Foraging behavior of a forest slime

Question

The continent of Enyvea is home to a diverse population of slimes. These amorphous creatures are blobs of viscous goo of mostly homogenous composition. In order to move, they draw magic from the background magical field and convert it directly into kinetic energy, propelling their whole body or parts of it in the chosen direction.

General info about slimes:

• The slimes are uniform in color, and their color is characteristic to the species.

• The weight of an average slime is 50-200 kg (assuming slime has the density of water), though there exist species as small as a tennis ball and as large as several tonnes.

• Different species of slimes can have different levels of intelligence, ranging from simple "eat anything" to as complex as humanlike.

• The slime can change its shape at will and assume any form it wants, though morphing into more detailed forms requires more attention and takes proportionally more time. Once the morphing is complete, sustaining the current form is significantly easier.

• Each species of slime produces a different set of digestive enzymes to digest its preferred prey.

• The slime converts magic to energy at a finite rate, and not fast enough to sustain levitation or movement at unnatural speeds.

• There are very few slime species which feed on magic, and for good reason: Most of the places able to sustain this niche are already overgrown by manaweed, a strange leafless bushy plant that does this better than slimes.

• Individual slimes can merge and split back at will. While merged, the merged individuals think like a hive mind.

How do the slimes move:

• oozing
• leaping
• crawling with pseudopods
• morphing into animal or pseudo-animal form (even as simple as blob on four legs) and walking or running
• morphing into a humanoid form and moving in a human way or similar
• any combination of the above

The senses of a slime:

• aura vision: The slime can sense the magical energies present in its surroundings. Magical objects and creatures look as if they were glowing, non-magical ones look dark, and the background magic is seen as a tinted fog.
• taste: The slime can taste objects with its whole body.
• smell: The slime smells its surroundings by absorbing chemicals present in the air
• touch: The slime knows where it is touching something, and whether it sticks to the thing it is touching.
• hearing: By sensing the vibrations travelling through its body the slime is able to hear its surroundings.

Species info:

The common green slime is an opportunistic omnivore. It is about the average size for a slime. Its translucent green color helps it camouflage in the vegetation. It cannot digest plant matter, with the exception of the fruits. It is fairly intelligent in terms of a slime, but not as intelligent as a human. It lives a solitary life, but can cooperate with others of its kind when the situation requires it.

Region info:

The forests of Én'vyen are the domain of elves and other nature spirits. No human ever dares to come here in fear of angering the fae. The dense vegetation makes this place difficult to move through. The center of the forest is so overgrown that the light barely reaches the ground. A diverse population of animals and magical creatures inhabits this place.

Fauna of the forest:

• The green dragon is the apex predator of the forest. It has an elongated body of length 25-40 m (from the tip of the snout to the tip of the tail), with four short legs and a pair of large wings. It has animal-like intelligence and poisonous gas breath. Females nest ontop the gigantic trees in center of the forest, laying one or two eggs at a time. While incubating the eggs, the dragon coils around them like a snake.

• The forest drake is much smaller than a dragon, measuring 2-3 m in length. It is green or brown in coloration and has a muscular, stocky build and a pair of short horns pointed backward. It nests in burrows at the outskirts of the forest.

• The yellow-eyed gremlin is an arboreal creature filling the same ecological niche as primates do in our world. It has rough hairless green skin and eats fruits, bugs, and other small animals. It has a flat face with upturned nose, large ears, and wide mouth full of numerous pointy teeth. It is very curious and often investigates unknown things without much thinking. It is known for its distinctive cackling and its glowing yellow eyes were the source of many ghost stories amongst the local folk.

• The batbirds are birdlike animals with many chiropteran features. They live in groups and different species have different coloration and body size. They have intelligence comparable to corvids. Their call consists of raspy 'car' and 'car-car' noises.

• The lizardmen are troglodytic humanoidal reptilians measuring 1.4-1.6 m in height. They live in tribes and are capable of coordinated hunting and making simple tools such as a spear. Their language consists of various short and long hisses. Some live a nomadic lifestyle, while the others dwell in caves. The females carry their egg with themselves, if they have one.

• The analogues of deer, foxes, boars, rodents, lizards, snakes and frogs also live here, as well as countless species of insects and other invertebrates.

Flora of the forest:

• The elvenwood tree is the largest tree of the forest, its branches are so thick that they can support a dragon nest. These trees are towering over anything else in the forest, especially in its center where they've grown much larger. The tree is pollinated by wind and its seeds resemble walnuts.

• The glowshade tree is a medium-sized tree known for its characteristic coloration. Its leaves are green to teal with dark blue veins and its branches have similar dark blue tint. It has very aromatic flowers and its small blue fruits are rich in mana.

• The manaweed plant is a dense-growing leafless bush that gains energy from magic insead of sunlight. It grows in large amount in the center of the forest, where light is so scarce that other plants have problems growing. It has small purple flowers glowing with magical energies and its dry seeds are in pods that crack open after they mature.

• The sylvan berry bush is a small thorny bush growing at the outskirts of the forest. Its juicy red fruits are a delicacy amongst animals of the forest.

• Several other mundane trees, which are of little interest to a slime.

• Miscellaneous grasses, ferns, mushrooms, and flowering plants.

Where and how would the slimes forage for food in such a biome?

Answer 1

Since the slimes cannot digest plant matter, other than fruits, there are a few real world niches that could be taken advantage of in this biome.

You said the slimes have the same density as water which would allow them to control their movement through water very effectively. While there may not be many lakes or swamps in Én'vyen, many of the slimes might find it advantageous to sit and wait in bodies of water and "pounce" on animals which have strayed too close to the water's edge. This would fill a similar role to alligators in the real world.

Alternatively, a slime might find a fruit-bearing tree and simply wait under it while it's in season. Stretching itself out to cover as much ground as possible, the slime would slowly circle the base of the tree picking up any fruits it passes over or that fall directly into it.

Forest slimes are fairly intelligent, so they would probably not have a difficult time locating the burrows of a small animal, perhaps those of the forest drake. By splitting apart into several smaller slimes, the slime could cover each of the burrow entrances and simply wait for the animal to get hungry and emerge. Once one of the smaller slimes has caught a meal, it would track down the rest of itself and remerge.

A similar strategy to the one above would be for each of the smaller slimes to enter the burrow from all entrances and advance on the animals inside. The slime would rejoin itself at the center of the burrow and it will hopefully have found something.

A strategy animals could employ to avoid this attack would be to build a pseudo room in their burrow and after detecting the presence of a slime they would enter the pseudo room and fill the door with dirt, waiting until the slime disperses.

Answer 2

Where and how would the slimes forage for food in such a biome?

Where: probably everywhere

How: any way you can imagine, and a lot more you can't.

For instance, I would expect at least one species to target dragon eggs. I would expect lizardmen females carry there eggs to prevent them being eaten. At the other end of the spectrum, I would expect some slimes eat other slimes.

Most slimes would probably target a small number of food types. One to three species of animals, or one to three plant parts. (I would not expect something to eat foliage, branches/trunks, and roots of one plant.)

Slimes might also be able to non-nutritiously eat some other things. For instance, a slime targeting dragon eggs might be able to eat/bore a hole up the trunk of a tree to surreptitiously reach its prey, despite not being able to benefit from eating the tree.

I would expect few slime species to be total omnivores, and those that are are probably very slow moving. A fast-moving creature that eats everything will quickly destroy its environment. (Earth has some starfish that are comparable.)