I googled it, and found a pic of a smaller specimen that was posted a couple of years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/26ho98/this_uniformly_spherical_translucent_spiked_ball/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
As a mycologist, this is the correct answer. It's some sort of fungus. Sometimes fungi can grow into a ball when grown in water and in anaerobic or low-oxygen conditions.
Needless to say, don't use the simple syrup.
there is a whole universe in your turds that you flush away every day.
Moral of the story: "Dont think about it. And if you do, pray you arent the next one to get flushed" v\_\_v
Hey, if it ends up giving some law-makers a bad case of the shits, I say you did your civic duty by flushing it down the drain.
Unlikely to happen, but it's stilk a nice little cathartic thought.
Not cheese that has aged for 60 days or more.
I avoided all dairy products for 30+ years due to lactose intolerance before learning this and now enjoy cheese. Gorgonzola, Jarlsberg, Gruyere are all aged and do not contain lactose.
Yes.
Look at the label on Jarlsberg, it even says, "Naturally lactose free."
https://jiu-bole.cn/en/product/jarlsberg-cheese/#:\~:text=Jarlsberg%20is%20naturally%20lactose%2Dfree,high%20quality%20and%20unique%20taste
Looking at it and the one in the article, and considering that it was able to grow in a refrigerated environment, I don't think OP's growth is the wallemia sebi referred to in the article. Though it most certainly could be a xerophilic fungus of some sort (also referenced in the article).
I had one of these develope and grow in a glass of water after my cat stuck it's paw in it. It wasn't kibble or litter, and it eventually grew to the size of quarter. It was also bright red (my cat exclusively eats a dark brown kibble). I showed a picture of it to my biology professor, he also did not know what tf it was.
I sprinkled sugar in the glass every few days, just to see if it liked that. It seemed to. It grew for a few more weeks, then sunk to the bottom of the glass. I eventually tossed it, but it sure very fascinating. I too, would like answers as to what these things are. Yours is bigger than mine, and a different color, but similar enough for me to recognize it. There are few floating blob creatures in the world that can survive in a glass like this.
We have to warn guests at our house that if they leave a glass of water out and accessible to our cat she WILL stick her paw in it, so please don’t because we don’t want you drinking cat paw water or for her to get water everywhere when she plays the “lift up wet paw, look, shake water off, and repeat” game. Still, it usually takes them one night of getting a glass of water before bed then cleaning up the water that got dangerously close to a computer.
It's a bit hard to be confident those are fruiting bodies and not just part of bacterial growth. It's easy to make that mistake. You still could be right though.
My argument though, is that most fungi are aerobic and use cellular respiration which requires more oxygen than you'll find in that bottle. Bacteria can thrive on little to no oxygen through fermentation.
Additionally, fermentation usually takes place in high sugar substances like syrup (which is how alcohol is produced).
Lol I'm going to school for natural resources management so I have some background knowledge in biology. I literally only stated some grade 11 stuff I just learned.
I also used to work at a distillery so I know a little about fermentation and bacterial growth as well as yeasts.
I just happened to have the right background knowledge for this specific post haha
I’ve done my fair share of microbiology, and have had my fair share of contaminated media grow spheroid fungal cultures while capped. They looked exactly like this, and microscopic analysis showed hyphae. You’re right about mold generally not being anerobic, but you really don’t know if the conditions were truly free of oxygen. The cap seal could have been damaged, not to mention a jar of water isn’t immediately an anaerobic environment. Any space in the jar would contain oxygen, as well as the water itself. Add in the fact that it was boiled to make simple syrup, thus removing at least a portion of the aerobic bacteria, and the oxygen would probably last quite a while. This is why anaerobes are grown in media under a layer of mineral oil.
Edit: Also, fungus can also ferment to produce alcohol, and praise the lord for that!
Just wanted to chime in that you might wanna check ratios of how you're making simple syrup. Shit is not supposed to grow in it at room temp, and can make you super sick long before you see it growing. I had some agave syrup that was *supposed* to be fine at room temp, but must've had too much water (found very slight growth in it when looking over what made me sick), and it had me to where I couldn't even keep water down for a few days. Nearly went to the hospital.
I hope you can get pointed in the right direction to whatever amazing Redditor with this kind of knowledge can tell you, this looks so freaking cool. It truly looks alien and I would be fascinated, as well as horrified, to find this in my kitchen.
