“Beware of The Blob!If you are near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania next weekend, you might want to check out BlobFest 2008, celebrating the 1958 horror movie The Blob, which was filmed in the area. There will be tons of fun, including a Scream Contest, street fair, screenings of The Blob and Creature from the Black Lagoon at the Colonial Theatre, and a tour of nearby sites where The Blob was filmed.
It creeps, and leaps, and glides and slides,
Across the floor, right through the door
And all around the wall.
A splotch, a blotch,
Be careful of The Blob!”
The Blob’s feeding habits are quite like a slime mold. Slowly crawling around, the Blob searches out its food, surrounds it, and absorbs it. Slime molds do the same thing, even absorbing particles they cannot digest and passing them out the other side, always hoping to engulf more bacteria. Is this any different from The Blob absorbing an entire phone booth to eat the waitress inside? Of course, The Blob has evolved to eat people (and kittens)—not just bacteria, but this is appears to be a common mutation acquired in space.And while they aren't particularly clever, slime molds can solve a maze!
Top Image: Promotional poster for the The Blob (1958)
Bottom Image: Dog vomit slime mold (Fuligo septica) by Flickr user Franco Folini. For more about Fuligo septica, see Tom Volk's Fungus of the Month.
Tags:The Blob, slime mold
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And on rare occasions slime molds have been known to grow to uncharacteristic size, examples longer than eight inches have been observed.
ReplyDeleteLOL
ReplyDeleteI love it! Very clever….
About the “dog vomit slim mold”…is that a slug boldly exploring where every slug has always want to go?
Thomas: An 8-inch slime mold would be pretty nasty to find in your back yard.
ReplyDeletelivingsword: Could be! But I suspect it is a reference to what it looks like rather than where it travels.