Mushrooms can talk to — and protect — each other with ‘up to 50 words’
They’re shi-talky mushrooms.
As if mushrooms didn’t seem “magical” enough, UK scientists have found that the multifaceted fungi can reportedly talk to each other — and even have a bountiful vocabulary. Research detailing their alleged fungal correspondence was published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
“[We] found that the ‘fungal language’ exceeds the European languages in morphological complexity,” reads the study, which was conducted by computer science professor Andrew Adamatzky at UWE Bristol.
To find out if mushrooms do indeed communicate — and not just with psychedelic adventurers — Adamatzky analyzed the electrical impulses of four species of mushrooms: enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar fungus.
The fungal-linguist accomplished this by inserting tiny electrodes into the dirt colonized by the mushroom’s hyphae — the threads that compose the organism’s roots, known as mycelium. He then recorded the results.
As it turns out, the scientist wasn’t trippin’: Adamatzky found that the electrical spikes often occurred in clusters, mirroring human vocabularies and employing up to 50 words, the Guardian reported.
“We demonstrate that distributions of fungal word lengths match that of human languages,” the researcher wrote in the study. Split gills — a species that resides in rotting wood — generated the most complex “sentences” of the four fungi.
Scientists postulate that mushrooms “chat” in order to make their presence known to other members of their cluster — much like wolves howling to alert the pack, the Scientist reported. These mycological motormouths could also be trying to tip off fellow fungi, both to potential threats — such as the weather — as well as sources of sustenance, a la a slimy sentry.
However, as with a ’shroom trip, there is the possibility that it could all be in our heads.
“There is also another option — they are saying nothing,” said Adamatzky. “Propagating mycelium tips are electrically charged and, therefore, when the charged tips pass in a pair of differential electrodes, a spike in the potential difference is recorded.”
‘There is also another option — they are saying nothing.’
While researchers can agree that the patterns are not random, more study is needed before making mushroomese an official language.
“Though interesting, the interpretation as language seems somewhat overenthusiastic, and would require far more research and testing of critical hypotheses before we see ‘Fungus’ on Google Translate,” said University of Exeter mycologist Dan Bebber, a co-author on previous studies on the phenomenon, who suggested the electrical impulses could be indicative of active nutrient foraging.
In a similar landmark lingual study from 2018, United Arab Emirates researchers found that insulting plants can be detrimental to their health.