Evolutionary biologist Thibaut Brunet was studying single-celled organisms called choanoflagellates when he noticed something strange: The microbes are typically rigid, but when they got trapped in a tight space, they started to move like The Blob (see video, above). In his lab at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, he watched as their external whiplike flagella disappeared; parts of their bodies began to push out, forming bubbles called blebs; and they were able to squeeze into new spaces, like jelly pushing through a maze.