The thing about these slimes is that they are surprisingly complex compared to the image most of us have from slimes in media. A lot of that is typically explained away by magic and the fantasy genres, so I appreciate someone who actually takes an in depth at real biology. Even so, I wonder if maybe it might be easier for a slime creature to support itself on a lower gravity planet than Earth. It would likely lead to a larger possible size as well.
I think slimes would really need to be colony organisms with individual zooids or cells that can flow around and then reattach based on some pheromone signal or something, with a very strong grip, essentially bolting The lipid bilayers of the cells together or even interlocking rows of mineralized barbs like tiny velcro. The nightmare of transporting food, blood, gasses, nutrients, metabolic waste, foreign bodies, excrement, and information through such a creature as vessels, guts, trachea, and nerves are routinely sealed, severed, rerouted and reattached is daunting, but it's not impossible.
In a way it could be easier. Imagine just quarantineing off a section and ejecting it for waste management. Essentially all their cells could act like endoplasmic reticulum
I love the intricate anatomical designs. I could imagine the air sac system evolving for use in jet propulsion and/or to store hydrogen or methane from internal bacteria colonies to make blimp slimes
@PZ Myers - Thank you! Yes, already in the previous video I discounted the "slime mold" path, as I was thinking that above a certain size, you'd need complex organs for circulation and such, so I focused on a concept with a coherent body type. Still, it would be fascinating to envisage an amorphous organism capable of not only taking certain shapes, but also forming organs on the fly in order to sustain that shape above certain sizes. I may want to consider an alternative pathway for a future video. :)
@@Phrenotopiajust a random kid with no expertise here, but octopi take shape really nicely, so you can make organs either stretchy or thin enough. Anyway, it'd be amazing to see something like that work, so looking forward to it!
@@Phrenotopia H P Lovecraft's shoggoths actually fit the description of largely sized amorphous beings that make organs on the fly... Though... (spoilers) . . . . . . . . . . They're not naturally evolved, but are actually biotechnology designed by another species.
I like the slime mold with an outer skin that holds the bulk of the creature safe and gives it a defined front and rear. That’s almost a worm already and still could break into a puddle of goo if they stopped holding together
Yes, indeed! As alternate animals, i could imagine many other different evolutionary pathways. There are already several interesting deviant ctenophores that are e.g. ribbon-shaped and even a creeping form (Coeloplana)!
The slime would be more likely to develop eyes radially along the body and keep the mouth at the bottom Or maybe they could have one large eye at the top that sees everything? Why not both?
@@Phrenotopia I just had a thought you know those antenna things that certain slimes in games have (aka maplestory and stardew valley) what if that was in eye
An eye at the top would probably be very prone to damage from the sun I like the idea of radial eyes, though. And the mouth really should be kept at the bottom.
the radially symmetric slime design kinda reminds me of starfish and sea urchins, what if the slimes moved food to their mouth using little suction limbs like they do ?
In many media slimes posses the ability to jump at their attacker or prey in order to harm them. If we retain the spiky skeleton from the early comb jellies we can potentially have this effect to some level, especially if we combine an otherwise defensive poisonous mucus to then deposit in the wounds. This would also exemplify the selective pressure for a forward mouth and eyes as opposed to a bottom facing radial one as it would allow for more depth perception when leaping at targets as well as the option to grapple onto smaller or already poisoned prey.
I was thinking the same thing before you said it in the video. "Jellyfish would likely be the most capable of become a sci-fi slime" sweet gonna be a good one.
Slimes frequently split apart into separate, motile beings in media, and while this is clearly supposed to be a nod to asexual reproduction I always thought a slime that evolved from a Siphonophore might be used to explain this since siphonophores are basically collections of countless living zooids, the idea of zooids being able to regenerate polyps that get broken off from the main body and go on living is sorta pseudo feasible at least. Perhaps a ctenophore ancestor could have formed a symbiotic relationship with zooids at some point via kleptoplasty or simply by having some zooids thrive inside the main body cavity, food for thought.
I've thought a lot about amorphous creatures, they've fascinated me since I was a child. I feel like there's potential for colonial organisms to coopt a less structured form for greater flexibility - Instead having the organs themselves connect to and disconnect from each other based on the needs of the moment. As if they were each different animals, working together to create a single creature. You could even have the outer membrane do this on a smaller scale, different "scales" of membrane shifting around to make alternative structures more cohesive and durable. A mucus cytoplasm to store nutrients and protect the organs would finish the aesthetic pretty nicely.
it does not even have to be a colonial oganism. something like a more complex descendant of something like a sea cucumber would work. with the body, and head if it has one, that contain the vital organs being more rigid, while the limbs can do the skeletal liquification thing. enabling them to be reshaped, or easily split into more, like some sort of organic swiss army knife.
@@grailw9221 Yes, very true. I suppose my version comes from what I find to be the most compelling and interesting potential of an amorphous creature - Unparalelled adaptibility paired with substantial durability. Having a fixed organ structure would be more evolutionarily reasonable and may offer some other benefits, but it feels to me like it's exploring the possibility space only halfway, if that makes sense. It's just never felt satisfying to me, to tie an amorphous creature permanently to a fixed shape or structure.
So, kind of like how salps work? (they can form chains and clusters and link together into a coherent whole, but also live independently) That'd be COOL
I really like how you fleshed out the Slimes. I can imagine an Alternate Earth, where Fantasy Creatures, like Slimes, could exist. Especially since Nature had all the ingredients to make these Fantasy Creatures in the first place, but chose not to. I'll bet there will be more Fantasy Creatures to be speculated in the future. Here's an interesting question: How would Humans cope with Slimes? Will they domesticate some Species for Food or the use of their sticky mucus? Will they fear the Slimes and avoid or hunt them down at all costs? How would their existence affect the Ecosystems?
While I still like the idea of slimes being really advanced slime molds, this one is also quite lovely, especially concerning the origins of more gelatinous and "solid" slimes. Maybe these terrestrial cnidarians can be called "jelly slimes" or "blob slimes", while the slime molds can be called "amoeba slimes" or "true slimes", as most people picture a slime with a body that can be punctured without actually damaging it.
