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! 

[Spyx, MHA]

A lone oat flake sits in the dark, Waiting for the yellow spark. I have no cash, no coins to spend,
But hope to call this slime my friend.
Five years from now, we’ll solve the maze,
And spend our quiet, creeping days.
I cannot pay a single dime,
But write these lines to claim my slime.

[ANMOL PRIYAM]

An Invitation to the Slimekind

I want the slime because I want to understand something extraordinary: how can an organism with no brain, no neurons and no nervous system navigate a maze, optimise networks, adapt to its environment and exhibit behaviour that resembles learning?

I am a 14-year-old student from Pune, India, and I want to explore these questions myself, not just read about other people's discoveries.

My hopes for slimekind are quite ambitious. I want to investigate its problem-solving abilities, understand how information is processed through its physical network, explore habituation and memory-like behaviour, and perhaps discover something about intelligence that we have overlooked by studying only brains.

My fear is that we underestimate organisms simply because they are so different from us. Perhaps intelligence does not always need a brain, and perhaps we have only begun to understand the possibilities of biological computation.

Where do I see my slime in five years?

Hopefully, not merely sitting in a forgotten Petri dish! I imagine it participating in carefully designed experiments, navigating increasingly challenging mazes, forming networks, and helping me develop a much deeper understanding of unconventional biological intelligence.

Perhaps one day, I will be able to contribute something meaningful to slime-mould research myself.

I currently have neither a laboratory nor a Physarum culture. I am starting with curiosity, determination and very limited resources. A tiny piece of slime would give me the opportunity to turn that curiosity into actual experiments.

In return, I promise to document its adventures, share my observations with the community and treat my little research partner with the respect it deserves.

I don't know whether I will discover anything extraordinary. But I would certainly like to give this extraordinary organism the opportunity to surprise me.

Long live the slimekind!