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Slime: A Natural History
Slime is an ambiguous thing. It exists somewhere between a solid and liquid. It inspires revulsion even while it compels our fascination. It is a both a vehicle for pathogens and the strongest weapon in our immune system. Most of us know little about it and yet it is the substance on which our world turns. Slime exists at the interfaces of all things: between the different organs and layers in our bodies, and between the earth, water, and air in the environment. It is often produced in the fatal encounter between predator and prey, and it is a vital presence in the reproductive embrace between female and male.
In this ground-breaking and fascinating book, Susanne Wedlich leads us on a scientific journey through the 3 billion year history of slime, from the part it played in the evolution of life on this planet to the way it might feature in the post-human future. She also explores the cultural and emotional significance of slime, from its starring role in the horror genre to its subtle influence on Art Nouveau. Slime is what connects Patricia Highsmith's fondness for snails, John Steinbeck's aversion to hagfish, and Emperor Hirohito's passion for jellyfish, as well as the curious mating practices of underwater gastropods and the miraculous functioning of the human gut. Written with authority, wit and eloquence, Slime brings this most nebulous and neglected of substances to life.
In this ground-breaking and fascinating book, Susanne Wedlich leads us on a scientific journey through the 3 billion year history of slime, from the part it played in the evolution of life on this planet to the way it might feature in the post-human future. She also explores the cultural and emotional significance of slime, from its starring role in the horror genre to its subtle influence on Art Nouveau. Slime is what connects Patricia Highsmith's fondness for snails, John Steinbeck's aversion to hagfish, and Emperor Hirohito's passion for jellyfish, as well as the curious mating practices of underwater gastropods and the miraculous functioning of the human gut. Written with authority, wit and eloquence, Slime brings this most nebulous and neglected of substances to life.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published February 28, 2023
81 people are currently reading
1,214 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
March 31, 2023
Sucked in by the beautiful cover - marine drawings by Ernst Haeckel, one of my favourite artists who wasn't really an artist but an illustrator of biology. His book, I had in the shop but was so enamoured of it, I used to hide it in case someone bought it. Which they did in the end and I had to give them a discount since it was a bit used looking. (I got another copy though and took it home).
But the book reads like a brief was given to a team of researchers who had to look up every reference to slime they could find, whether from the odious but talented H.P. Lovecraft or the exploration of the sea bed, or science. It is all over the place and I had thought it was what the title said, Slime: a Natural History, ie. science. I am particularly interested in how slime without any neurological system can solve many problems.
It is possible that the book will get round to it at some point, but life's too short, I have too many books... dnf.
But the book reads like a brief was given to a team of researchers who had to look up every reference to slime they could find, whether from the odious but talented H.P. Lovecraft or the exploration of the sea bed, or science. It is all over the place and I had thought it was what the title said, Slime: a Natural History, ie. science. I am particularly interested in how slime without any neurological system can solve many problems.
It is possible that the book will get round to it at some point, but life's too short, I have too many books... dnf.
October 20, 2024
Ooze. Sticky, dripping muck. The greenest, most luminescent sludge.
Grossed out? I thought so. But maybe we shouldn't be automatically repulsed by all things slimy when it plays such a critical role not only in the day-to-day lives of so many creatures out there, but also within our own bodies. Science writer Susanne Wedlich thinks so, anyway, and she makes her case in this book.
to hear more of my thoughts on this book (and one other book on slime) over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!
Grossed out? I thought so. But maybe we shouldn't be automatically repulsed by all things slimy when it plays such a critical role not only in the day-to-day lives of so many creatures out there, but also within our own bodies. Science writer Susanne Wedlich thinks so, anyway, and she makes her case in this book.
to hear more of my thoughts on this book (and one other book on slime) over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!
April 21, 2022
(3.25) This is just the sort of wide-ranging popular science book that draws me in. Like Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, a work I’ve had many opportunities to recommend even to those who don’t normally pick up nonfiction, it incorporates many weird and wonderful facts about life forms we tend to overlook. Wedlich, a freelance science journalist in Germany, starts off at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, where she seeks a sample of the “primordial slime� collected by the HMS Challenger in 1876. “It seems to be an unwritten rule of horror: slime sells!� she remarks � from H.P. Lovecraft to Ghostbusters, it has provoked disgust. Jellyfish, snails, frogs and carnivorous plants � you’re in for a sticky tour of the natural world.
The technical blanket term for slimy substances is “hydrogels,� which are 99% water and held together by polymers. Biological examples have been inspiring new technologies, like friction reducers (e.g. in fire hoses) modelled on fish mucus, novel adhesives to repair organs and seal wounds, and glue traps to remove microplastics. Looking to nature to aid our lives is nothing new, of course: Wedlich records that slugs were once used to lubricate cart wheels.
The book branches off in a lot of directions. You’ll hear about writers who were spellbound or terrified by marine life (Patricia Highsmith kept snails, while Jean-Paul Sartre was freaked out by sea creatures), the Victorian fascination with underwater life, the importance of the microbiome and the serious medical consequences of its dysfunction, and animals such as amphibians that live between land and water. At times it felt like the narrative jumped from one topic to another, especially between the biological and the cultural, without following a particular plan, but there are enough remarkable nuggets to hold the interest.
