Our backstory and mission
Our kits are inspired by our founder’s longstanding love of myxomycetes. Introducing these living slime creatures to people in easy-to-use kits and sparking curiosity with creative habitats for their pet slime to explore has been a passion project for some time now. We’re so excited to share these amazing creatures with you and we hope you fall in love with them as quickly as we did!
Our mission is to inspire curiosity and a passion for STEM through the magic of living slime pets, encouraging kids to explore, care for, and understand these fascinating beings and the world we share.
Connor Behr, the creator of Slime-O Worlds, has been keeping and studying myxomycetes since he was 12 years old, and they’ve been a primary focus of his career as a molecular biologist. He was the first person to use myxomycetes to produce useful proteins, including human insulin. He also designed the first bioreactor for myxomycetes and various other molecular biology tools for their study and use.
As so many do, Connor has developed a personal friendship with the myxomycetes he works with, especially the species Slime-O Worlds is designed for, Physarum polycephalum. They seem to inspire passion, curiousity, and creativity in everyone who looks closely enough. One fellow scientist who pioneered research in Physarum wrote this about it, and we couldn’t say it better ourselves:
Ode to a Slime Mould
Physarum is
the singular aroma of a cool damp forest
the vibrant yellow of a saucy lemon
the relentless rhythms of nature’s multiple cycles
the storehouse of countless answers
the tantalizing challenge that lures us onkram namleda
(Mark Adelman)