cover that is used to grow all sorts of cells, like bacteria, fungi, and even human cells. Cells can be grown with the growth medium that is put into the dish, some sort of food like some agarose gel or a liquid mixture of nutrients.

Cantri (Poison/Psychic): When dormant, they reside completely inside their dish, only coming out when they run out of the food that dragged in. Despite having many protozoan-like cells in their body, they seem to be resistant to the antibiotics of this world.

The SDGs and the UN itself have fallen in Gaza. This is a shame!!!!! & It appears that #SDGs can't be applicable equally in the different parts of the world !!!

Slime Molds and Intelligence

Okay, despite going into a biology related field, I only just learned about slime molds, and hang on, because it gets WILD.

This guy in the picture is called Physarum polycephalum, one of the more commonly studied types of slime mold. It was originally thought to be a fungus, though we now know it to actually be a type of protist (a sort of catch-all group for any eukaryotic organism that isn't a plant, animal, or a fungus). As protists go, it's pretty smart. It is very good at finding the most efficient way to get to a food source, or multiple food sources. In fact, placing a slime mold on a map with food sources at all of the major cities can give a pretty good idea of an efficient transportation system. Here is a slime mold growing over a map of Tokyo compared to the actual Tokyo railway system:

Pretty good, right? Though they don't have eyes, ears, or noses, the slime molds are able to sense objects at a distance kind of like a spider using tiny differences in tension and vibrations to sense a fly caught in its web. Instead of a spiderweb, though, this organism relies on proteins called TRP channels. The slime mold can then make decisions about where it wants to grow. In one experiment, a slime mold was put in a petri dish with one glass disk on one side and 3 glass disks on the other side. Even though the disks weren't a food source, the slime mold chose to grow towards and investigate the side with 3 disks over 70% of the time.

Even more impressive is that these organisms have some sense of time. If you blow cold air on them every hour on the hour, they'll start to shrink away in anticipation when before the air hits after only 3 hours.

Now, I hear you say, this is cool and all, but like, I can do all those things too. The slime mold isn't special...

To which I would like to point out that you have a significant advantage over the slime mold, seeing as you have a brain.

Yeah, these protists can accomplish all of the things I just talked about, and they just... don't have any sort of neural architecture whatsoever? They don't even have brain cells, let alone the structures that should allow them to process sensory information and make decisions because of it. Nothing that should give them a sense of time. Scientists literally have no idea how this thing is able to "think'. But however it does, it is sure to be a form of cognition that is completely and utterly different from anything that we're familiar with.

by Journey to the Microcosmos on yt

Microbiology!

[ID: a banner made of emojis of microscopes, bubbling flasks, and DNA, with different bacteria emojis from a combo emoji scattered between them. /End ID]

Stemonitis sp.

photo source-The MacroClub Project (Myxomycetes)

Slime Mold

A microscopic spectacle: these diatoms (Bacillaria paxillifer) slide parallel to each other in large colonies. I can only speculate as to why, but I imagine it is a method to access sunlight for photosynthesis while also providing a quick route to safety. 250x magnification, 4x speed.

Metabolic Modeling of Gut Bacteria in Fish Fed Agricultural Waste: Implications for Human Health (Bioinformatic work)

Physarum pulcherrimum + beetle

by Kim Fleming