Originally published on my blog, .
The technical blanket term for slimy substances is “hydrogels,� which are 99% water and held together by polymers. Biological examples have been inspiring new technologies, like friction reducers (e.g. in fire hoses) modelled on fish mucus, novel adhesives to repair organs and seal wounds, and glue traps to remove microplastics. Looking to nature to aid our lives is nothing new, of course: Wedlich records that slugs were once used to lubricate cart wheels.
The book branches off in a lot of directions. You’ll hear about writers who were spellbound or terrified by marine life (Patricia Highsmith kept snails, while Jean-Paul Sartre was freaked out by sea creatures), the Victorian fascination with underwater life, the importance of the microbiome and the serious medical consequences of its dysfunction, and animals such as amphibians that live between land and water. At times it felt like the narrative jumped from one topic to another, especially between the biological and the cultural, without following a particular plan, but there are enough remarkable nuggets to hold the interest.
Originally published on my blog, .
November 6, 2022
*2.5 stars.
I struggled to get to the end of this book. The author jumps between a lot of different topics without ever really giving a detailed enough insight into each of them. A lot of time was also wasted discussing certain aspects of human culture that were very tenuously linked to the topic of slime and seemed really random and out of place. I did find some of it quite interesting though.
I struggled to get to the end of this book. The author jumps between a lot of different topics without ever really giving a detailed enough insight into each of them. A lot of time was also wasted discussing certain aspects of human culture that were very tenuously linked to the topic of slime and seemed really random and out of place. I did find some of it quite interesting though.
November 5, 2021
Absolutely brilliant. I read a proof of this and have since recommended it to about ten other people; it's funny, accessible, rigorous and eye opening on a topic little considered. Favourite part was the discussion of Patricia Highsmith's handbag of snails.
December 30, 2022
“Slime� is an all over the place book that manages to be altogether understandable while attempting to bring an entire history together. Wedlich’s writing is enjoyable and bright; sweeping metaphors and sharp descriptions. I loved the wide range the book covers from movies to stereotypes to jellyfish to slugs to carbon traps. It isn’t a book easy to get lost into and sometimes the external references felt overwhelming instead of clarifying. The most interesting parts to me were about the relationship of slime to climate change and the future of planet. “Slime� poses interesting questions and provides interesting answers, both theoretical and working in past tense to track the influence of slime overtime. The chapters on land, wetland, and aquatic animals and plants were the strongest part of the book referencing animals ranging from the most obvious (slugs, snails, jellyfish) to rare or extinct or ubiquitous (snot otters, velvet worms, plankton). Wedlich’s passion and interest is obvious throughout the entire book which adds to the experience of reading. She introduces fun facts and explains them well, linking everything together in a fast-paced way. “Slime� was a captivating overview of a history I wasn’t familiar with.
March 7, 2023
This is quite possibly one of the best books I have every read - THE best book, and easily a fucking holder of “Best Book of The Year� for myself !
Do you like feminism; do you like female prominence in history; do you like biochemistry; do you like biology; do you like frogs ? This fucking book has it all - page turner wouldn’t even do it justice !
Emphatically, I am implore anyone to pick up this fucking astonishing book if they want something different from their usual, who’re having a curious taste for more gooey subjects !
Do you like feminism; do you like female prominence in history; do you like biochemistry; do you like biology; do you like frogs ? This fucking book has it all - page turner wouldn’t even do it justice !
Emphatically, I am implore anyone to pick up this fucking astonishing book if they want something different from their usual, who’re having a curious taste for more gooey subjects !
January 28, 2024
Not to bury the lede here, this one didn't really gel with me.
In theory, I'm absolutely here for this book, and had had my eye on it for a while. Upon starting it, I was also pleasantly surprised that it was going to deal with cultural aspects of slime as well as just the science - neat! But the opening chapters on slime in relation to cosmic horror etc. were pretty surface level, rarely staying on a point for more than a few brief paragraphs, and not really drawing up to any meaningful conclusions. The later chapters dealing with more scientific content were often similarly rapid-fire - were they similarly surface level? I lack the expertise to tell you.
Allow me, for a moment, to be incredibly petty. On page 86 they describe, in passing, the alien queen from "Ridley Scott's film Alien", despite the queen not showing up until Cameron's Aliens. Obviously this isn't a particularly massive or earth-shattering error, and without looking at the original German I can't be sure if it's an issue of inaccurate research or translation, but it doesn't exactly inspire hope about the accuracy of everything else in the book that I can't as easily factcheck given I'm not, you know, a biologist. And the last thing I want to do is fall victim to the old Gell-Mann amnesia effect, doubting the content that I know things about but taking for granted what's written on subjects I'm less familiar with.
