Slime sublime

An even more bizarre group of organisms are the distinctly horror-scifi-movie-like slime molds. They actually hunt their food, crawling outwards as they sense delicious decaying vegetative matter.  This one rejoices in the name of Dog Vomit slime mold or Scrambled Egg slime mold,  Fuligo Septica:

This phase, the plasmodium, is one single cell with many nuclei, and has this extraordinary amoeba-like ability to shape-shift, clumping up, like here:

or fanning out across the forest floor, in search of food:

Time-Lapse photography (not mine!) shows it in action:

https://www.facebook.com/ScienceChannel/videos/2812668395470735

 Some slime molds are more delicate, like this Honeycomb Coral Slime Mold, Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa, known in Australia as Icicle Fairy Fans. The pine-needle provides some scale!

Some are jet black. This I think is Lindbladia tubulina. It is coating a leaf in the foreground, with more on the dead sticks behind it.

This unidentified white slime mould is trailing threads behind as it goes:

I end with my favorite, the aptly named Insect-egg Slime Mold, Leocarpus fragilis, creeping up the stalk of a plant, and completely engulfing the one lying on the ground.

The 2mm “eggs” are the fruiting bodies hanging from the slimy substrate. In due course they will release their spores, creating the next generation.

PS According to Wikipedia, there are 888 species of slime molds, or Myxomycetes, the plasmodial or acellular slime molds.

“All species pass through several very different .. phases, such as microscopic individual cells, slimy amorphous organisms visible with the naked eye, and conspicuously shaped fruiting bodies…. In extreme cases the organism can be up to 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) across and weigh up to 20 kilograms (44 lb).”