lol slime rancher.. fyi the best game in terms of actually explaining slimes and what they might be and are and why they do what they do.. though in a sense that they are just animals living they life unlike other games where they are "monsters" out to get you... the game is about RANCHING slimes... so it really took the time to actually makes sense of what a slime would actually be like if it where real and we raised them as "live stock" so to speak... not for food but for the reasource sthey would expell after feeding them.. aka to remain at a certain size.. to avoid infinitely growing after every meal.. slimes eat food.. then they grow for a few seconds butt shrink back to former size case they expelled the mass they just at. while keeping the nutrients for themselves... and its these "plorts" they expelled taht are used as a resource and on the trade market.. slimes come in a huge variety of types based on diet and enviorment.. ones taht feed on radiation emit radtion and u cant really be around them for too long... rock slimes are well rocky found in caves and etc.. they like to roll around which can be bad for if u happen to get rolled on xD or boom slimes which seem to explode reguarlly to expell build up heat .. aka dangerous to be around .. . then u got ur tabby slimes and tiger slimes.. thing of big cute squish balls with tails and ears that use them to punch and sneak up on chickens.. the list goes on.. and if one slime eats the plort/dispelled mass of another different type of slime.. that slime now has both properties of both.. if it eats a 3rd new type of plort.. it turns in to a TARR which is tbh a POPULATION CHECK.. Tarr is black with rainbowish lights emiting from its insided.. it only can live for couple of seconds and recreats another tarr in place of a plort/dispelled mass.. and eat everything.. so every time a tar eats it creates a tar so u have two tarrs.. 2 turns to 4 .. 4 to 8 etc.. xb itll eat plants animals humans other slimes.. everything with LIFE in it is on the menu.. xD water can kill it.. or the slime sea.. which is where all slime come f rom and humans can swim in it cause they can not float in it.. cause its not water.. and slimes seemingly travel up thru the ground and soil an materailize on the surfurce as a "single being" aka one slime... throwing the slime back into the slime sea... simple makes it dematerialize and it then just pops up where ever it wants to .. its as if all the slimes are actually one with the slime sea and use it as means of transperationation to get around.. sure the game is all cutesy on the surface... butt lowkey it by far seems to give the best attempt at slime biologies then other games.. which always makes slimes being monsters yet in this game they are simply just another animal living its life lol
I feel like the ideas surrounding slimes in fantasy tend to conflict with each other a bit. Particularly, the material they're composed of conflicts with their stipulated properties, so I would propose dividing their properties into multiple different lifeforms. For example, slimes are portrayed as being able to be split apart freely, like an extreme version of a starfish, and have the different pieces be smaller versions of the original slime. Minecraft is a popular version of this depiction. However, the consistency of slimes as well as their preferred method of locomotion makes this impossible. The slimes you've made are very slimey in nature, but they're not slime, they're amphibious cnidarians. Cutting one open would kill it. It's possible that killing one would not only fail to dent, but possibly even bolster their population depending on their method of reproduction, but they still have distinct parts that cannot function when seperated from one another. I think that someone would still call a slime a slime if it didn't jump and didn't have facial features. I think some media depicts them this way anyways. In this case, I think that a macro-scale omivorous/predatory slime mold-like creature would be more accurate. My question is how would the biology of such a creature work? What would be required to have a large "true slime" exist? Once that's figured out, their ecology shouldn't take much effort to build. If they do sometimes eat meat(which they probably would given how nutritious meat is), they'd likely be scavengers, and in the case of live prey, ambush predators. They can't chase, but they're depicted as both highly corrosive and highly adhesive, so it'd only need to hide so as to make physical contact with a prey item, so that once it makes contact, a piece of the slime would be able to stick to the animal and ride on them as it eats them alive. It'd likely stick to the feet and legs first when the prey item steps on it, so the leg/legs would be destroyed first, making digesting the rest of the immobilised animal much easier. Aside from this, it'd benefit more from nutritious plant matter like fruits, berries, and nuts, but might not have issues eating coarser vegetation either. Alternatively, more passively living slimes could come to fruition, like photosynthetic slimes. That would explain why the green slimes are always the least dangerous. Self defense would be pretty straightforward too. If they digest things just by sticking to food, eating one would be nearly impossible without highly specialized adaptations, like how koalas only eat poisonous leaves. A dedicated slime-eater. Aside from that, they'd be near impossible to drive to extinction since it'll live on so long as just a little bit of slime matter remains.
Learning about those early Ctenophores makes me realize just how plausible it could have been that real-world slimes like you described could have existed. A few tweaks in just the right places, and we could have been living in a world with terrestrial Ctenophores!
yeahhh!!! always love your speculative evolution uploads, no matter what the subject is, i always come away thinking about evolution in a new and different light.
Interesting idea with using sea jellies to be slime ancestors as well as having a structured inside. Would be interesting to see what some slimes could be formed if their ancestors were microorganisms like Stentors or Diatoms.
This is a great take on the evolution of the firmer jumping slime! There's also the more amorphous one of course, but unless one comes up with some really clever way of creating a truly amorphous creature, the shape and texture changing of octopi are probably the closest to that we got to it on Earth. But that of course poses different anatomical problems... Great video! Speculative evolution like this is interesting to think about.
I think a giant amoeba with photosynthesis but with fermentation or something. possibly with symbiosis with bactria. another thing i have thought of was endosymbiosis with macro creatures. like a slime that is a living ant nest or something in wicht the ants bring food to the slime and dig the circulatory system in the slime.
i believe they would slither on the ground like snails rather than jumping around like frogs, while they can, hopping around in land would cost a lot of energy as their mass increase and impact momentum would be a strain for their internals
This is hilarious. I'm not saying you're wrong, or that you're not making sense. It's just funny how someone actually took this topic seriously and came up with a way for slimes to not only exist, but potentially evolve through fairly plausible means. In fact, I applaud you for this! But it's still really funny.
I'm writing a story that includes slimes as composite organisms, wherein the "slime" part of the slime are acidic microbes that are suspended by a telepathic field produced by the core, which is actually an animal that relies on the slime to give it nutrients as it controls the shape of the slime.
Very cool. I could imagine a slime creature evolving from modern day frogs as well. Especially with their life cycle, there are lots of places to lose limbs, and become a blob.
I find the step to create its "face" a bit too far fetched but that might be me being biased because I don't like the concept of a slime having one in the first place. Otherwise nice video. Tbh. I think this is the "series" with the longest break in between I have yet seen on youtube. I like his attitude of not even acknowledging how many years have passed xD
I never quite understood why slimes became so popular as a monster but this video does a great job of exploring how such a creature might have existed if evolution took a different path. As someone who enjoys D&D, I'm going to try and keep some of this logic in mind when oozes are around. Thanks for the great video.
I had to go through the comments just in case so I wouldn't be saying what's already been said. -As stated in other comments a radial body plan would be unlikely to develop forward facing photoreceptors, but that would really only hold true of ones that don't hunt for food. The less mobile the slime, the more likely radially spaced photoreceptors would be worth the resource investment. Convergent evolution really favors depth perception for predators. -When it comes to the jumping movement, there are several things to be concerned about. 1) Too many muscles means significantly more energy would be required. So radially evolved muscles would likely only remain advantageous for the non-hunters, but most of the muscles could remain in a relatively atrophied state for load distribution in hunters. There would need to be a method of turning in the hunters and the easiest solution would be something like the sartorius muscle, which could be repurposed from the surrounding ones. 2) The landing is also a concern. They would need to be bottom heavy so they could remain upright on uneven ground, but this bottom heaviness would also mean more force on the "bones" when coming down. They would need the heavier underside to also act as a cushion. They could potentially not even need bottom heaviness if they could make the top lighter, like with, as other people pointed out, methane or other lighter than air substance (this could also lead to floating or flying slimes) and have the pressure from that replace part of the hydrostatic skeleton. -For the forward facing "mouth", this could come from both hunter and sedate paths. 1) It could be a predator deterrent. 2) It could be the hunting slimes's method of not eating what they excrete, though the "mouth" would likely be the anus for ease of evolutionary explanation, but gut reversal is not unheard of. 3) The "mouth" could also be the main method for the reproductive organ to distribute the next generation.