Compounded with this is the lack of references. The last thing I want to be is the sort of arsehole who demands intense academic rigour in popular books, but given how much of this book is essentially a lit review of slime-related stuff, their absence is really glaring. There's a bibliography (sorry, further reading section) at the end of the book that presumably includes all the 'studies' that are directly quoted or paraphrased but remain nameless and anonymous in the text itself. The lack of any referencing though renders it less than useless as a way to find out where the writer actually got their information from, or to actually follow up on any further reading. Is this down to the writer of the publisher - who knows. Either way it's pretty unsatisfying. In other reviews I've seen people cross about the book's mentioning of the gut-brain axis and its possible connection to conditions including autism. Given it's essentially just dropped in passing and not elaborated on or referenced, as a reader there's no way to tell if the writer is citing proper research a little too glibly, or some Andy Wakefield nonsense that we should be rightfully cross about!
Was hoping for something akin to Ed Yong's I Contain Multitudes, an excellent book on bacteria, but this ain't it chief.
In theory, I'm absolutely here for this book, and had had my eye on it for a while. Upon starting it, I was also pleasantly surprised that it was going to deal with cultural aspects of slime as well as just the science - neat! But the opening chapters on slime in relation to cosmic horror etc. were pretty surface level, rarely staying on a point for more than a few brief paragraphs, and not really drawing up to any meaningful conclusions. The later chapters dealing with more scientific content were often similarly rapid-fire - were they similarly surface level? I lack the expertise to tell you.
Allow me, for a moment, to be incredibly petty. On page 86 they describe, in passing, the alien queen from "Ridley Scott's film Alien", despite the queen not showing up until Cameron's Aliens. Obviously this isn't a particularly massive or earth-shattering error, and without looking at the original German I can't be sure if it's an issue of inaccurate research or translation, but it doesn't exactly inspire hope about the accuracy of everything else in the book that I can't as easily factcheck given I'm not, you know, a biologist. And the last thing I want to do is fall victim to the old Gell-Mann amnesia effect, doubting the content that I know things about but taking for granted what's written on subjects I'm less familiar with.
Compounded with this is the lack of references. The last thing I want to be is the sort of arsehole who demands intense academic rigour in popular books, but given how much of this book is essentially a lit review of slime-related stuff, their absence is really glaring. There's a bibliography (sorry, further reading section) at the end of the book that presumably includes all the 'studies' that are directly quoted or paraphrased but remain nameless and anonymous in the text itself. The lack of any referencing though renders it less than useless as a way to find out where the writer actually got their information from, or to actually follow up on any further reading. Is this down to the writer of the publisher - who knows. Either way it's pretty unsatisfying. In other reviews I've seen people cross about the book's mentioning of the gut-brain axis and its possible connection to conditions including autism. Given it's essentially just dropped in passing and not elaborated on or referenced, as a reader there's no way to tell if the writer is citing proper research a little too glibly, or some Andy Wakefield nonsense that we should be rightfully cross about!
Was hoping for something akin to Ed Yong's I Contain Multitudes, an excellent book on bacteria, but this ain't it chief.
March 22, 2022
I can imagine the concern in Granta’s publicity and marketing department when the concept for this book arrived on their desks; ‘it’s about what?, you’re calling it Slime?�. The obvious problems notwithstanding, they’ve done a grand job, helped enormously by getting it a slot as a BBC Radio 4 book of the week, which is where I first heard it. There are some fascinating facts and mind-boggling information packed in to Susanne Wedlich’s book, but it suffers from a tendency to the journalistic which, while making it ideal for reading in short chunks on the radio, sometimes leaves the reader frustrated as the book skims over the surface of things where more detail and context would be welcome.
Read
April 15, 2024Similar to how you always have to pretend fiction books aren't about bullied orphans or Mary Sues in love triangles, scientific nonfiction books have their own annoying mandatory tropes. That is, whenever you read about any topic, even slime, you have to ignore all the rambling about climate change, feminism, racism, anti-Semitism, and, in anything that came out after 2020, Coronavirus. (The validity and science behind which, we are all, of course, completely agreed upon... As we are with everything else here. Obviously).
In other words, these books always have the "democrat accent," making sure to look through each and every leftwing social lens to make sure it's not "remiss." (An annoying word they always repeated in my nonfiction college course that means any writing that actually stays on nonsocial topics).
But this is no different than how every genre has its glaring issues and unfortunate clutter to wade through. The act of reading anything traditionally published is about rolling up your sleeves and going treasure hunting through the muck. And there sure is a lot you have to skip through in every single book under the sun to get to the valuable parts. At least we can edit with technology. (And put funny music in the background with text to speech).
In other words, these books always have the "democrat accent," making sure to look through each and every leftwing social lens to make sure it's not "remiss." (An annoying word they always repeated in my nonfiction college course that means any writing that actually stays on nonsocial topics).
But this is no different than how every genre has its glaring issues and unfortunate clutter to wade through. The act of reading anything traditionally published is about rolling up your sleeves and going treasure hunting through the muck. And there sure is a lot you have to skip through in every single book under the sun to get to the valuable parts. At least we can edit with technology. (And put funny music in the background with text to speech).