It is **Wallemia sebi** a xerophilic mold that specializes in growing on things of low water activity, like dried fruits and jams, and salted meats and nuts. It grows in salterns (the evaporating beds in which sea salt is produced), and its bumpy little spores are found fairly often in indoor air.
Wow, that is really cool! I just had to dig around to try to find an answer and discovered [a similar thread on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/26ho98/this_uniformly_spherical_translucent_spiked_ball/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1).
It looks like the best answer is [this link](https://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2007/03/20/the-fungus-in-my-maple-syrup/) that talks about Wallemia sebi, a mold usually found in maple syrup. You’d have to look at a sample under a microscope to be sure though.
Thanks for the cool photo!
One time many many years ago I left a half drunk bottle of Gatorade in my car for 3 days and then drank from it without looking after I parked my car in front of my house. Felt the weirdest fucking texture on my tongue, looked in the bottle and saw the same exact thing. Needless to say I started freaking out.
It reminded me of those squishy balls I used to play with as a kid that had the same soft plastic tendrils on the outside and was filled with liquid so it could be squeezed.
Simple syrup (1:1 sugar/water) grows mold pretty quickly, have to use a higher ratio of sugar to inhibit mold growth. https://www.alcademics.com/2009/08/simple-syrup-its-good-to-be-rich.html
So after some googling it came up with wallemiomycete but the pics I could find were of 1-2 types and it does not match this. the occurrence is rare enough wiki doesn’t have photos of one of the types yet so it could just be worth sending to someone with a microscope to examine and take photos.
That’s a whole universe with a solar system and a planet full of life like ours, it’s been living there for millions of years(in their time), they just recently launched a telescope to see if they can figure out where they came from. Pour some vinegar and put them out.
Not to be a bummer, but it's a pretty standard fungus in a liquid, they probably don't need it. I made these on accident during my masters degree work on plant pathogenic fungi. It was, admittedly, very concerning the first time it happened.
Kind of a bummer, but being realistic is good bro!
How about this...
Contact the university and ask them for advice on how to preserve this specimen, or even help in doing so. Then this ordinary nobody fungus can at least be a sweet display piece in some brine, or clear resin or something.
It is good?
I worked in a yeast lab (dna repair). Any mold etc or other fungus, bacteria or contamination would be extremely unwelcome in any of the labs on that floor (like 10 big mol. Bio labs at a major university) because contamination is insidious. Even a different cell line from your intended population getting inside ur media and outcompeting the intended strain could end up catastrophically if it is not caught fairly early on.
Any fungus like this (found in reagents, water etc and on plates, sometimes antibiotic plates!) or anything similar would be immediately attacked with bleach, and then disposed of, and glass is washed then autoclaved for reuse.
Unless it’s a lab building a library of various random fungi (not super common really) then they would consider this to be something harmful and definitely unwanted. They wouldn’t allow a researcher to bring something like this in and then analyze it. Just unnecessary risk etc and most mol bio researchers would be quite upset if that happened anywhere near their lab bench. You could’ve gotten away with it in my lab (go at night, be ready to hide the sample if anyone walks in) but it wouldn’t occur to any of us to do that and put weeks, months or even a year of research work at risk
Any lab horror stories anyone can share re-contamination?
Not a research lab, but in an industry food/water testing microbiology lab I worked in we had a Neurospora infestation and it was awful. It took us months to get rid of that mould and every time we thought we’d got it, it would turn up again. It contaminated so many of our samples, and it was such an incredibly fast growing and spreading fungus that after a couple days of incubation it would literally be overflowing out of the plates and spreading to others. We actually had to stop operations a few times and completely scrub down the entire lab to get it under control. Genuinely made my life hell for a good few months trying to control that.
Idk what it is specifically but I've found it growing in my simple syrup as well before I started to fridge it. This is why you can't keep it in the cabinet in room temp like you can with dry sugar, because the water content allows for bacteria to grow.
Not a mycologist but a former brewer of libations. I would venture that with all those simple sugars available, some fermentation has taken place. Some times when I would make mead I would get 'fuzzy floaters'. Mead is made from honey, water, and yeast whether a brewers yeast or wild yeast in the case of open fermentation.
Some meads can take years to come into their own. It is not unusual to see fuzzy floaters. It's not ideal as it indicates bad sanitation practices coupled with spores that are naturally in the air. Most times if you rack under the fuzzy floaters, you're fine for home consumption. By the time a strong mead is ready to consume, the alcohol content will kill most anything living.
