A surprising species of unicellular being that’s neither plant nor animal will be unveiled at the Paris Zoo for the first time on Saturday.
The curious single cell biological wonder — called “the blob” — has a bright yellow color and is capable of complex behavior, including sensing food and moving.
“While he has no mouth, neither stomach, nor eyes, the blob is perfect at detecting the presence of food and ingesting it,” the Paris Zoo said in a translated tweet.
The zoo also said the blob, which has 720 sexes, does not have a brain or legs, but it “moves at the speed of one centimeter an hour, four if it sprints.”
“The blob is difficult to place in the tree of life,” Bruno David, the director of the Paris Museum of Natural History and Zoological Park, said in a statement. “[It] teaches us a lot about the richness of life on Earth.”
Dr. Audrey Dussutour, a researcher with the CNRS (translated to: National Scientific Research Center) who has studied blobs and works with the zoo, tweeted a short poem about the algae-like organism, also known as a eukaryotic protist.
Dussutour explained that while the “Physarum polycephalum,” aka the blob, has long been studied, this is the first time it will be on exhibit at a zoo.
The new area within the Paris Zoo dedicated to the blob will open to the public on Saturday.
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