October 18, 2023
hard to get through unfortunately. just a bit all over the place and not enough detail on any topic to really take anything away from this
May 3, 2023
DID NOT FINISH. Stopped the moment she suggested lack of microbe variety might cause autism (along with autoimmune disease, asthma, and type-2 diabetes). Not fucking cool.
Outrageously poorly researched, not a single reference in sight. Further reading lists are NOT enough when every other sentence she's making a wild assertion that you can't tell whether it's from a book she's misread or whether she's pulling it right out of her ass.
Additionally, written like a stream of consciousness of her going down various half hearted Wikipedia rabbit holes. Utterly atrocious book, which I only got a third of the way into due to it being entertaining how outlandish it is. Stopped being funny the moment the autism assertion occurred.
Outrageously poorly researched, not a single reference in sight. Further reading lists are NOT enough when every other sentence she's making a wild assertion that you can't tell whether it's from a book she's misread or whether she's pulling it right out of her ass.
Additionally, written like a stream of consciousness of her going down various half hearted Wikipedia rabbit holes. Utterly atrocious book, which I only got a third of the way into due to it being entertaining how outlandish it is. Stopped being funny the moment the autism assertion occurred.
December 9, 2021
Found this book very boring. Each paragraph is written like a miniature essay with seemingly no direction and cohesion. Struggled to finish it unfortunately
May 9, 2023
dnf
Poorly referenced and badly structured. Wedlich writes in long, stream-of-conscious paragraphs that always end up nowhere close to where they started. It would be a fun book of rabbit holes if she elaborated on a single interesting fact beyond the first few lines of a wikipedia article, blending fact with fiction, published science with incomplete- sometimes redacted- studies. The pseudoscience was fun until she made a claim that micriobiome diversity could influence autism, a baffling connection that, like with every other throw away point in this book, she refused to elaborate on. Slime is an excellent topic for a non-fiction novel, it would have been lovely to see it covered with some competency.
Poorly referenced and badly structured. Wedlich writes in long, stream-of-conscious paragraphs that always end up nowhere close to where they started. It would be a fun book of rabbit holes if she elaborated on a single interesting fact beyond the first few lines of a wikipedia article, blending fact with fiction, published science with incomplete- sometimes redacted- studies. The pseudoscience was fun until she made a claim that micriobiome diversity could influence autism, a baffling connection that, like with every other throw away point in this book, she refused to elaborate on. Slime is an excellent topic for a non-fiction novel, it would have been lovely to see it covered with some competency.
March 10, 2023
References to Lovecraft, monsters, sex, and space are all covered in this book. I do like the niche topic and how the book is divided into different sections based on the area, but it is a very loaded book because of the way facts are formatted
January 12, 2025
I loved the social parallels.
August 29, 2023
Hardly the most attractive of titles but absolutely fascinating. I had some idea of the importance of mucus membranes and such like but virtually no in depth understanding of the ubiquitous importance of hydrogels or slimes in our biology. Well, it's mainly biology but there are overlaps with geology...as for example where sand gets glued together by exertions from diatoms and thus stabilises the sea shore giving flat surfaces. Where the gel is not present and the sand is loose then ridges and dunes are formed ...thus impacting the nature of the channels etc in the sea.
This is a translation from the German and it's a pretty good translation (in the sense that it flows well...I can't speak to the accuracy) though occasionally I had to read things twice to get the meaning. Wedlich (the author), I think gets a bit too carried away with literary allusions and the role of slime in literature but that may appeal to some people. To me it was a bit of an irritant....I wanted to get onto the real nature of slimes and their chemistry. It's a book that is crying out for illustrations and diagrams. I'd really like to see some chemical structures for these hydrogels...especially the differences between different sorts of hydrogels but there are no illustrions. Likewise, the many examples of animals and microbes that make use of slimes of various sorts would lend themselves to having photographs. I thought that the lack of pictures was a great loss to what would have made a superb book. However, I guess the cost benefit didn't stack up from the publishers perspective.
A few little gems that struck me on reading :
"Invertebvrates make up some 97 percent of all species". (I suspect this does not include fungi, bacteria or viruses).
The term slime covers pseudonyms such as gel, biofilm, mucilage, glycocalyx, soil crusts, etc.
Slime is little more than stiff water with a molecular framework of polymers
Secreted slimes lie the mucus in our stomachs have a large content of mucins...in whatever life form the mucin tend to be similar ...a bit like a bottlebrush with a long single protein stretched out with a large number of specific sugars....nine of them... (glycans) attached along it's length. These glycans seem to play a significant role in biology. For example, with cystic fibrosis the glycands are "starkly altered.There are four different hydrogel systems in the human body.
Every cell in the human body exhibits a glycocalyx which is involved in various cellular processes.......from membrane organisation to cancer progression
Cancer cells don't just roam around at random they need a suitable microenvironment of supporting cells embedded in an altered extracellular matrix.
