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Science

Paris Zoo Unveils the 'Blob,' An Organism With No Brain But 720 Sexes (reuters.com) 156

Posted by BeauHD from the single-celled-organisms dept.
The Paris Zoological Park on Wednesday showcased a mysterious new organism, dubbed the "blob," that has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet it can detect food and digest it. The blob also has almost 720 sexes, can move without legs or wings and heals itself in two minutes if cut in half. Reuters reports: "The blob is a living being which belongs to one of nature's mysteries," said Bruno David, director of the Paris Museum of Natural History, of which the Zoological Park is part. "It surprises us because it has no brain but is able to learn (...) and if you merge two blobs, the one that has learned will transmit its knowledge to the other," David added.

The blob was named after a 1958 science-fiction horror B-movie, starring a young Steve McQueen, in which an alien life form - The Blob - consumes everything in its path in a small Pennsylvania town. "We know for sure it is not a plant but we don't really if it's an animal or a fungus," said David. "It behaves very surprisingly for something that looks like a mushroom (...) it has the behavior of an animal, it is able to learn."
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Paris Zoo Unveils the 'Blob,' An Organism With No Brain But 720 Sexes More

Paris Zoo Unveils the 'Blob,' An Organism With No Brain But 720 Sexes

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  • We already know this creature by another name (Score:5, Funny)

    by Moba Hup ( 5701906 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:05AM (#59317516)

    A feminist

    • Re:We already know this creature by another name (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:26AM (#59317548)
      It is actually a Slime Mold, and the slashdot editor with an agenda, just got punked.

    • I was going to with âoeTwitterâ, but same joke.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RatBastard ( 949 )

      And shit like this is why so many old-timers left this place. Slashdot used to be a site dedicated to tech news. Now it's become a rancid shithole full of angry nerds.

      Grow the fuck up.

  • What? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:07AM (#59317520)
    720 different sexes or 720 instances of male/female?
    • Only 689 more sexes than humans.

    • The definition of sexes doesn't make sense for the (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:39AM (#59317574)

      The definition of sexes really doesn't make sense for organisms like this.
      It is so wide, that it's pracically useless for coming up with commonalities between one of its "sexes" and one of our own.
      A bit like saying chemicals have two sexes because they can be positive or negative ions.

    • My best guess (and I'm just spitballing here because TFA doesn't give any answers and I couldn't find anything scientific making that claim) is that they're confusing strains with sexes to drum up clicks. If it can reproduce asexually and sexually, but cannot reproduce sexually without a mate, than it cannot reproduce sexually with a genetically identical, asexually produced individual either. So to reproduce sexually, you need another, different strain. It sounds to me like they're confusing strains for

      • Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Sique ( 173459 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @04:42AM (#59317660) Homepage
        Actually, it's sexes, not strains. The slime mold in question is Physarum polycephalum [wikipedia.org]. Wikipedia gives only a short description of the complicated way this slime mold germinates.

        • Interesting... "In a 2010 paper, oatflakes were dispersed to represent Tokyo and 36 surrounding towns.[5][6] P. polycephalum created a network similar to the existing train system, and "with comparable efficiency, fault tolerance, and cost""

          Perhaps we could replace all of local government with this slime mold?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sique ( 173459 )

            Perhaps we could replace all of local government with this slime mold?

            It was only the network design the slime mold could replicate. All the other tasks for the local governments (e.g. funding, debating with residents, zoning, contracts with construction companies and train builders, with local utilties and hiring operating people) could not be handed off to the slime mold.

            • Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)

              by easyTree ( 1042254 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @06:59AM (#59317826)

              All the other tasks for the local governments (e.g. funding, debating with residents, zoning, contracts with construction companies and train builders, with local utilties and hiring operating people) could not be handed off to the slime mold.

              You never know until you try, right ;P

              +1 for Slime Mold as my local candidate...

              • Don’t do it. Australia elected a slime mold to the office of prime minister at the last election, it’s sucking the goodness out of the country and the damn thing isn’t even housebroken.

            • But there probably was a team of highly paid civil engineers whe spent a reasonable amount of time planning the routes. Those highly paid engineers can be replaced with slime molds.

              Somehow it's not surprising to me that civil engineers can be replaced with slime molds.

        • Very interesting, thanks.

          To add a little trivia, the zoo website adds that "it" moves at 1 centimetre per hour. https://www.parczoologiquedepa... [parczoologiquedeparis.fr]

          (Setting the page in English yields no useful result. Typically French)

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by tinkerton ( 199273 )

      More than 720 I think
      https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alwin Barni ( 5107629 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @09:48AM (#59318264)

      The nature is quite surprising at times for us humans limited to our experience, but there are more sexes then 2 for some organism, and it comes with enormous advantage for them. Think from the evolutionary perspective, as all it counts is to survive and have energy to have offsprings, now, a human enters a "room" (filled with random selection of the same species) and theoretically can have offsprings only with half of the individuals, if an organism with 3 sexes enters a "room" it can have offsprings with 2/3 of individuals, and so on. Some organism can change their sex depending on what is needed, e.g. the Nemo fish (Ocellaris clownfish) - sorry for ruining the story. Now, it is hypothesized that humans (and in general mammals) ended up with 2 sexes due to high specialization of each, which logically leads to only 2: the best at delivering genetic material and the best of having offsprings.