Calvin, the alien from the movie 'Life', is made up solely of a unique type of cell that can act as "a muscle, a nerve and an eye at the same time." While it does end up forming a permanent shape, it could be that it judged that form to be the most suited for traveling around the space station's zero-G environment. I've always imagined slimes to work like that as well, being made up of a single (or at least very few) type of cell that can be freely distributed and can fulfill multiple roles
Love the video. It is well organized and is easy to follow along and I love how you go into detail on the science behind your decisions. I don't know any youtuber who makes videos with this kind of quality. I also wonder if these slimes could bounce like a Kangaroo? Using the impact energy when hitting the ground to bend their skeletal rods and use that for the next jump.
I like how these slimes are squishy rubber balls. I can see some slimes ditching the slime coating and developing a layer of fur with light and motion sensors. I can also see the hard spiky armor being repurposed for photosynthetic purposes as well as defense. Personally I think the mouth moving to a "face" makes sense as landing on the mouth would be painful and potentially damage the opening and the insides which isn't desirable. Maybe next video you can talk about the ecosystem that surrounds the slimes as well as how they continue to change over time.
With their limiting method of locomotion, lack of active defense or offense, and bright coloring, I imagine the ecological niche of slimes would be some toxic scavenger.
I kinda imagine that slimes are like a very distant cousin of jellyfish that have their stinging things built into their skin (since most fictional slime hurt you upon touching you)
Maybe a kind of large slime (descended from the wide, murky green species) evolved to float in the air like a jellyfish through the use of a large air sac and its oral petals.
This is really interesting, I enjoy. I remember the PC-98 version of EVO Search for Eden also had a speculative biology of slimes, maybe want to check it out.
Thank you! I did already do one dragons, but only discussed its mythological origins so far. Maybe one day, I will speculate on its possible evolutionary origins.
this kind of slime is definitely the sort that would be a level 1 mob in an rpg, easily killed with a single sword swing. The kinds of slimes with no complex structures, now those are godlike beings, practically immune to physical damage.
Slimes could evolve from sort of microscopic gregarious species, which could develop some Sort of nervous system inside a mass of "slime mold". I don't really know if it's possible, but I have hope
How about one with an entirely viscous, non solid internal body and the ability to engulf, envelop and dissolve prey instead of a solid internal skeleton and organ systems? More like a man-o-war colony with a soft jelly inner layer and inside it’s all digestive fluid and free ranging independent cells that live and eat as they individually please swimming through an ecosystem made by the outer skin. The permeable skin only envelops food, repairs itself and eats the inner fluid while the cells inside produce the fluid as bodily waste from eating whatever gets forced inside Every cell has its job be it finding, chasing, enveloping or digesting food but they don’t work as together as a cohesive body would, just the surface cells which know to defend, seek and overtake
This was a really cool in depth video discussing evolutionary sciences and adaptions about how (and why) slimes could have evolved, that even my square brain could understand Great Video!
in a lot of fantasy stories, Slimes are considered a low level creature or harmless, but infact they are the most dangerous monster species that exist. 1) Slime consumes world resource and they eat without stopping 2) they can adapt to a lot of environment without issues, they can even survive in the harshest possible climate that exist. 3) there's one species of slime that is considered a world ending species
Slimes as portrayed in many forms of anime, usually have some kind of “core” that produces their slime as long as they have enough water. Given ample access to water, they grow substantially in size and can retain whatever shape they choose, but if dehydrated, they’re more like a basketball sized booger. It would be interesting to hear your explanation of how a Core Slime could come to be. Another route for potential Slime evolution could come in the form of a Collective Being, like the living lake from The Secret Saturdays season 1, episode 24 “Where Lies The Engulfer”
I think Kelp are actually single-celled organisms with specialized parts (leaves, stems, gas-filled floatation sacs) buuut who knows how the heck they do that. I LOVED your take, the ctenophores blew me away so much. jumping to move must use a lot of energy but kangaroos do it somehow! I think your slimes have plenty of time for environmental pressures to fit some elastic tissues in there and make the process very efficient. for those who want slimes to split in half when attacked... reproduction wasn't covered, so perhaps your slimes grow live young inside them that burst out of their destroyed parent when big enough/ when attacked, like some small starfish species do. a bit more grisly but hey that's nature 😅
I still have my doubts about a few facets of the progression, but since this is all speculative to begin with I'll just throw my own into the ring: Like with yours, we start with ctenophora. Instead of strengthening and repurposing the skeletal system, the skeleton atrophies away completely. This is eventually "replaced" by a set of water bladders and a thicker skin. Alongside this development the muscles develop into a larger and more complex meshwork making use of turgor pressure on the water bladders to keep structure (similar to the "hydraulic" muscles that arachnids use to move) These features would first make the slime very durable without increasing their food requirements much, but it'd slow them down. This might make it seem like a dead end, but it'd be perfect for life in a tide pool. It can use its ciliated body to slowly move across coral and then "flex" to avoid damage when the tide begins to batter it. It can easily survive like an anemone at this point. Then things get interesting. Some tide pools can dry up, or get hit by riptide. This would pressure the slimes to develop an even tougher musculature and skin, so it can resist losing its water on contact with air (by the environment drying up or simply washing ashore after being battered off of its anchor point). Slimes intelligent enough to control their muscles and "flex" their entire outer body, forcing it into a spherical shape by turgor pressure, could hop or roll back into the water and would prove more fit. This eventually leads to an amphibious slime which, similar to yours, could transition to live in humid climates to avoid predation by developing rudimentary lungs or lung-like structures. The particular differences: No eye development until land, the slimes would rely on the ocean to bring food to it. Photoreceptive clusters might exist just to detect sunlight/shade, but otherwise it is "blind". Significantly weaker hops, only very small slimes would be able to leap very far as the square-cube law weakens its proportional strength. This is instead replaced by controlled rolling via its musculature. It maintains transparency until land (or possibly even on land). Many jellyfish are capable of living in sunlight (indeed, they seem to seek it out actively) so resistance would not prove to be a large threat. No predatory behavior. This slime would likely be a detritivore. Without predatory behavior, it can be much less intelligent. It might not need to develop a centralized nervous system, instead maintaining a decentralized system. This also means no true eyes, though photoreceptive patches near its mouth might help it eat more quickly. No "face". Its only external features would be a semi-permanent mouth and some breathing spiracles (or perhaps smaller ones could survive by oxygen diffusion). While significantly less cute, this creature could remain fully transparent and relatively harmless. Smaller ones could be kept as a pet, though when they get larger they could defend themselves by picking up speed while rolling and slamming into things with its toughened body.
The sad thing is that animals that move, are biletaral, polarised and in some form long. If slimes would be actively moving then they would actually resemble slugs i guess. Organisms that are sessile are asymetrical like those slimes. But i guess this is our imagination anyways.
Would these slimes really grow 2 eyes? I mean I know that's the end state we're aiming for, but given the radial body plan, wouldn't it make sense for the slime to grow eyes in a circle around it's body or mouth? Or would it actually just have 2, because that's all you need for seeing depth, and any more would require a lot of extra resources?