The gels/slime that surround our organs and cells act as major barriers to invader pathogens....and parasites but for one parasite (the human embryo) the immune defences are lowered ...though the umbilical cord has a protective function via its "wharton's jelly".
In Victorian England the colon was considered a "banal disposable tube".
The seemingly useless appendix probably keeps in store a sample of our micro diversity to repopulate after a wipe-out in the large intestine.
We form an inextricably linked community with our microbes......Microbial diversity in our internal ecosystems seems to make us more resilient....though they are constantly adapting and changing.
Stromatolites form via a biofilm ,,,which is a high functioning city for microbes....it's an entire ecosystem.
Around 1.8 billion years ago the oxygen content of the air and sea dropped dramatically and for a billion years earth was probably very stable (not much change) however, the ocean floor was covered in microbial mats as far as the deep sea....and evolution found a protected hiding hole in these microbial mats .....which contributed to the explosive growth in species in the Cambrian period.
The yearly amount of carbon that ends up in the deep (as agglomerated flakes) from jellyfish, ctenophores and free living tunicates could rival the amount the EU releases into the atmosphere in the form of greenhouse gases.
Unicellular diatoms produce about 20% of the world's oxygen through photosynthesis and use a sticky glue to attach themselves to grains of sand overnight. In the morning they detach and get washed away. But the sand stays glued together ..keeping whole coastlines in shape.
Amphibians first line of defence against pathogens is it's outer mucus layer...the microbiota are thought to play an important role as well.
I liked the story of the American herpetologist who kept snakes around the house ...."the rattlesnake....once you get to know him is a loveable creature"....oh yeah? she died when her Indian cobra bit her...admittedly startled by a camera flash.
Mucilages have been found in shrubs and flowering plants but also in algae, lichen, mosses and ferns. They're secreted by roots, shoots, leaves, and flowers with a myriad of functions.
A form of giant Mexican corn takes up nitrogen directly via its thick, aerial roots which encircle the steamed are covered in a thick hydrogel.
The volume of the deep biosphere is thought to be twice as large as all the oceans combined. It could comprise 70 percent of all bacteria and unicellular arches on the planet, with the biomass of microbes potentially outweighing that of humans nearly 400 times.
Using skimmers to remove micro plastics from the ocean surface could destroy 90 percent of this neuston layer.
According to one researcher soil crusts with their associated nitrogen fixing microbes could account for up to half of the nitrogen fixing that is essential for plants.
A report by wildlife conservation of the European Union showed that investment per vertebrate species has been 468 times higher than that for invertebrates."
Overall, a fascinating book and it opened up a whole new world for me. I also checked in a number of text books which I have on Chemistry, Biochemistry, The Cell and one on Phycology (algae) and there was virtually nothing about hydrogels or mucus...a little about the chemical structure of the glycocalyx .......so seems to me that the text books have a fair bit of catching up to do. Happy to give the book 5 stars but it would be much much better with diagrams and photos. (and maybe less about slimes in literature).
This is a translation from the German and it's a pretty good translation (in the sense that it flows well...I can't speak to the accuracy) though occasionally I had to read things twice to get the meaning. Wedlich (the author), I think gets a bit too carried away with literary allusions and the role of slime in literature but that may appeal to some people. To me it was a bit of an irritant....I wanted to get onto the real nature of slimes and their chemistry. It's a book that is crying out for illustrations and diagrams. I'd really like to see some chemical structures for these hydrogels...especially the differences between different sorts of hydrogels but there are no illustrions. Likewise, the many examples of animals and microbes that make use of slimes of various sorts would lend themselves to having photographs. I thought that the lack of pictures was a great loss to what would have made a superb book. However, I guess the cost benefit didn't stack up from the publishers perspective.
A few little gems that struck me on reading :
"Invertebvrates make up some 97 percent of all species". (I suspect this does not include fungi, bacteria or viruses).
The term slime covers pseudonyms such as gel, biofilm, mucilage, glycocalyx, soil crusts, etc.
Slime is little more than stiff water with a molecular framework of polymers
Secreted slimes lie the mucus in our stomachs have a large content of mucins...in whatever life form the mucin tend to be similar ...a bit like a bottlebrush with a long single protein stretched out with a large number of specific sugars....nine of them... (glycans) attached along it's length. These glycans seem to play a significant role in biology. For example, with cystic fibrosis the glycands are "starkly altered.There are four different hydrogel systems in the human body.
Every cell in the human body exhibits a glycocalyx which is involved in various cellular processes.......from membrane organisation to cancer progression
Cancer cells don't just roam around at random they need a suitable microenvironment of supporting cells embedded in an altered extracellular matrix.
The gels/slime that surround our organs and cells act as major barriers to invader pathogens....and parasites but for one parasite (the human embryo) the immune defences are lowered ...though the umbilical cord has a protective function via its "wharton's jelly".
In Victorian England the colon was considered a "banal disposable tube".
The seemingly useless appendix probably keeps in store a sample of our micro diversity to repopulate after a wipe-out in the large intestine.