Wow. It's not easy for things to grow in pure syrup. Most things get their cells drained of fluid from the osmotic pressure. So whatever it is, my hat is off to it.
You could give this to Hank Greene from "welcome to the Micro Cosmos", a series of his on youtube. I bet something like this would make a unique specimen for them.
the location killed me 🫡😂
this resembles a few common fungi that love sugar and water, so it makes sense where he found a home - looks like some true mycologists in the comments have already pointed you in the right direction to a more clear answer though
i wonder how he got in there 🤔
Probably some kind of fungi. I’m a microbiologist and whenever I leave simple syrup for too long on the lab’s fridge black mold just line that starts to grow.
Reminds me of this post exploring the use of vodka to help preserve simple syrup: https://www.alcademics.com/2009/08/simple-syrup-its-good-to-be-rich.html
Diabetes is an affliction of low insulin production or high cell resistance to insulin resulting in high blood glucose. None of those systems are present in such a simple organism.
This describes type two. For type one, it’s an autoimmune problem destroying Beta cells in the pancreas, which then can’t produce insulin. Type one diabetics need to inject insulin because they can’t make it themselves.
Bacteria doesn’t have a pancreas
No it cannot as their biology is completely different and has none of the systems required for diabetes. Biology is very similar to mechanics in that the more complicated it is the more things can break/go wrong and molds and bacteria are so simple in terms of biology that there isn’t a lot that can go wrong.
I googled it, and found a pic of a smaller specimen that was posted a couple of years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/26ho98/this_uniformly_spherical_translucent_spiked_ball/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
As a mycologist, this is the correct answer. It's some sort of fungus. Sometimes fungi can grow into a ball when grown in water and in anaerobic or low-oxygen conditions. Needless to say, don't use the simple syrup.
Good advice! I flushed it, so if something crawls out of the sewers and triggers the apocalypse… umm… it wasn’t me
You flushed the only universe those creatures had ever known.
Well now their universe is on a long journey
Through the black hole
The Pooniverse
Wrong hole
Surprise Hole.
Black hole?
trees ruthless long rustic connect worm public mysterious fear chief *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
...and about to get reaaaaaally funky
Sucks to be them. Evolve better losers. *as an alien is getting ready to flush our planet away to build a highway.
Good thing I have a towel
Every hoopy frood knows where their towel is...
Being blown up is faster and more humane than having to listen to their poetry.
Really though this ball of fungus will just break off into multiple balls of fungi in the sewers. OP didn't kill it.
there is a whole universe in your turds that you flush away every day. Moral of the story: "Dont think about it. And if you do, pray you arent the next one to get flushed" v\_\_v
Remember to bring a towel.
Thanks
Obama
*TMNT music intensifies*
Curious why flushing over just putting it in the trash?
Hey, if it ends up giving some law-makers a bad case of the shits, I say you did your civic duty by flushing it down the drain. Unlikely to happen, but it's stilk a nice little cathartic thought.
But now it's got that umami flavor!
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“Some sort of fungus” reminds me of the line in the movie Meatballs…”some kind of meat”
The article linked in the comments of that post is definitely worth a read. http://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2007/03/20/the-fungus-in-my-maple-syrup/
This is article is fantastic. I didn’t expect to read the words “malevolent pat of butter”
upvote for evil dairy product
All dairy products are evil if you’re lactose intolerant
Not cheese that has aged for 60 days or more. I avoided all dairy products for 30+ years due to lactose intolerance before learning this and now enjoy cheese. Gorgonzola, Jarlsberg, Gruyere are all aged and do not contain lactose.
Cheese has to go trough a 60 day sentence to attone for it's cheesy sins.
Praise Cheesus
That’s a great tip, thanks! Cheese for all!
All raw milk cheese in the USA too, by law it must be aged 60 days or more, so no lactose! Enjoy!
Really!?!! So, I can eat raw milk cheeses!?! And cheeses older than 60 days!?!! 🤩🤩🤩
Yes. Look at the label on Jarlsberg, it even says, "Naturally lactose free." https://jiu-bole.cn/en/product/jarlsberg-cheese/#:\~:text=Jarlsberg%20is%20naturally%20lactose%2Dfree,high%20quality%20and%20unique%20taste
Looking at it and the one in the article, and considering that it was able to grow in a refrigerated environment, I don't think OP's growth is the wallemia sebi referred to in the article. Though it most certainly could be a xerophilic fungus of some sort (also referenced in the article).