Perhaps the larger slimes could evolve some of their airsacs into buoyancy chambers for flight, hydrogen sacs would probably be easiest and most likely, though they would also preset a combustion hazard. Keep up the great work! :)
The thing about slimes is that they are supposed to not be single organisms, but colonies of unicelular organisms mimicking a true multicelular organism but not being one for real. Usually they have a core, that would be a special "queen" type cell of the colony that the colony can't survive without, but the colony can always regrow from this core/queen cell
yknow, another interpretation on the slimes we know could be a form of highly diverged flatworm species, planaria specifically in order to play into their highly resilient and regenerative (or even divisive) properties! such flatworms are extremely simple animals that lack eyes but move around with a series of chemoreceptors that 'smell' particles in the air or along the ground, water planaria have been known to have 'eyespots' that detect light, and land planaria have a sheet-like pharynx that excretes digestive mucus and enzymes to digest prey externally before absorbing it back into a branching gut. perhaps the land slime could be a form of Highly diverged land planaria
Great idea but i would have liked it not have developed a human like face.it doesnt rwally makes sense for an radial symethrical oganismism to develope bilaterial symethrie and change nothing internaly.i also think that if the mouth move to one side the whole through gut would rearrange itself.
It would make a lot more sense for mouth to develop on the bottom of the animal as that would put it closest to the food source as without limbs it would be difficult to eat with the mouth to one side.
Eyes all around the body does seem to make more sense, and would almost certainly be the first step towards land viability; but having fewer well-developed eyes could allow for more cognitive efficiency. Consider your fingers. They are all quite sensitive and agile, but try feeling something for its fine details and you may use one or two rather than all ten, and only the tips, not the whole lengths. Slimes would be very mechanically inefficient and probably survive mostly by having low caloric requirements, so opting for the minimum number of eyes allows them to perceive where they are going, which is sufficient for most animals anyway, without the unnecessary expense of having vision just as acute all around. However, the classic two-eyed slime archetype does have a considerable blind area, so they could solve this by having minimalistic eyes on the back and sides, or by having the eyes on flexible stalks like a snail to look behind.
What @Limey Lassen says. I was perhaps trying too hard to arrive at the iconic slimes from many fantasy tropes. If I would do a follow up on this, I may consider a more realistic incarnation of this concept. A radially symmetrical slime would be interesting, but let's not forget that Ctenophores were biradial and had two sides to begin with.
I love your videos so much! This is a really cool take on slime evolution, and they give me so many different ideas for my own speculative evolution projects...
Before watching My own pet theory: I like to think they would be something similar to Cnidaria and molluscs, not an evolutionary offshoot but similar in their "blobness" to slugs and jellies, especially to jellies. I imagine touching one would be like a semi dried up "thickened" jellyfish on the beach. Edit: called it, sort off. Being amphibious even fits. I love it.
I like to think of slimes as non-organic beings, they are living, but they are not animals or plants or stuff like that, they would be more similar to Golems, but instead of Rock, Slimes would be Goo reanimated by magic
I believe that they could be closer to what fantasy has. Slimes in Fantasy tend to use psuedopods to both move and shapeshift, as well as being able to be split in half and survive. They do not always have eyes, thats entirely subjective. And Most importantly, slimes dissolve things. Their inside is explicitly known to break down compounds in a way heavily implied to be acidic. Lastly, they usually are transparent. Opaque slimes are not that common in fantasy tropes. I believe that if you were to consider alternative methods to what we have explicitly seen like having very compressed stretchy skin, we could get a better fit. Because this feels less like a slime, and more like a jellyfish-fish hybrid on land. This video does use an amazing method and I think it is brilliant, but it isn't really a SLIME at this point.
In my fiction, slimes are a colony of bacteria, algae, and fungi. The "core" of the slime is a specialized neural network that controls and attracts the initial single-cellular lifeforms. Depending on the "Race" of the slime the structure can be supported by either multicellular algae or a mycellium network. It "eats" by absorbing single cellular life from its environment and composting/decaying life. Edible slimes tend to live in or near water and are made primarily of algae, fungal slimes live in forests and eat primarily fungi from composting plants and the forest floor. Poison slimes feed on decaying corpses of animals instead of plants, but still use mycellium for support. They can move slowly to get to food sources, but they don't move fast enough (except in water) to escape predators. they move by moving fluid around to either change their center of mass or to expand part of themselves towards a target, then retracting towards it. They are dangerous primarily because they strip nutrients from the soil/water in an area and multiply quickly. The poison slimes are the only ones with a defense other that just releasing a foul smelling gas, as they can spray microbes on a target to make them sick.
I feel like a pair of eyes wouldn’t be necessary for slimes. I think it would be interesting if it felt around like an octopus’s tentacles would to navigate the world. Using air, sound waves, the ground, and vibrations to navigate the world around it.
The thing about these slimes is that they are surprisingly complex compared to the image most of us have from slimes in media. A lot of that is typically explained away by magic and the fantasy genres, so I appreciate someone who actually takes an in depth at real biology. Even so, I wonder if maybe it might be easier for a slime creature to support itself on a lower gravity planet than Earth. It would likely lead to a larger possible size as well.
This is true for just about all terrestrial organisms
Thing is slimes in media are basically very large single cells often. But single cells can't get nearly as large.
@@dominiklehn2866 the biggest cell on earth is an ostrich egg, just a cool thing I remembered
Me?
Yes because bones only exist bc the huge gravity. If we were of an other planet, most creature would look like a huge biomass
I think slimes would really need to be colony organisms with individual zooids or cells that can flow around and then reattach based on some pheromone signal or something, with a very strong grip, essentially bolting The lipid bilayers of the cells together or even interlocking rows of mineralized barbs like tiny velcro. The nightmare of transporting food, blood, gasses, nutrients, metabolic waste, foreign bodies, excrement, and information through such a creature as vessels, guts, trachea, and nerves are routinely sealed, severed, rerouted and reattached is daunting, but it's not impossible.
Hi
same approach I took. their support is from algae or mycellium, but they are a colony of microbes that can break off and rejoin.
In a way it could be easier. Imagine just quarantineing off a section and ejecting it for waste management. Essentially all their cells could act like endoplasmic reticulum
jellyfish
Like Corrals, but squishy instead of solid.
I love the intricate anatomical designs. I could imagine the air sac system evolving for use in jet propulsion and/or to store hydrogen or methane from internal bacteria colonies to make blimp slimes
Great idea! The sky's the limit!
kind of like kirby lol
Slimps.
Blimes.
Interesting, but doesn't your morphological progression involve abandoning amorphous sliminess for greater and greater structure?
If the slimes are transparent enough, they can still LOOK amorphous
@PZ Myers - Thank you! Yes, already in the previous video I discounted the "slime mold" path, as I was thinking that above a certain size, you'd need complex organs for circulation and such, so I focused on a concept with a coherent body type. Still, it would be fascinating to envisage an amorphous organism capable of not only taking certain shapes, but also forming organs on the fly in order to sustain that shape above certain sizes. I may want to consider an alternative pathway for a future video. :)
@@Phrenotopiajust a random kid with no expertise here, but octopi take shape really nicely, so you can make organs either stretchy or thin enough. Anyway, it'd be amazing to see something like that work, so looking forward to it!
