Slithersucker

The slithersucker is a predatory mycetozoan slime mold native to the Northern Forest of Novopangea, 200 million AD, in The Future is Wild.

The slithersucker lives in the lichen trees and is an efficient predator. At certain times of day, it oozes along a branch and dangles strands of itself below, forming a sticky curtain. A passing prey, such as a small flish (for instance, forest flish) or an insect is easily trapped in the slithersucker's slimy net. Once the animal has been caught, the slithersucker slides off the branch and crashes to the forest floor. There, it slowly phagocytoses its victim. If prey is big enough, it may take days for the mycetozoan to absorb it, so rotting flish and insects provide plentiful nutrients for the lichen trees.

In order to reproduce, a slithersucker will change its shape to look like a lichen tree fruit. And so it lays on a lichen tree branch and waits. If it waits long enough, it will be noticed by a megasquid and then devoured by the animal. The slithersucker has no intention of becoming anything else's meal, it is just simply hitching a ride on the megasquid. Some of its own cells will migrate to the megasquid's brain and almost take control of its mind in order to steer it in a particular direction. Other cells migrate up to the vocal sac and induce a headache that drives the megasquid insane. Then, unexpectedly, it makes the megasquid "sneeze" out gushy parts of the slithersucker out of pores in its vocal sac and onto trees within range. All these bits and pieces now blown out will develop into new slithersuckers. Once the slime mold has left its body, the megasquid just continues its life in the seemingly endless forest.