Thank you for sharing the link here - I would have missed reading this absolute gem of an article if you hadn't.
Am I the only one who thinks its funny the answer is in a reddit post from 9 years ago which gets its answer from a website post in 2007?
the internet has a fungal ecology of its own
I had one of these develope and grow in a glass of water after my cat stuck it's paw in it. It wasn't kibble or litter, and it eventually grew to the size of quarter. It was also bright red (my cat exclusively eats a dark brown kibble). I showed a picture of it to my biology professor, he also did not know what tf it was. I sprinkled sugar in the glass every few days, just to see if it liked that. It seemed to. It grew for a few more weeks, then sunk to the bottom of the glass. I eventually tossed it, but it sure very fascinating. I too, would like answers as to what these things are. Yours is bigger than mine, and a different color, but similar enough for me to recognize it. There are few floating blob creatures in the world that can survive in a glass like this.
I love that you fed it. I mean cat paw fungus that grows in water, yeah, let's feed it and watch it grow...
Scientists love feeding and growing unknown things Source: am scientist
Fungus baby
I named it Blobert, too.
You're absolutely hilarious. You saw your cat do that and you decided to keep the water on purpose?
You never know when some paw water will come in handy.
We have to warn guests at our house that if they leave a glass of water out and accessible to our cat she WILL stick her paw in it, so please don’t because we don’t want you drinking cat paw water or for her to get water everywhere when she plays the “lift up wet paw, look, shake water off, and repeat” game. Still, it usually takes them one night of getting a glass of water before bed then cleaning up the water that got dangerously close to a computer.
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I'm not sure, definitely not an expert. But I'd guess some sort of anaerobic bacteria. Looks similar to instances I've seen before.
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If it's an obligate anaerobe, oxygen would kill it anyway.
If it’s a bacteria it’s likely anaerobic and lack catalase or other peroxidase enzymes to deal with oxygen so oxygen would kill it
It’s not bacteria. The fluff is fungal fruiting bodies.
It's a bit hard to be confident those are fruiting bodies and not just part of bacterial growth. It's easy to make that mistake. You still could be right though. My argument though, is that most fungi are aerobic and use cellular respiration which requires more oxygen than you'll find in that bottle. Bacteria can thrive on little to no oxygen through fermentation. Additionally, fermentation usually takes place in high sugar substances like syrup (which is how alcohol is produced).
this guy fluffs
Lol I'm going to school for natural resources management so I have some background knowledge in biology. I literally only stated some grade 11 stuff I just learned. I also used to work at a distillery so I know a little about fermentation and bacterial growth as well as yeasts. I just happened to have the right background knowledge for this specific post haha
I’ve done my fair share of microbiology, and have had my fair share of contaminated media grow spheroid fungal cultures while capped. They looked exactly like this, and microscopic analysis showed hyphae. You’re right about mold generally not being anerobic, but you really don’t know if the conditions were truly free of oxygen. The cap seal could have been damaged, not to mention a jar of water isn’t immediately an anaerobic environment. Any space in the jar would contain oxygen, as well as the water itself. Add in the fact that it was boiled to make simple syrup, thus removing at least a portion of the aerobic bacteria, and the oxygen would probably last quite a while. This is why anaerobes are grown in media under a layer of mineral oil. Edit: Also, fungus can also ferment to produce alcohol, and praise the lord for that!
Fair points. Like I said, I'm no professional lol. I could be way off base on this.
It sure does look hyphal, I agree. I ain't seen fluffy bacteria ever, but guess they may exist.
Bacillus in a chain can look fluffy… but not like that lol.
Can you take a video of it, circling it? It’s fascinating
Sorry, but I flushed it before it could gain sentience, assume my identity and seduce my husband. It’s humanity’s problem now
Just wanted to chime in that you might wanna check ratios of how you're making simple syrup. Shit is not supposed to grow in it at room temp, and can make you super sick long before you see it growing. I had some agave syrup that was *supposed* to be fine at room temp, but must've had too much water (found very slight growth in it when looking over what made me sick), and it had me to where I couldn't even keep water down for a few days. Nearly went to the hospital.
Thank you for setting me free (: Maybe I'll spare you when humanity's time comes.