@@Phrenotopia H P Lovecraft's shoggoths actually fit the description of largely sized amorphous beings that make organs on the fly...
Though...
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They're not naturally evolved, but are actually biotechnology designed by another species.
I like the slime mold with an outer skin that holds the bulk of the creature safe and gives it a defined front and rear. That’s almost a worm already and still could break into a puddle of goo if they stopped holding together
I love this, I've always wondered of the possibilities of comb jellies, and seeing them be turned into slimes was amazing.
Yes, indeed! As alternate animals, i could imagine many other different evolutionary pathways. There are already several interesting deviant ctenophores that are e.g. ribbon-shaped and even a creeping form (Coeloplana)!
The slime would be more likely to develop eyes radially along the body and keep the mouth at the bottom
Or maybe they could have one large eye at the top that sees everything?
Why not both?
Biradially then probably, or an orbicular one at the top as you write, right at the site of the apical organ.
@@Phrenotopia I just had a thought you know those antenna things that certain slimes in games have (aka maplestory and stardew valley) what if that was in eye
Maybe it would extend out like a snails
it would be like a tentacle with an eye attach to it
An eye at the top would probably be very prone to damage from the sun
I like the idea of radial eyes, though. And the mouth really should be kept at the bottom.
their mouth being at the bottom will make moving around hurts the mouth
the radially symmetric slime design kinda reminds me of starfish and sea urchins, what if the slimes moved food to their mouth using little suction limbs like they do ?
Yes, indeed I have been considering that too. I was trying a bit too hard to make it look like a fantasy slime.
@@Phrenotopia i always thought slimes were some sort of mollusk
@@Phrenotopia Im sure there's enough time for some slimes to radiate towards crawling around instead of jumping around
In many media slimes posses the ability to jump at their attacker or prey in order to harm them. If we retain the spiky skeleton from the early comb jellies we can potentially have this effect to some level, especially if we combine an otherwise defensive poisonous mucus to then deposit in the wounds. This would also exemplify the selective pressure for a forward mouth and eyes as opposed to a bottom facing radial one as it would allow for more depth perception when leaping at targets as well as the option to grapple onto smaller or already poisoned prey.
Spiky blebs!
I was thinking the same thing before you said it in the video. "Jellyfish would likely be the most capable of become a sci-fi slime" sweet gonna be a good one.
Slimes frequently split apart into separate, motile beings in media, and while this is clearly supposed to be a nod to asexual reproduction I always thought a slime that evolved from a Siphonophore might be used to explain this since siphonophores are basically collections of countless living zooids, the idea of zooids being able to regenerate polyps that get broken off from the main body and go on living is sorta pseudo feasible at least. Perhaps a ctenophore ancestor could have formed a symbiotic relationship with zooids at some point via kleptoplasty or simply by having some zooids thrive inside the main body cavity, food for thought.
I'm gonna go rewatch that older slime video and then come back 😀
I've thought a lot about amorphous creatures, they've fascinated me since I was a child. I feel like there's potential for colonial organisms to coopt a less structured form for greater flexibility - Instead having the organs themselves connect to and disconnect from each other based on the needs of the moment. As if they were each different animals, working together to create a single creature. You could even have the outer membrane do this on a smaller scale, different "scales" of membrane shifting around to make alternative structures more cohesive and durable. A mucus cytoplasm to store nutrients and protect the organs would finish the aesthetic pretty nicely.
it does not even have to be a colonial oganism. something like a more complex descendant of something like a sea cucumber would work. with the body, and head if it has one, that contain the vital organs being more rigid, while the limbs can do the skeletal liquification thing. enabling them to be reshaped, or easily split into more, like some sort of organic swiss army knife.
@@grailw9221 Yes, very true. I suppose my version comes from what I find to be the most compelling and interesting potential of an amorphous creature - Unparalelled adaptibility paired with substantial durability. Having a fixed organ structure would be more evolutionarily reasonable and may offer some other benefits, but it feels to me like it's exploring the possibility space only halfway, if that makes sense. It's just never felt satisfying to me, to tie an amorphous creature permanently to a fixed shape or structure.
So, kind of like how salps work? (they can form chains and clusters and link together into a coherent whole, but also live independently) That'd be COOL
I really like how you fleshed out the Slimes. I can imagine an Alternate Earth, where Fantasy Creatures, like Slimes, could exist. Especially since Nature had all the ingredients to make these Fantasy Creatures in the first place, but chose not to. I'll bet there will be more Fantasy Creatures to be speculated in the future.
Here's an interesting question: How would Humans cope with Slimes? Will they domesticate some Species for Food or the use of their sticky mucus? Will they fear the Slimes and avoid or hunt them down at all costs? How would their existence affect the Ecosystems?
Maybe there can be like cats , I think that would be viviparous ,
They could be used as waste disposal and clean the sewers
I see potential domestication I think the Greeks cultivated snails to eat so in theory the same could happen to non poisonous slimes
And if we hunted slimes for 300 years, could we max out our level?
@@smass8586 and maybe they cured the slime Meat ? It would be very interesting to cooking with slime flesh . How it would taste like?
While I still like the idea of slimes being really advanced slime molds, this one is also quite lovely, especially concerning the origins of more gelatinous and "solid" slimes. Maybe these terrestrial cnidarians can be called "jelly slimes" or "blob slimes", while the slime molds can be called "amoeba slimes" or "true slimes", as most people picture a slime with a body that can be punctured without actually damaging it.
Absolutely fascinating. If there is life on other planets, similar to Earth, then I bet these exist out there, thriving and having a slimey good time!
lol slime rancher.. fyi the best game in terms of actually explaining slimes and what they might be and are and why they do what they do.. though in a sense that they are just animals living they life unlike other games where they are "monsters" out to get you...
the game is about RANCHING slimes... so it really took the time to actually makes sense of what a slime would actually be like if it where real and we raised them as "live stock" so to speak... not for food but for the reasource sthey would expell after feeding them.. aka to remain at a certain size.. to avoid infinitely growing after every meal.. slimes eat food.. then they grow for a few seconds butt shrink back to former size case they expelled the mass they just at. while keeping the nutrients for themselves... and its these "plorts" they expelled taht are used as a resource and on the trade market..
slimes come in a huge variety of types based on diet and enviorment..
ones taht feed on radiation emit radtion and u cant really be around them for too long...
rock slimes are well rocky found in caves and etc.. they like to roll around which can be bad for if u happen to get rolled on xD
or boom slimes which seem to explode reguarlly to expell build up heat .. aka dangerous to be around .. .
then u got ur tabby slimes and tiger slimes.. thing of big cute squish balls with tails and ears that use them to punch and sneak up on chickens..
the list goes on..
and if one slime eats the plort/dispelled mass of another different type of slime.. that slime now has both properties of both..
if it eats a 3rd new type of plort.. it turns in to a TARR which is tbh a POPULATION CHECK.. Tarr is black with rainbowish lights emiting from its insided.. it only can live for couple of seconds and recreats another tarr in place of a plort/dispelled mass.. and eat everything.. so every time a tar eats it creates a tar so u have two tarrs.. 2 turns to 4 .. 4 to 8 etc.. xb
itll eat plants animals humans other slimes.. everything with LIFE in it is on the menu.. xD
water can kill it.. or the slime sea.. which is where all slime come f rom and humans can swim in it cause they can not float in it.. cause its not water..
and slimes seemingly travel up thru the ground and soil an materailize on the surfurce as a "single being" aka one slime...
throwing the slime back into the slime sea... simple makes it dematerialize and it then just pops up where ever it wants to .. its as if all the slimes are actually one with the slime sea and use it as means of transperationation to get around..
sure the game is all cutesy on the surface... butt lowkey it by far seems to give the best attempt at slime biologies then other games.. which always makes slimes being monsters yet in this game they are simply just another animal living its life lol
This is definitely one of my favorite channels, and a big inspiration to boot :)
I love how you indirectly included an explanation for the many recolors and "variants" that slimes get in these games.