We form an inextricably linked community with our microbes......Microbial diversity in our internal ecosystems seems to make us more resilient....though they are constantly adapting and changing.
Stromatolites form via a biofilm ,,,which is a high functioning city for microbes....it's an entire ecosystem.
Around 1.8 billion years ago the oxygen content of the air and sea dropped dramatically and for a billion years earth was probably very stable (not much change) however, the ocean floor was covered in microbial mats as far as the deep sea....and evolution found a protected hiding hole in these microbial mats .....which contributed to the explosive growth in species in the Cambrian period.
The yearly amount of carbon that ends up in the deep (as agglomerated flakes) from jellyfish, ctenophores and free living tunicates could rival the amount the EU releases into the atmosphere in the form of greenhouse gases.
Unicellular diatoms produce about 20% of the world's oxygen through photosynthesis and use a sticky glue to attach themselves to grains of sand overnight. In the morning they detach and get washed away. But the sand stays glued together ..keeping whole coastlines in shape.
Amphibians first line of defence against pathogens is it's outer mucus layer...the microbiota are thought to play an important role as well.
I liked the story of the American herpetologist who kept snakes around the house ...."the rattlesnake....once you get to know him is a loveable creature"....oh yeah? she died when her Indian cobra bit her...admittedly startled by a camera flash.
Mucilages have been found in shrubs and flowering plants but also in algae, lichen, mosses and ferns. They're secreted by roots, shoots, leaves, and flowers with a myriad of functions.
A form of giant Mexican corn takes up nitrogen directly via its thick, aerial roots which encircle the steamed are covered in a thick hydrogel.
The volume of the deep biosphere is thought to be twice as large as all the oceans combined. It could comprise 70 percent of all bacteria and unicellular arches on the planet, with the biomass of microbes potentially outweighing that of humans nearly 400 times.
Using skimmers to remove micro plastics from the ocean surface could destroy 90 percent of this neuston layer.
According to one researcher soil crusts with their associated nitrogen fixing microbes could account for up to half of the nitrogen fixing that is essential for plants.
A report by wildlife conservation of the European Union showed that investment per vertebrate species has been 468 times higher than that for invertebrates."
Overall, a fascinating book and it opened up a whole new world for me. I also checked in a number of text books which I have on Chemistry, Biochemistry, The Cell and one on Phycology (algae) and there was virtually nothing about hydrogels or mucus...a little about the chemical structure of the glycocalyx .......so seems to me that the text books have a fair bit of catching up to do. Happy to give the book 5 stars but it would be much much better with diagrams and photos. (and maybe less about slimes in literature).
April 9, 2022
An unsual topic and subject matter indeed that many find disgusting, fear-inducing, repulsive. Yet, it is an extremely interesting one, which might even hold the future of our planet in a way that we do not hope for.
Wedlich walks through literature and entertainment before she gets to the juicier bits introducing the reader to the functions and properties of slime. The evolution of mucology, the use that different species make of slime, also some promises for our medical and technological advance.
This is the centerpiece that interests me the most. For me, she could have gone deeper here, expand on more species, dig deeper into science. But she didn't.
The ecological role of slime in the development of our planet and its possible future is then much of a lame ending, also because we are in the area of speculation rather than science and, as usual, the danger of propaganda and manipulation lurks inside it.
So, my resume is that this book is an interesting one that could have been shorter in the beginning and end and more expansive in the middle. A nice introduction to a topic seldomly heard about that makes hungry for more.
Wedlich walks through literature and entertainment before she gets to the juicier bits introducing the reader to the functions and properties of slime. The evolution of mucology, the use that different species make of slime, also some promises for our medical and technological advance.
This is the centerpiece that interests me the most. For me, she could have gone deeper here, expand on more species, dig deeper into science. But she didn't.
The ecological role of slime in the development of our planet and its possible future is then much of a lame ending, also because we are in the area of speculation rather than science and, as usual, the danger of propaganda and manipulation lurks inside it.
So, my resume is that this book is an interesting one that could have been shorter in the beginning and end and more expansive in the middle. A nice introduction to a topic seldomly heard about that makes hungry for more.
February 27, 2023
Who would have thought I'd like a book about slime. Well, my fellow nerds, I did.
But this isn't your normal, boring technical tome of scientific jargon. No, Susanne Wedlich has written a book for the masses without making us feel like she had to dumb the book down. She melds popular culture and the creepiest (and incredibly fascinating) sea creatures with the benefits of slime. So much so that I was doing a lot of Googling (please Google pyrosomes, larvaceans and phronima to have your mind blown).
The author does a great job of making the case for slime, or hydrogel, which is a nicer name for it. But whatever you call it, know that it is everywhere and is not as gross as you think. Slime is what helps us fight pathogens, what makes our organs work properly, what slugs use to travel and keep themselves safe from predators (Google Australian red triangle slug, and you guessed it, have your mind blown). It is also a substance that scientists are continuously studying to see how it can be used in treatments for various diseases. Slime is a wonder!
