tpkq (08/10/82)
>From the New York Times:
"Science has met the Blob. A biologist from Princeton, David
Waddell, is the intrepid discoverer. By discoverer's right, he has
named it *Dictostelium caveatum*, meaning cave dweller but doubtless
intending *caveat* as well.
"Mr. Waddell's blob is by nature a slime mold. It lives in
utter darkness, in 100 percent humidity, in a cavern in Arkansas. It
grazes on bat excrement, delicately referred to as 'bat guano' in
this week's Nature. The new species is distinguished among slime
molds because of its bizarre, body-snatching mode of predation.
"Slime molds, as every science fiction reader appreciates,
generally flow along in a shapeless mass that engulf any living object
in its path. The Dictostelium molds, having more style, move in the
form of a 'slug' that periodically metamorphoses into a spore-forming
cup. The slug is not the single organism it seems to be but a
coalition of amoebas operating under federal rule.
"The Arkansan slime mold dispatches constituent amoebas to
infiltrate the slug of a prey species as it dines on the bacteria that
grow on the bat guano. Once inside, these Trojan horses on the
myxomycetic world excrete a poison that halts the host amoebas at the
point of their collective switch from slug to cup.
"The predator amoebas multiply and eat up their hosts; cell by
cell, the slug changes from prey species to predator. It's as if,
being infected by the cell of another person, you were gradually to
become him. The life of man may be poor, nasty, brutish and short,
but it holds no horror like the Blob of Blanchard Springs Cavern in
Arkansas."
Bon appetit!