I feel like the ideas surrounding slimes in fantasy tend to conflict with each other a bit. Particularly, the material they're composed of conflicts with their stipulated properties, so I would propose dividing their properties into multiple different lifeforms. For example, slimes are portrayed as being able to be split apart freely, like an extreme version of a starfish, and have the different pieces be smaller versions of the original slime. Minecraft is a popular version of this depiction. However, the consistency of slimes as well as their preferred method of locomotion makes this impossible. The slimes you've made are very slimey in nature, but they're not slime, they're amphibious cnidarians. Cutting one open would kill it. It's possible that killing one would not only fail to dent, but possibly even bolster their population depending on their method of reproduction, but they still have distinct parts that cannot function when seperated from one another.
I think that someone would still call a slime a slime if it didn't jump and didn't have facial features. I think some media depicts them this way anyways. In this case, I think that a macro-scale omivorous/predatory slime mold-like creature would be more accurate. My question is how would the biology of such a creature work? What would be required to have a large "true slime" exist? Once that's figured out, their ecology shouldn't take much effort to build. If they do sometimes eat meat(which they probably would given how nutritious meat is), they'd likely be scavengers, and in the case of live prey, ambush predators. They can't chase, but they're depicted as both highly corrosive and highly adhesive, so it'd only need to hide so as to make physical contact with a prey item, so that once it makes contact, a piece of the slime would be able to stick to the animal and ride on them as it eats them alive. It'd likely stick to the feet and legs first when the prey item steps on it, so the leg/legs would be destroyed first, making digesting the rest of the immobilised animal much easier. Aside from this, it'd benefit more from nutritious plant matter like fruits, berries, and nuts, but might not have issues eating coarser vegetation either. Alternatively, more passively living slimes could come to fruition, like photosynthetic slimes. That would explain why the green slimes are always the least dangerous.
Self defense would be pretty straightforward too. If they digest things just by sticking to food, eating one would be nearly impossible without highly specialized adaptations, like how koalas only eat poisonous leaves. A dedicated slime-eater. Aside from that, they'd be near impossible to drive to extinction since it'll live on so long as just a little bit of slime matter remains.
Learning about those early Ctenophores makes me realize just how plausible it could have been that real-world slimes like you described could have existed.
A few tweaks in just the right places, and we could have been living in a world with terrestrial Ctenophores!
yeahhh!!! always love your speculative evolution uploads, no matter what the subject is, i always come away thinking about evolution in a new and different light.
Interesting idea with using sea jellies to be slime ancestors as well as having a structured inside.
Would be interesting to see what some slimes could be formed if their ancestors were microorganisms like Stentors or Diatoms.
This is a great take on the evolution of the firmer jumping slime!
There's also the more amorphous one of course, but unless one comes up with some really clever way of creating a truly amorphous creature, the shape and texture changing of octopi are probably the closest to that we got to it on Earth. But that of course poses different anatomical problems...
Great video! Speculative evolution like this is interesting to think about.
I think a giant amoeba with photosynthesis but with fermentation or something. possibly with symbiosis with bactria. another thing i have thought of was endosymbiosis with macro creatures. like a slime that is a living ant nest or something in wicht the ants bring food to the slime and dig the circulatory system in the slime.
Finally! I've been waiting forever for this! :D
i believe they would slither on the ground like snails rather than jumping around like frogs, while they can, hopping around in land would cost a lot of energy as their mass increase and impact momentum would be a strain for their internals
It's fascinating what we get when we try to make scientificly plausible versions of fantasy creatures
This is hilarious.
I'm not saying you're wrong, or that you're not making sense. It's just funny how someone actually took this topic seriously and came up with a way for slimes to not only exist, but potentially evolve through fairly plausible means. In fact, I applaud you for this!
But it's still really funny.
Finally! So excited for a new video, dude. I was kinda worried you'd quit.
I'm writing a story that includes slimes as composite organisms, wherein the "slime" part of the slime are acidic microbes that are suspended by a telepathic field produced by the core, which is actually an animal that relies on the slime to give it nutrients as it controls the shape of the slime.
So a colony creature?
I love the use of ctenophores as inspiration. They often get forgotten, so it's nice to see them get some love
Very cool. I could imagine a slime creature evolving from modern day frogs as well. Especially with their life cycle, there are lots of places to lose limbs, and become a blob.
I find the step to create its "face" a bit too far fetched but that might be me being biased because I don't like the concept of a slime having one in the first place.
Otherwise nice video.
Tbh. I think this is the "series" with the longest break in between I have yet seen on youtube. I like his attitude of not even acknowledging how many years have passed xD
Slime rancher irl
I never quite understood why slimes became so popular as a monster but this video does a great job of exploring how such a creature might have existed if evolution took a different path. As someone who enjoys D&D, I'm going to try and keep some of this logic in mind when oozes are around. Thanks for the great video.
love the effort and amount of research that went into this, keep it up!
Great video, very creative use of a somewhat obscure lineage
its slime time
I had to go through the comments just in case so I wouldn't be saying what's already been said.
-As stated in other comments a radial body plan would be unlikely to develop forward facing photoreceptors, but that would really only hold true of ones that don't hunt for food. The less mobile the slime, the more likely radially spaced photoreceptors would be worth the resource investment. Convergent evolution really favors depth perception for predators.
-When it comes to the jumping movement, there are several things to be concerned about.
1) Too many muscles means significantly more energy would be required. So radially evolved muscles would likely only remain advantageous for the non-hunters, but most of the muscles could remain in a relatively atrophied state for load distribution in hunters. There would need to be a method of turning in the hunters and the easiest solution would be something like the sartorius muscle, which could be repurposed from the surrounding ones.
2) The landing is also a concern. They would need to be bottom heavy so they could remain upright on uneven ground, but this bottom heaviness would also mean more force on the "bones" when coming down. They would need the heavier underside to also act as a cushion. They could potentially not even need bottom heaviness if they could make the top lighter, like with, as other people pointed out, methane or other lighter than air substance (this could also lead to floating or flying slimes) and have the pressure from that replace part of the hydrostatic skeleton.
-For the forward facing "mouth", this could come from both hunter and sedate paths.
1) It could be a predator deterrent.
2) It could be the hunting slimes's method of not eating what they excrete, though the "mouth" would likely be the anus for ease of evolutionary explanation, but gut reversal is not unheard of.
3) The "mouth" could also be the main method for the reproductive organ to distribute the next generation.
