Planimal

Such a 'planimal' could move itself over the ground only at a rate considerably slower than that of a terrestrial slug but if other plants could not move at all, this would be sufficient.

This week my planimal friend Daedalus continues his exploration of human symbiosis with useful organisms. Those green flatworms, permeated with photosynthesizing algae, represent a distinct advance on his plumbed-in photosynthetic sandwich-boards of last weak.

Overseas scientists have taken an animal cell and crossed it with a cell from a tobacco plant to produce a half-animal, half-plant creature known as a planimal.

That is our Syncytial Planimal, genetically engineered to give us both plant and animal proteins.

The planimal was the first post-plant, followed by the versatile, Octopamine-blessed animant, and only then came the animals.