      Lastly, what is a sex - it's all about speeding up evolution by exchanging/mixing genetic material between the most adapted individuals, self reproducing organisms can only rely on natural mutations, thus obviously having a possibility to exchange genetic material gives an organism advantage. An interesting fact is that e.g. bacteria, even though they just multiply by divisions, they can exchange genetic material "sideways", i.e. just by picking it up from the environment, which together with super fast generations give them substantial adaptation to changing environment.

      • >if an organism with 3 sexes enters a "room" it can have offsprings with 2/3 of individuals
        I think that depends on the species - with slime molds any sex can reproduce with any other sex (and I think the number of sexes may change with species - I seem to recall 10 to 40 sexes being typical for them). I'm pretty sure some species need a member of each sex, or at least a quorum, in order to reproduce but I can't think of any examples offhand. That obviously reduces the ease of reproduction, but increas

        • I think that depends on the species - with slime molds any sex can reproduce with any other sex ...

          I think it's what I wrote - more "genders" -> more chance to find a mate withing a group of individuals of the same species:
          - 2 genders -> 50%
          - 3 ... -> ~66%
          - 4 ... -> 75%
          - 720 -> 99.8%

          Of course that raises the question - if any two nonequivalent genders can reproduce, then obviously their reproductive system is very flexible, so why have genders at all?

          To speed up evolution by exchanging genetic material -> improve chances of species survival by faster adaptation to a changing environment.

          The nature is even more astonishing then I wrote, e.g. Comodo Dragon females can give a male offspring without any male involvement if needed (e.g. no males availabl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      There are species which are genuinely do not have a male/female dichotomy.

      And there are species which do.

  • It has 720 different sexes (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:28AM (#59317552)

    .. but reserves the right to self-identify as a 721st

    Seriously what does "has 720 sexes" mean?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by udachny ( 2454394 )

      I thought 640 different sexes was enough for anyone but now, they just have to come out with 80 more in a day...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iCEBaLM ( 34905 )

      It's all a spectrum maaan.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by NotSoHeavyD3 ( 1400425 )
      If I remember right all it means is that when 2 of these meet to reproduce sexually they have to be of different sex type. If 2 of the same sex type meet they can't reproduce together.(I'm thinking both will produce spores after mating though.)
      • More akin to blood type for us I think

      • Exactly right.

        Except that I don't think there's any mating going on, any more than with plants, less mobile molds, etc. As I recall (and I don't recall the terminology) individuals release (hemi?)spores, and when spores from two different genders come in contact they fuse to form a complete spore that's able to grow into an adult.

      • That doesn't really clarify much.

        What about species that can reproduce sexually with any partner?

        What's the distinction between 720 "sexes" and and a genetic disorder which interferes with reproduction in 1/720 cases?

        I feel like someone is using the word "sex" in an imprecise way.

        I can find no scientific literature referencing this creature having 720 "sexes". Only news articles.

  • None of that is special. Many microorganisms do th (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:34AM (#59317564)

    This article deliberately states its properties in a way that makes it look unusual and alien to viewers.

    When likely you have been eating and drinkng many microorganisms with such properties just this morning.

    There are single-celled organisms, that have organelles, or even less, just clusters of molecules, that can detect things like chemical gradients, light, etc, move or eat with just changing the shape of their body and passing chemicals through their membrane, and learn in the simplest way by holding internal chemical states or charges etc.
    Also, you can define sexes conveniently how you like. It's not like they got a penis and vagina or sperm and eggs that would make the analogy make sense.

    So you can stay cool and watch Journey To The Microcosmos [youtube.com], with a nice snack of The Blob on the side, sure that our own bodies' mocroorganisms have no problems winning fight with it.

    • Re:None of that is special. Many microorganisms do (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @06:20AM (#59317784) Homepage
      In this case, it's not a microorganism, although it has one-celled stadii. Slime molds are macroscopic organisms, easily to see with the bare eye. It's more that the normal definition of single cell organisms doesn't make much sense with slime molds as they can create extremely large cells (the largest every grown in a lab was 5,54 square meter!), and those cells can contain thousand cell nuclei. And then the once single celled organism can split itself into a thousand cells at once.

      • Slime molds are macroscopic organisms, easily to see with the bare eye.

        Slime molds are aggregates of cells that can and do live freely. So, yes, slime molds are micro-organisms.

  • Slime mold clickbait (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ChromeAeonuim ( 1026946 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:36AM (#59317570)
    It's a slime mold, and this article reads like clickbait. Slime molds are really interesting no doubt, ad there's probably some fascinating stuff to learn by studying them, but this article, rather than trying to be informative, just tries to get you to click on it and make it more mysterious than it really is.

