Studies in Slime75

With their bizarre life cycles and shapeshifting abilities, there aren’t many lifeforms as weird as slime moulds. For one thing, they’re not moulds. A lot of the time, they’re not even slimy. They can exist as single-celled loners or as ‘supercells’ made up of millions of individuals. Sometimes they look like toadstools, and sometimes they behave like slugs. But they’re neither. Hence the weirdness.

“The fact that you can find the same species pretty much anywhere on the planet is fascinating to me,” says Andy Sands, a UK-based photographer who spent months searching for slime moulds under dead logs in the woods around his Hertfordshire home. Andy’s close-up studies reveal in surprising detail the weird world that exists underneath our feet.

To find out more – and to discover how these ancient, primitive organisms are opening up new frontiers of research check out our full story PDF, complete with text, here.