The amount of research the author did is staggering and she includes an extensive "Further Reading" section for those of us who want to know more about slime. I'm not gonna lie, I would love to visit a science lab studying the benefits of slime so I can see first hand what it can possibly do. My inner scientist was incredibly fascinated by what I read and I am so thankful to the publisher for sending me a copy.
If you want to learn more about slime and how it works, I definitely recommend this book as a starting point.
But this isn't your normal, boring technical tome of scientific jargon. No, Susanne Wedlich has written a book for the masses without making us feel like she had to dumb the book down. She melds popular culture and the creepiest (and incredibly fascinating) sea creatures with the benefits of slime. So much so that I was doing a lot of Googling (please Google pyrosomes, larvaceans and phronima to have your mind blown).
The author does a great job of making the case for slime, or hydrogel, which is a nicer name for it. But whatever you call it, know that it is everywhere and is not as gross as you think. Slime is what helps us fight pathogens, what makes our organs work properly, what slugs use to travel and keep themselves safe from predators (Google Australian red triangle slug, and you guessed it, have your mind blown). It is also a substance that scientists are continuously studying to see how it can be used in treatments for various diseases. Slime is a wonder!
The amount of research the author did is staggering and she includes an extensive "Further Reading" section for those of us who want to know more about slime. I'm not gonna lie, I would love to visit a science lab studying the benefits of slime so I can see first hand what it can possibly do. My inner scientist was incredibly fascinated by what I read and I am so thankful to the publisher for sending me a copy.
If you want to learn more about slime and how it works, I definitely recommend this book as a starting point.
July 18, 2023
"Instead of forcing our will on the rest of nature, perhaps we could try slime's soft and slow approach for a change. Yielding instead of pushing through, a will to adapt, and even more flexibility might just enable us to survive these crises of our own making."
The closing words of Slime
I loved the way the science was integrated with fascinating literary clips and cultural allusions, this clearly became a labor of love. A solid bibliography was provided; it would have been more helpful if it were arranged by chapter, or a consistent method for citations had been offered in the text. I slithered my way through this from start to finish. In retrospect, it might have been better to have dipped into chapters at random. As the author notes:
"be warned, this is a sprawling story, bursting at the seams and hard to contain at times. When it comes to slime, there are no hard borders or distinct divisions, or a chronology to connect the dots. Please indulge yourself with the dripping and oozing glory of slime."
Fair enough, but I would have liked a little more structure, and to have had a few more of the goopy threads drawn together into conclusions, no matter how wobbly. Still, I see the world differently after reading this book, and that is no mean achievement.
The closing words of Slime
I loved the way the science was integrated with fascinating literary clips and cultural allusions, this clearly became a labor of love. A solid bibliography was provided; it would have been more helpful if it were arranged by chapter, or a consistent method for citations had been offered in the text. I slithered my way through this from start to finish. In retrospect, it might have been better to have dipped into chapters at random. As the author notes:
"be warned, this is a sprawling story, bursting at the seams and hard to contain at times. When it comes to slime, there are no hard borders or distinct divisions, or a chronology to connect the dots. Please indulge yourself with the dripping and oozing glory of slime."
Fair enough, but I would have liked a little more structure, and to have had a few more of the goopy threads drawn together into conclusions, no matter how wobbly. Still, I see the world differently after reading this book, and that is no mean achievement.
November 10, 2024
Slime: somewhere between liquid and solid, it inspires revulsion yet is vital to life�
This was pretty interesting, filled with plenty of weird and wonderful creatures who are either slimy or use slime in curious and clever ways. But for a book with “a natural history� as the subtitle, I did expect slightly more biological detail (which I reckon would have been possible without making it any less accessible to non-biologists) and I never quite found myself itching to pick it up. Also, some pictures and/or diagrams would not have gone amiss.
I didn’t expect the first chapter on slime in popular culture - specifically our association with slime as a negative thing (aliens, supernatural goo, etc.) and how that shows up in books and films. I have abysmal pop culture knowledge, particularly in terms of the horror and sci-fi canons, so this was actually rather fascinating. Until it carried through into the subsequent chapters and got a bit annoying, because I was most interested in the natural history side of things.
An accessible, wide-ranging book about slimy creatures and various biological uses of slime in the natural world, full of fun little facts and information tidbits but heavy on the pop culture references.
This was pretty interesting, filled with plenty of weird and wonderful creatures who are either slimy or use slime in curious and clever ways. But for a book with “a natural history� as the subtitle, I did expect slightly more biological detail (which I reckon would have been possible without making it any less accessible to non-biologists) and I never quite found myself itching to pick it up. Also, some pictures and/or diagrams would not have gone amiss.
I didn’t expect the first chapter on slime in popular culture - specifically our association with slime as a negative thing (aliens, supernatural goo, etc.) and how that shows up in books and films. I have abysmal pop culture knowledge, particularly in terms of the horror and sci-fi canons, so this was actually rather fascinating. Until it carried through into the subsequent chapters and got a bit annoying, because I was most interested in the natural history side of things.