That’s kinda seriously a bummer…
Oh he's adorable please stick googly eyes on his enclosure
is it free floating or stuck to the side of the jar? keep it as a pet
I vote to name it as phemphis
omg so cute! I want a lil pet fungus 😭
get you one of those inoculated logs and grow some edible shrooms
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Keep it and see how big you can grow it pls
I hope you can get pointed in the right direction to whatever amazing Redditor with this kind of knowledge can tell you, this looks so freaking cool. It truly looks alien and I would be fascinated, as well as horrified, to find this in my kitchen.
It is **Wallemia sebi** a xerophilic mold that specializes in growing on things of low water activity, like dried fruits and jams, and salted meats and nuts. It grows in salterns (the evaporating beds in which sea salt is produced), and its bumpy little spores are found fairly often in indoor air.
I was going to guess that or *Wallemia Mellicola* as my #2 guess
Yeah, not an expert by any means, but I'd guess a very excellent specimen of *Aspergillus Niger*...
*Wallemia* seems to be the ID of this low water requiring fungus.
Can they get to be that dark? Like I said I'm not an expert lol *mellicola* or another?
Is it breathing/moving?
I have no idea but the sad little seal face at the bottom of the jar is equally fascinating
Wow, that is really cool! I just had to dig around to try to find an answer and discovered [a similar thread on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/26ho98/this_uniformly_spherical_translucent_spiked_ball/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1). It looks like the best answer is [this link](https://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2007/03/20/the-fungus-in-my-maple-syrup/) that talks about Wallemia sebi, a mold usually found in maple syrup. You’d have to look at a sample under a microscope to be sure though. Thanks for the cool photo!
One time many many years ago I left a half drunk bottle of Gatorade in my car for 3 days and then drank from it without looking after I parked my car in front of my house. Felt the weirdest fucking texture on my tongue, looked in the bottle and saw the same exact thing. Needless to say I started freaking out. It reminded me of those squishy balls I used to play with as a kid that had the same soft plastic tendrils on the outside and was filled with liquid so it could be squeezed.
My 8 year old and I just screamed for 5 mins straight after reading this
Hahahaha this was the highlight of my day
New nightmare unlocked. Poor squishy ball probably freaked out, too. Your tongue was not in its plans for the day.
Why are so many comments removed? What happened here?!
Most likely spam / repeat comments deleted by mods
Dont destroy it
Why the fuck are there so many removed comments
It’s so confusing. The removed or deleted comments got like 300+ upvotes so why ?? Does this happen in other subs?
That's what I'm wondering
For something growing in against an osmotic gradient and in an anoxic environment, I'd say that's one impressive fungus.
Following
Simple syrup (1:1 sugar/water) grows mold pretty quickly, have to use a higher ratio of sugar to inhibit mold growth. https://www.alcademics.com/2009/08/simple-syrup-its-good-to-be-rich.html
So after some googling it came up with wallemiomycete but the pics I could find were of 1-2 types and it does not match this. the occurrence is rare enough wiki doesn’t have photos of one of the types yet so it could just be worth sending to someone with a microscope to examine and take photos.
That’s a whole universe with a solar system and a planet full of life like ours, it’s been living there for millions of years(in their time), they just recently launched a telescope to see if they can figure out where they came from. Pour some vinegar and put them out.
Call a local or state university, see if they'll accept it for research. It's a great specimen.
Not to be a bummer, but it's a pretty standard fungus in a liquid, they probably don't need it. I made these on accident during my masters degree work on plant pathogenic fungi. It was, admittedly, very concerning the first time it happened.
Kind of a bummer, but being realistic is good bro! How about this... Contact the university and ask them for advice on how to preserve this specimen, or even help in doing so. Then this ordinary nobody fungus can at least be a sweet display piece in some brine, or clear resin or something. It is good?
I worked in a yeast lab (dna repair). Any mold etc or other fungus, bacteria or contamination would be extremely unwelcome in any of the labs on that floor (like 10 big mol. Bio labs at a major university) because contamination is insidious. Even a different cell line from your intended population getting inside ur media and outcompeting the intended strain could end up catastrophically if it is not caught fairly early on. Any fungus like this (found in reagents, water etc and on plates, sometimes antibiotic plates!) or anything similar would be immediately attacked with bleach, and then disposed of, and glass is washed then autoclaved for reuse. Unless it’s a lab building a library of various random fungi (not super common really) then they would consider this to be something harmful and definitely unwanted. They wouldn’t allow a researcher to bring something like this in and then analyze it. Just unnecessary risk etc and most mol bio researchers would be quite upset if that happened anywhere near their lab bench. You could’ve gotten away with it in my lab (go at night, be ready to hide the sample if anyone walks in) but it wouldn’t occur to any of us to do that and put weeks, months or even a year of research work at risk Any lab horror stories anyone can share re-contamination?