Calvin, the alien from the movie 'Life', is made up solely of a unique type of cell that can act as "a muscle, a nerve and an eye at the same time." While it does end up forming a permanent shape, it could be that it judged that form to be the most suited for traveling around the space station's zero-G environment. I've always imagined slimes to work like that as well, being made up of a single (or at least very few) type of cell that can be freely distributed and can fulfill multiple roles
Love the video. It is well organized and is easy to follow along and I love how you go into detail on the science behind your decisions. I don't know any youtuber who makes videos with this kind of quality.
I also wonder if these slimes could bounce like a Kangaroo? Using the impact energy when hitting the ground to bend their skeletal rods and use that for the next jump.
Good point!
And thank you for the compliment 😊
I like how these slimes are squishy rubber balls. I can see some slimes ditching the slime coating and developing a layer of fur with light and motion sensors. I can also see the hard spiky armor being repurposed for photosynthetic purposes as well as defense. Personally I think the mouth moving to a "face" makes sense as landing on the mouth would be painful and potentially damage the opening and the insides which isn't desirable.
Maybe next video you can talk about the ecosystem that surrounds the slimes as well as how they continue to change over time.
been waiting for this video for litteral years
My favourite model of the slime by far is the idea that they are a colony of microscopic organisms as opposed to a single organism.
With their limiting method of locomotion, lack of active defense or offense, and bright coloring, I imagine the ecological niche of slimes would be some toxic scavenger.
I kinda imagine that slimes are like a very distant cousin of jellyfish that have their stinging things built into their skin (since most fictional slime hurt you upon touching you)
Maybe a kind of large slime (descended from the wide, murky green species) evolved to float in the air like a jellyfish through the use of a large air sac and its oral petals.
This is surprisingly well thought. I myself had been thinking on what would slimes be, but didn't go anywhere this far.
they could also evolve in the future after a mass extinction
You've impressed me.
You took the Jrpg fantasy creature and made it real.
This is really interesting, I enjoy. I remember the PC-98 version of EVO Search for Eden also had a speculative biology of slimes, maybe want to check it out.
Wow! Given my interest in retro-computers, this might just be my thing!
This was absolutely fascinating. You put great effort into designing a critter that seems entirely feasible not to mention adorable. :-)
glad i got this in my recommended
id like to see the other creatures in fantasy speculated like this -EG: orcs, dragons and elves
Thank you! I did already do one dragons, but only discussed its mythological origins so far. Maybe one day, I will speculate on its possible evolutionary origins.
this kind of slime is definitely the sort that would be a level 1 mob in an rpg, easily killed with a single sword swing. The kinds of slimes with no complex structures, now those are godlike beings, practically immune to physical damage.
Great work once again
exciting news!!!
Slimes could evolve from sort of microscopic gregarious species, which could develop some Sort of nervous system inside a mass of "slime mold". I don't really know if it's possible, but I have hope
How about one with an entirely viscous, non solid internal body and the ability to engulf, envelop and dissolve prey instead of a solid internal skeleton and organ systems?
More like a man-o-war colony with a soft jelly inner layer and inside it’s all digestive fluid and free ranging independent cells that live and eat as they individually please swimming through an ecosystem made by the outer skin.
The permeable skin only envelops food, repairs itself and eats the inner fluid while the cells inside produce the fluid as bodily waste from eating whatever gets forced inside
Every cell has its job be it finding, chasing, enveloping or digesting food but they don’t work as together as a cohesive body would, just the surface cells which know to defend, seek and overtake
Now I want a part 3 of how slimes will continue to evolve until the present day.
Your video has been blessed by the youtube algorithm. Liked and subscribed.
I like that you dove into speculative lifeforms.
This was a really cool in depth video discussing evolutionary sciences and adaptions about how (and why) slimes could have evolved, that even my square brain could understand
Great Video!
:D
finally i got my slime video part 2 now i am at peace.
Finally the part 2
Omg bioluminescent slimes are such an adorable thought.
in a lot of fantasy stories, Slimes are considered a low level creature or harmless, but infact they are the most dangerous monster species that exist.
1) Slime consumes world resource and they eat without stopping
2) they can adapt to a lot of environment without issues, they can even survive in the harshest possible climate that exist.
3) there's one species of slime that is considered a world ending species
I had the idea of a slime using some gyroscope like mechanism, spinning their blobby bodies around to make themselves move rather than jumping.
Slimes as portrayed in many forms of anime, usually have some kind of “core” that produces their slime as long as they have enough water. Given ample access to water, they grow substantially in size and can retain whatever shape they choose, but if dehydrated, they’re more like a basketball sized booger.
It would be interesting to hear your explanation of how a Core Slime could come to be.
Another route for potential Slime evolution could come in the form of a Collective Being, like the living lake from The Secret Saturdays season 1, episode 24 “Where Lies The Engulfer”
I think Kelp are actually single-celled organisms with specialized parts (leaves, stems, gas-filled floatation sacs) buuut who knows how the heck they do that. I LOVED your take, the ctenophores blew me away so much.
jumping to move must use a lot of energy but kangaroos do it somehow! I think your slimes have plenty of time for environmental pressures to fit some elastic tissues in there and make the process very efficient.
for those who want slimes to split in half when attacked... reproduction wasn't covered, so perhaps your slimes grow live young inside them that burst out of their destroyed parent when big enough/ when attacked, like some small starfish species do. a bit more grisly but hey that's nature 😅
Nice video
I’m excited :)
This is so cool!
I just love speculative elulution (i know i spelled that wrong)
I still have my doubts about a few facets of the progression, but since this is all speculative to begin with I'll just throw my own into the ring:
Like with yours, we start with ctenophora. Instead of strengthening and repurposing the skeletal system, the skeleton atrophies away completely. This is eventually "replaced" by a set of water bladders and a thicker skin. Alongside this development the muscles develop into a larger and more complex meshwork making use of turgor pressure on the water bladders to keep structure (similar to the "hydraulic" muscles that arachnids use to move)
These features would first make the slime very durable without increasing their food requirements much, but it'd slow them down. This might make it seem like a dead end, but it'd be perfect for life in a tide pool. It can use its ciliated body to slowly move across coral and then "flex" to avoid damage when the tide begins to batter it. It can easily survive like an anemone at this point.
Then things get interesting. Some tide pools can dry up, or get hit by riptide. This would pressure the slimes to develop an even tougher musculature and skin, so it can resist losing its water on contact with air (by the environment drying up or simply washing ashore after being battered off of its anchor point). Slimes intelligent enough to control their muscles and "flex" their entire outer body, forcing it into a spherical shape by turgor pressure, could hop or roll back into the water and would prove more fit.
This eventually leads to an amphibious slime which, similar to yours, could transition to live in humid climates to avoid predation by developing rudimentary lungs or lung-like structures.
The particular differences:
No eye development until land, the slimes would rely on the ocean to bring food to it. Photoreceptive clusters might exist just to detect sunlight/shade, but otherwise it is "blind".
Significantly weaker hops, only very small slimes would be able to leap very far as the square-cube law weakens its proportional strength. This is instead replaced by controlled rolling via its musculature.
