Recently, molecular phylogenetic studies of this species have confirmed the view of some earlier researchers[7] that it is more closely related to Amoeba than to Pelomyxa.

As a new pseudopod is extended, a variable zone of ectoplasm forms at the leading edge and a fountaining stream of endoplasm circulates within.

The effort of describing these motions, and explaining how they result in the cell's forward movement, has generated a large body of scientific literature.

In subsequent decades, as new names and species proliferated, accounts of Chaos, under a variety of synonyms, became so thoroughly entangled with descriptions of similar organisms, that it is virtually impossible to differentiate one historic amoeboid from another.

[16] Since then, a nomenclatural consensus has emerged, and today the organism is generally known as Chaos carolinensis, as first proposed by Robert L. King and Theodore L. Jahn in 1948.

[15] Until quite recently, the genus Chaos was included, along with all other protists that extend lobose pseudopods or move about by protoplasmic flow, in the phylum Sarcodina.

[1] While the monophyly of Amoebozoa has yet to be established, current information confirms the status of Chaos and Amoeba as closely related taxa within the group.