    I have no idea what it means by '720 sexes' but I'm going to guess the truth is more mundane than they're making it out to be. Probably means 720 strains or genetic combinations that cannot reproduce with identical strains but can with any other strain, or something like that, which makes sense for something that can also reproduce asexually. TFA doesn't say, and I can't find any reasonable articles explaining the 720 sexes thing.

    • Re:Slime mold clickbait (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @04:06AM (#59317608) Homepage Journal

      Science Alert has a better description: https://www.sciencealert.com/p... [sciencealert.com]

      The 720 genders thing is completely wrong. It's 720 sexes in the sense that there are 720 different genetically compatible combinations of single cell organisms that make up the whole.

      • Is it more like theres 720 individuals?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          A lot more than that but I would say; 720 *types* of individuals

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Yeah... This thing isn't a plant and it isn't an animal, it's difficult to classify. The individual cells can live on their own but can also group together like this, and so there are 720 sexes within that group of many thousands (millions?) of individuals.

        • AniMojo has a good description: when trying to understand forms of life like this remember that plants, fungi, and animals are all very close cladistically... you're more like corn than this slime mold is like either.

    • I have no idea what it means by '720 sexes'

      I note that 720 is 6 factorial (6!), in case that sheds some kind of light on things...

    • Clickbait. That's all Slashdot really is these days anymore.
      720 sexes was used because half the debates here are about gender. The other half politics, and the other half renewables/global warming. It's all clickbait. All of it. I even purposely fucked up my percentages to display how fucking stupid this all is.

      But.. I guess there's the odd neato submission every now and then. So I come back.

    • >I have no idea what it means by '720 sexes'
      Same thing as is usually meant - two members of the same sex can't reproduce. Two members of different sex can.

      For humans, we have two genders, which means when you encounter another person there's a (2-1)/2 = 50% chance that they're a different gender so that you could reproduce together if you wanted to.
      For this species of slime mold, there's 720 genders, meaning that if two individual meet there's a (720-1)/720) = 99.86% chance that they could reproduce.

      I t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      So it's delicious, and can be eaten in a single turn, but without as high a nutrition/weigh ratio as lembas wafers? :)

      hawk

  • So (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pele ( 151312 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:39AM (#59317572) Homepage

    A single-cell organism (i.e. slime mold) has a "sex" nowdays? Wow.

    • Only in 2019. Because that's the cool thing to talk about.

  • Good news (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:45AM (#59317584)

    I'm glad to see that RMS has landed on his feet and found a new gig.

  • How unscientific does that sound? It's like naming it Urkel

    But why stop there? We coulda spun the wheel a little further and Voila! The Thing that Ate Pennsylvania!

    I'd like the discoverer to use that, instead. The trick is to try and keep a straight face while making the announcement on national TV. And to time the press conference close to Halloween.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      The description about learning, passing on knowledge when it fuses, and being able to split and recombine sounds rather like Sergeant Schlock of Schlock Mercenary.

    • It is a zoo, this is an advert for a slime mold exhibit, not naming something new to science.

  • about being marginalized :-D

  • Not sexes (gender), 700+ genes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @07:11AM (#59317864)

    The slime mold won't fuse sex cells with another mold if the genes do not differ widely. It's basically preventing incest by doing a genetic analysis before mating.

    It's not different sexes or genders, that's just us humans antropomorhising the thing to fit in post-modern social theory, it really has no gender to speak of.

  • But it has its own YouTube channel.

  • "The blob also has almost 720 sexes"
    Distinct or separate? 720 M/F pairs or singles?
    Way to bate people into BS.

  • Having 720 sexes really impressed the audience, as did it demonstrating more scientific expertise than Elizabeth Warren.

    Several major liberal arts schools have already offered it tenure.

  • no brain, 720 sexes (Score:5, Funny)

    by NikeHerc ( 694644 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @09:19AM (#59318162)
    Sounds like social justice warriors.

  • Damned Gen-Z, get off my lawn!

  • The blob also has almost 720 sexes

    Looks like Facebook is going to have to add some more options when selection your gender...

  • Life (Score:2)

    by krray ( 605395 )

    This is a little unsettling... I watched the movie "Life" (2017) last night. The similarities between this and the movie are a bit scary. It didn't end well (for us humans) in the movie...

    It acts like an animal? They think it's a billion years old. It prefers oatmeal (of all things)? It can learn. I say KILL IT now. While you still can. :\

  • All you need to know. (Score:3)

    by cheetah_spottycat ( 106624 ) on Friday October 18, 2019 @07:31AM (#59321712)
    The species is physarum polycephalum. Google for it, it's super fascinating. It's a slime mold, which is neither a plant, nor an animal, nor a fungus. It's its very own kind of lifeform, and it's been known and studied for decades. These kind of slime molds are very common, and you can find them on old tree trunks and decaying leaves.

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