How to get a physarum culture

[ian]

So you want slime? 

I can give you slime. I'll post physarum to anyone anywhere free of charge. 

"Free?" you say, surely that's too good to be true? 

Indeed it is, I said free of charge, not actually free. This is the slime mould collective, lone oat flakes do not get visited by physarum fairy. You must prove your worth if you want to join and engage with the network. Assimilation doesn't hurt, we promise and you might like it. 

Tell us why you want the slime, what are your hopes and fears for slimekind? Where do you you see your slime in five years time?

A paragraph, a short story, maybe a few lines of verse, how about an expressive dance? We don't mind we just want you to communicate.

In return we will let you have your very own slime sent discreetly in a plain envelope - your friends and family need never know! 

[Katie]

So I am humbling requesting to be allowed to open my home to receive Joey and Chandler (et al.) Slime Moulds please. They will be well loved and cared for.

[Ben Gruver]

Hi Ian! If you have some available and get a chance, I'd love to get some Physarum from you. I want to try to culture/propagate it and use it as food for some springtails that seem to be very picky eaters, but who have expressed an interest in another small, unknown slime mold that I've been working with.

[Tom Smith]

I am of course brand new to P. Polycephalum and have A LOT to learn. I began my steps in this pursuit by some Slime from Carolina, after a suggestion from my nephew. We are looking to solve a maze and maybe replicate the Tokyo pattern. But I myself am curious to see what the slime is capable of as a single celled specimen. EG. how far can it be conditioned to learn, how quickly it adapts to challenge, and quite possibly how it does as an algorithm for decision making. 

I have already got things going, with an unexpected amount of bumps, but just picked up an early grasp of interacting with the Slime. I saw the Slime detach from a new food source (possibly via confusion?) and form a "Glider" like pattern as referred to in Conway's Game of Life (https://playgameoflife.com/). In addition, its "pulse" is impressive under scope; such an amazing thing to see a Single Celled Organism form and maintain a smart structure via oscillating pulse. The organism is quite impressive and (in my beliefs/perception) a humbling point of just how little we know about this World and what good structural design is.

I have been looking around the website and found a lot of really interesting and useful information from all of you.
Ian, you run a good show. Your Manifesto guided me to a problem I had with my bed keeping the paper too wet. Simple is always better. 

I look forward to what I will learn with this pursuit and possibly what I may share.

Thank you.

[Ray]

Hello Ian.

My friend recommended me to you, after getting slime from you in the past 🙂
I've seen springtails eat it, which I'm particularly interested in, but also I've become fascinated by it and would love to grow some myself. I'd love to try any you can offer. My friend told me to ask for the "daywalker variant". Thank you very much and looking forward to hearing from you while I read your site 🙂👍🏼

[Erica]

Hello!  I have grown slime mold with my students that came from Carolina Biological and they were fascinated!  I tried to keep the strain going afterward but was only able to maintain it for about 2 months before it gave up which is the experience that many instructors that I have spoken with have run into. I would love to be able to maintain my own colony and share my love of this group of organisms with my college students for many years to come.  It is a little difficult to do my interpretive dance here but here is a haiku:

Slimy and yellow

One big intelligent cell

Finding oats to eat

[Isaac Hoyt]

Hi Ian! 

I'm a huge fan of slime molds and particularly physarum polycephalum. This actually wouldn't be my first physarum, as up until recently I had one of my own named Blobert. I ordered him online from an Etsy seller in France, and I really enjoyed keeping and growing him in multiple containers and on a variety of mediums. My journey with blobert ended when I left his container outside in the sun to sporulate and I couldn't recover any sclerotium as I had before. This time around I hope to 3d print a maze for my slime to solve, which is something I have always wanted to do but haven't done yet. I think it would be a ton of fun to 3d print and design some more complicated structures and terrain to put in his enclosure.

Please let me know if you'd like to talk more and if you're able to send me a new slime (and if you have any naming suggestions because otherwise I will be going with blobert 2.0),

Isaac

[Monika Fröhlich]

Hi Ian,

I am a teacher at a Gymnasium in Germany and I already had a slime mould culture some years ago. I got it from a fantastic colleague, a teacher from the Netherlands. Unfortunately, I failed to grow a sklerotium that I could recover after a while.

I would like to to do some food seeking experiments, setting up networks with oat flakes, do time lapse videos and let the students set up their own research questions and experiments.

Is there a possibility to get get some slime from you?

Best regards

Monika

[fred]

Hey Ian,

I would love to get a slime if you're still sending them out! I've been interested in them for a while and I'd love to have my own pet slime. I'm excited to make some mazes or set up experiments. And just have it around as a muse when writing my story that's inspired by slime molds. I'm also planning to get a microscope soon and would love to look at the slime mold under it. 

Thanks!!

[Amanda Karch]

Hi Ian, I discovered your site after listening to an episode of Stuff You Should Know, and became instantly enthralled.  I live in New Hampshire and spend a lot of time outdoors examining all of the fungal species that grow in our area.  My 5 year old son has become obsessed with fungus and I think he will love slime molds even more!  Maybe it could become his first pet.  (Is it a pet...or an experiment...or maybe both???)