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Mushrooms navigate in space and send each other messages – something like SMS
"It's amazing what mushrooms can do," Popular Science quotes Yu Fukasawa of Tohoku University. "Having a memory, learning, and making decisions."
Japanese scientists are renowned mushroom collectors. For several years now, they have been trying to understand what mushrooms are thinking, exploring the secrets of communication with each other, with the environment, and with the environment itself.
In a recent study, Fukasawa's team discovered that fungi can navigate in space. The paper was recently published in the journal Fungal Ecology.
Scientists experimented with the so-called wood mushrooms of the species Phanerochaete velutina. They served food - the same wooden boards. But they laid them on the ground in a different way. In one case, a cross, in the other, a circle.
The mushrooms did not grow by chance. Or evenly from the center of the picture. They somehow "understood" the essence, figured out the trends and sort of "figured out" how exactly the pieces of wood are laid out. Because it began to grow depending on its position on the ground.
Where the boards were arranged crosswise, the mushrooms concentrated on the four furthest boards. The circle "taught" the mushroom to grow only inside the circle. They did not go to the center.
Japanese suggestion: Mushrooms move in one direction or another depending on the location of the food source, choosing the optimal route. This means analyzing the situation and making a decision.
Fungi are connected to each other by mycelium, a complex, branched, thread-like structure. Mycelium is like a nervous system. And not only on the outside, but also through the threads that form the mycelial network, flow electrical signals that fungi exchange in the forest. And the signal itself is remarkably similar to the stimulation that accompanies the excitation of muscles and nerve fibers. Last year, Fukasawa and his colleagues were convinced of this and reported their findings in the same journal, Fungal Ecology.
Scientists stuck electrode needles into six mushrooms growing nearby. It was dry. The sounds of the mushrooms were heard periodically, but weakly. Although this is understandable. And then it started to rain. And the mushrooms sprouted. The electrical signals became more frequent and noticeably stronger.
At the same time, measurements showed that the mushrooms did not "shout" into space, but transmitted specifically to their neighbors. The signal was specially delivered to the mushrooms in the form of some kind of SMS message. In other words, the message was delivered. Perhaps the mushroom reported rain.
Two years ago, British scientists became interested in the ability of mushrooms to send and receive electrical signals.
Professor Andrew Adamatsky, professor of computer science and unconventional computing and director of the Institute for Unconventional Computing at the University of the West of England, says the stimulation produced by the mushrooms is similar in structure to human language. They follow a characteristic repeating pattern. Like words in a sentence. Some have up to nine letters. In fact, three-letter words are more common.
British scientists have suggested that mushrooms can discuss among themselves what interests them: the physiological state of the mycelium, environmental conditions and the presence or absence of nutrients. They can call each other and count their losses, especially after an invasion of mushroom pickers.
According to the Japanese, mushrooms are electrically connected not only to each other, but also to the trees with which their roots interact. You can send a signal. But again, its meaning remains mysterious.
“We are still at the beginning of the journey and we should not expect quick results,” said Professor Adamatsky.
Perhaps mushrooms can navigate in space because they receive and transmit electrical signals.
Read about the amazing intelligence of mushrooms. In fact, it is a mushroom of the species Physarum polycephalum, which has taken root in the zoo of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. These mushrooms learn and transmit their knowledge to the cut-out pieces. And it can form networks, optimally connecting individual nodes, solving the so-called "traveling salesman problem."