It maintains transparency until land (or possibly even on land). Many jellyfish are capable of living in sunlight (indeed, they seem to seek it out actively) so resistance would not prove to be a large threat.
No predatory behavior. This slime would likely be a detritivore.
Without predatory behavior, it can be much less intelligent. It might not need to develop a centralized nervous system, instead maintaining a decentralized system. This also means no true eyes, though photoreceptive patches near its mouth might help it eat more quickly.
No "face". Its only external features would be a semi-permanent mouth and some breathing spiracles (or perhaps smaller ones could survive by oxygen diffusion).
While significantly less cute, this creature could remain fully transparent and relatively harmless. Smaller ones could be kept as a pet, though when they get larger they could defend themselves by picking up speed while rolling and slamming into things with its toughened body.
The sad thing is that animals that move, are biletaral, polarised and in some form long. If slimes would be actively moving then they would actually resemble slugs i guess. Organisms that are sessile are asymetrical like those slimes. But i guess this is our imagination anyways.
What a cute and adorable research to learn new creatures that can be or not to be born in our world.:)
Man this video is great. I was interested for the whole thing.
This is a fun idea you should do this for more Monsters
Would these slimes really grow 2 eyes? I mean I know that's the end state we're aiming for, but given the radial body plan, wouldn't it make sense for the slime to grow eyes in a circle around it's body or mouth? Or would it actually just have 2, because that's all you need for seeing depth, and any more would require a lot of extra resources?
Perhaps the larger slimes could evolve some of their airsacs into buoyancy chambers for flight, hydrogen sacs would probably be easiest and most likely, though they would also preset a combustion hazard. Keep up the great work! :)
If they develop pack instincts then the combustion hazard might be worth using as a last ditch weapon/deadly distraction.
Interesting stuff. Always thought slimes are a bit too fantastical to make sense, this one is still quite out there but at least it sounds plausible
Very interesting video!
The thing about slimes is that they are supposed to not be single organisms, but colonies of unicelular organisms mimicking a true multicelular organism but not being one for real. Usually they have a core, that would be a special "queen" type cell of the colony that the colony can't survive without, but the colony can always regrow from this core/queen cell
yknow, another interpretation on the slimes we know could be a form of highly diverged flatworm species, planaria specifically in order to play into their highly resilient and regenerative (or even divisive) properties! such flatworms are extremely simple animals that lack eyes but move around with a series of chemoreceptors that 'smell' particles in the air or along the ground, water planaria have been known to have 'eyespots' that detect light, and land planaria have a sheet-like pharynx that excretes digestive mucus and enzymes to digest prey externally before absorbing it back into a branching gut.
perhaps the land slime could be a form of Highly diverged land planaria
Great idea but i would have liked it not have developed a human like face.it doesnt rwally makes sense for an radial symethrical oganismism to develope bilaterial symethrie and change nothing internaly.i also think that if the mouth move to one side the whole through gut would rearrange itself.
It would make a lot more sense for mouth to develop on the bottom of the animal as that would put it closest to the food source as without limbs it would be difficult to eat with the mouth to one side.
If it didn't have a face, it wouldn't be a slime!
Eyes all around the body does seem to make more sense, and would almost certainly be the first step towards land viability; but having fewer well-developed eyes could allow for more cognitive efficiency. Consider your fingers. They are all quite sensitive and agile, but try feeling something for its fine details and you may use one or two rather than all ten, and only the tips, not the whole lengths. Slimes would be very mechanically inefficient and probably survive mostly by having low caloric requirements, so opting for the minimum number of eyes allows them to perceive where they are going, which is sufficient for most animals anyway, without the unnecessary expense of having vision just as acute all around. However, the classic two-eyed slime archetype does have a considerable blind area, so they could solve this by having minimalistic eyes on the back and sides, or by having the eyes on flexible stalks like a snail to look behind.
What @Limey Lassen says. I was perhaps trying too hard to arrive at the iconic slimes from many fantasy tropes. If I would do a follow up on this, I may consider a more realistic incarnation of this concept. A radially symmetrical slime would be interesting, but let's not forget that Ctenophores were biradial and had two sides to begin with.
@@LimeyLassen not all slimes have a face, actually most of them don't.
ALGORITHM LETS GOOOOO
I love your videos so much! This is a really cool take on slime evolution, and they give me so many different ideas for my own speculative evolution projects...
I believe this video hasn't taken reproduction into the mix
Before watching My own pet theory: I like to think they would be something similar to Cnidaria and molluscs, not an evolutionary offshoot but similar in their "blobness" to slugs and jellies, especially to jellies. I imagine touching one would be like a semi dried up "thickened" jellyfish on the beach. Edit: called it, sort off. Being amphibious even fits. I love it.
Slimes could be a pile of microscopic versions of this.
Iv been waiting for something like this for so long, iv always had a fascination in this fictional? Creature lol
Curious archives should do a video about this.
I love this and I do believe that slimes lived on earth but no tease has been found
I imagine slime creatures as giant cells like real life amoebas.
I like to think of slimes as non-organic beings, they are living, but they are not animals or plants or stuff like that, they would be more similar to Golems, but instead of Rock, Slimes would be Goo reanimated by magic
I believe that they could be closer to what fantasy has. Slimes in Fantasy tend to use psuedopods to both move and shapeshift, as well as being able to be split in half and survive. They do not always have eyes, thats entirely subjective. And Most importantly, slimes dissolve things. Their inside is explicitly known to break down compounds in a way heavily implied to be acidic. Lastly, they usually are transparent. Opaque slimes are not that common in fantasy tropes.
I believe that if you were to consider alternative methods to what we have explicitly seen like having very compressed stretchy skin, we could get a better fit. Because this feels less like a slime, and more like a jellyfish-fish hybrid on land. This video does use an amazing method and I think it is brilliant, but it isn't really a SLIME at this point.
In my fiction, slimes are a colony of bacteria, algae, and fungi. The "core" of the slime is a specialized neural network that controls and attracts the initial single-cellular lifeforms. Depending on the "Race" of the slime the structure can be supported by either multicellular algae or a mycellium network. It "eats" by absorbing single cellular life from its environment and composting/decaying life. Edible slimes tend to live in or near water and are made primarily of algae, fungal slimes live in forests and eat primarily fungi from composting plants and the forest floor. Poison slimes feed on decaying corpses of animals instead of plants, but still use mycellium for support.
They can move slowly to get to food sources, but they don't move fast enough (except in water) to escape predators. they move by moving fluid around to either change their center of mass or to expand part of themselves towards a target, then retracting towards it.
They are dangerous primarily because they strip nutrients from the soil/water in an area and multiply quickly. The poison slimes are the only ones with a defense other that just releasing a foul smelling gas, as they can spray microbes on a target to make them sick.
Babe wake up new slime rancher lore just dropped
i scrolled for ages and this is the first slime rancher comment i've seen
I like how you used onezoom
Yay the video is out
*dry reef theme plays in the distance*
I can only picture Rimuru reacting to this
I feel like a pair of eyes wouldn’t be necessary for slimes. I think it would be interesting if it felt around like an octopus’s tentacles would to navigate the world. Using air, sound waves, the ground, and vibrations to navigate the world around it.
I've generally thought of them as just really, really big single celled organisms