An accessible, wide-ranging book about slimy creatures and various biological uses of slime in the natural world, full of fun little facts and information tidbits but heavy on the pop culture references.
September 25, 2022
This was a Christmas present that also neatly fitted into Women in Translation Month.
When I first started this book I thought it was going to be a definite 5 stars. The author starts by writing about why slime causes such revulsion when it is so important in our lives, including various appearances in fiction and popular culture - Ghostbusters anyone?
But then she goes on to describe how slime is integral to cells, how it keeps toxins out in our own bodies, and even how it is found at the bottom of deep oceans.
This is a really accessible book, and no background in science is needed. However, I found it a bit repetitive because the role of slime in different parts of the ecosystem, as written in different chapters of the book, is pretty similar. So, nothing wrong with the book, or the writing, but maybe it could have been organised in a different way. Still a pretty interesting read though.
When I first started this book I thought it was going to be a definite 5 stars. The author starts by writing about why slime causes such revulsion when it is so important in our lives, including various appearances in fiction and popular culture - Ghostbusters anyone?
But then she goes on to describe how slime is integral to cells, how it keeps toxins out in our own bodies, and even how it is found at the bottom of deep oceans.
This is a really accessible book, and no background in science is needed. However, I found it a bit repetitive because the role of slime in different parts of the ecosystem, as written in different chapters of the book, is pretty similar. So, nothing wrong with the book, or the writing, but maybe it could have been organised in a different way. Still a pretty interesting read though.
February 26, 2023
Not my favorite kind of reading. It's well written and funny, the subject of slime - fascinating, and there are a lot of surprising facts here, but it wasn't as engaging as I expected. I think the impressive scope of this project was, well, a little too ambitious. I appreciate background stories in popular science books, but here the cultural and psychological aspects of slime are treated as important as the evolutionary or biological ones, and for me that was a disappointment. Mixing such a wide range of topics resulted in something more like a curiosity cabinet than a coherent narrative. But if you like a book that can be read in small bites - as the author writes, "Not every reader will be interested in every single facet of slime and might skip some parts" - it can undoubtedly be a rewarding experience.
Thanks to the publisher, Melville House Publishing, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
Thanks to the publisher, Melville House Publishing, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
November 11, 2022
Most importantly about the book is that it covers a very unique area. In explaining slime, the book uses some plain language and some good analogies. In addition there is certainly some clever writing along the way. On the other hand, I found that the writing was more literary and less conversational, and contained some rather nebulous discussions. I also felt that the discussions of slime with respect to cultural and emotional significance to be weak. Overall, though, the book is worth reading on the strength of the subject matter. Thank you to Netgalley and Melville House Publishing for the digital review copy.
September 12, 2023
Another quick science book about one subject. In this case, slime. This book abounds in interesting factoids and stories that are tangentially about slime. As other reviews have noted, the author finds some rabbit holes throughout the book and it sometimes feels a little incomplete. I still found the book to be extremely informational and thought provoking. I keep imagining an Earth that was mostly inhabited by slime for thousands of years, without humans. And then we came along later. Slime is life. Life is slimy.
January 3, 2025
4.5/10
A great concept for a deep dive: all about slimes, mucuses, and membranes and how they are used as nature's building blocks. The core hypothesis of this book is that they make nearly all natural life possible and are used by almost every living thing everywhere on earth. So a book about slime turns into a natural history of the entire Earth since the formation of life, predictions for the future, and potentials for alien planets. It's fully fledged out to the point of being overwhelming, even when it gets its point across in the first six or so chapters.
A great concept for a deep dive: all about slimes, mucuses, and membranes and how they are used as nature's building blocks. The core hypothesis of this book is that they make nearly all natural life possible and are used by almost every living thing everywhere on earth. So a book about slime turns into a natural history of the entire Earth since the formation of life, predictions for the future, and potentials for alien planets. It's fully fledged out to the point of being overwhelming, even when it gets its point across in the first six or so chapters.
June 24, 2024
Such a well-written deep dive into the ooze of life. It touches on many different areas such as literary, psychological, chemical and biological. Some parts were easier to get through than others, and I found that because she seeks to encompass so many different areas that they all seemed a bit underdeveloped. The fun facts were absolutely fascinating and I ended up finding some great books from the references.
June 11, 2022
Intriguing for the premise alone. I really liked the beginning where the author discusses our biological fascination and revulsion towards slime. The remainder of the book dealt with the various biological and ecological functions of slime, from the movement of snails, to biofilms to amphibians. I found some parts lacking some focus but overall an interesting read.
November 23, 2022
A strange little book. It jumps round quite a bit looking at slime (as a concept and as a thing) from just about any angle you can think of. If you want to dig deeper into any of the topics the author picks up it's probably not the right book but I really enjoyed the glimpses into the world of slime.
November 27, 2021
Absolutely fascinating and eye opening. Covers a wide range of scientific areas touching on biological hydrogels/slimes that have never been connected. German edition includes beautiful illustrations but English version is a bit more streamlined and has been updated on the content as well.
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