These algae wake up and choose violence. In a 2021 study, researchers gave five kinds of algae a bunch of live bacteria, and the algae ate the bacteria. It's pretty cool to imagine algae opening their mouths and chewing up their bacteria lunch, and on a smaller scale, that's kind of what they do they can eat bacteria because they're mixotrops which means they can photosynthesize or eat other organisms. But not all of the algae were predicted to eat bacteria as much as they did, and they do seem to have a hunger for bacteria, maybe because they get nutrients from them either way. Eating bacteria helps them grow better, but When researchers offered dead bacteria, all the algae tested were like, eh, thank you. Next, scientists hypothesized that Because algae have a harder time recognizing heated-up deteriorated bacteria, some algae choose a hot pursuit over a hot cooked meal.