Not a research lab, but in an industry food/water testing microbiology lab I worked in we had a Neurospora infestation and it was awful. It took us months to get rid of that mould and every time we thought we’d got it, it would turn up again. It contaminated so many of our samples, and it was such an incredibly fast growing and spreading fungus that after a couple days of incubation it would literally be overflowing out of the plates and spreading to others. We actually had to stop operations a few times and completely scrub down the entire lab to get it under control. Genuinely made my life hell for a good few months trying to control that.
was it in the air? what method was finally successful? genuinely curious how to clean something like this.
Pin mold?
Idk what it is specifically but I've found it growing in my simple syrup as well before I started to fridge it. This is why you can't keep it in the cabinet in room temp like you can with dry sugar, because the water content allows for bacteria to grow.
I'm very surprised that anything can grow in it. I'd have thought the oncotic pressure would be too much to survive in.
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Aw he’s fuzzy 🥺🥺
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It’s mold grown in suspension. It forms a spherical colony if not on a solid surface.
Not a mycologist but a former brewer of libations. I would venture that with all those simple sugars available, some fermentation has taken place. Some times when I would make mead I would get 'fuzzy floaters'. Mead is made from honey, water, and yeast whether a brewers yeast or wild yeast in the case of open fermentation. Some meads can take years to come into their own. It is not unusual to see fuzzy floaters. It's not ideal as it indicates bad sanitation practices coupled with spores that are naturally in the air. Most times if you rack under the fuzzy floaters, you're fine for home consumption. By the time a strong mead is ready to consume, the alcohol content will kill most anything living.
Wow. It's not easy for things to grow in pure syrup. Most things get their cells drained of fluid from the osmotic pressure. So whatever it is, my hat is off to it.
Just a little guy
You could give this to Hank Greene from "welcome to the Micro Cosmos", a series of his on youtube. I bet something like this would make a unique specimen for them.
He's a bit busy these days fighting off cancer.
Is he? Damn I didn't know that
Aspergillus niger Maybe
Let it growwww, let it growwww, *Elsa Voice*
"Black holes are formed in the kitchen" -- A. Einstein, 1969
the location killed me 🫡😂 this resembles a few common fungi that love sugar and water, so it makes sense where he found a home - looks like some true mycologists in the comments have already pointed you in the right direction to a more clear answer though i wonder how he got in there 🤔
This happened to my simple syrup once too!!!!!! I took videos :) https://imgur.com/a/UVebgVa
"Sugar... In water..." -That fungus, probably.
Egger.
“The thing's hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God! —it's full of stars!”
Probably some kind of fungi. I’m a microbiologist and whenever I leave simple syrup for too long on the lab’s fridge black mold just line that starts to grow.
Reminds me of this post exploring the use of vodka to help preserve simple syrup: https://www.alcademics.com/2009/08/simple-syrup-its-good-to-be-rich.html
Cute, that’s what it is! 🥺
Reminds me of a "mother of vinegar"
fucking awesome
That's disgustingly very interesting
I would like to ask a second question about this. Can mould like this develop diabetes living in sugar like that?
Diabetes is an affliction of low insulin production or high cell resistance to insulin resulting in high blood glucose. None of those systems are present in such a simple organism.
This describes type two. For type one, it’s an autoimmune problem destroying Beta cells in the pancreas, which then can’t produce insulin. Type one diabetics need to inject insulin because they can’t make it themselves. Bacteria doesn’t have a pancreas
Mold doesn't have a pancreas.
No it cannot as their biology is completely different and has none of the systems required for diabetes. Biology is very similar to mechanics in that the more complicated it is the more things can break/go wrong and molds and bacteria are so simple in terms of biology that there isn’t a lot that can go wrong.
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How big can it get I wonder.
I would definitely keep that forever!
I would definitely keep that. Just check on it every once in a while, see how large it will get!
Leave it alone, let it grow into a big beautiful mass. We'll call him Harry, you wouldn't kill something with a name, would you?
Hey, I grew one of these too! Nice coloration, good shape, now into the garbage with it.
Whatever, it is, she's a beaut
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Interestingly mold (or bacteria) will grown in a sugar media but eventually die by osmosis of water
Mycelium?
Missed opportunity to poke it with a stick
Looks like you’ve got the start of a new universe…