Mushrooms can actually communicate like animals? How do mushrooms "talk"?

Mushrooms are neither animals nor plants, but if they must be classified into one category, then they should be classified into the animal family.

This is not because mushrooms taste like meat, but for a deeper reason. First, if we trace back, mushrooms and animals have a common ancestor. All organisms in the world are developed from early protozoa. The ancestor of animals is a protozoa with flagella, and so is the ancestor of mushrooms. It is only in the later evolutionary path that mushrooms and animals took different directions. Since they have the same origin, it is not far-fetched to classify them into the same category. Secondly, mushrooms and animals have the same way of survival. The reason why plants are different from animals is that there is an essential difference in the way they survive.

Plants are producers in the food chain. They do not need to absorb energy directly from the outside world, but can produce the energy they need for growth by themselves. Because plants can carry out photosynthesis, they can thrive as long as there is sunlight and water.

Animals are not like this. Animals are consumers. They need to obtain the energy they need to survive directly from the outside world. Herbivores obtain energy from plants by eating plants, while carnivores obtain energy from herbivores by eating herbivores. In this respect, mushrooms are the same as animals. Mushrooms do not photosynthesize and cannot produce energy. They also need to obtain nutrients directly from the outside world. Their food is similar to that of herbivores. For example, a piece of rotten wood is their delicious meal. Third, the body structure of mushrooms is more similar to that of animals.

Both animals and plants are made up of cells. The most significant difference between animal cells and plant cells is that the former do not have cell walls, while the latter have cell walls.

Of course, mushrooms also have cell walls, but their cell walls are very different from those of plants. They are made of chitin, which is a substance that can only appear in animals and never in plants. Moreover, the cytochrome in mushrooms is very similar to that of mammals. It can be said that the only thing mushrooms and plants have in common is that neither can run around. Apart from that, mushrooms are more similar to animals in all aspects. In addition to being able to move freely, animals have another thing that plants cannot compare to, that is, animals can communicate with each other. Can mushrooms do this? A new study shows that this may really be possible.

A study led by scientists from the University of the West of England, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, shows that fungi may be able to communicate with each other through a language of electrical spikes that is similar to human language.

There are four types of fungi involved in the study, namely, the essential enoki mushrooms for hot pot, the tonic cordyceps, the delicious schizophyllum, and the green ghost fungus. The study showed that all four types of fungi have obvious electrical signal peaks, and these electrical signals are emitted by the mycelium buried underground, which is very similar to the way human nerve cells transmit information. Scientists assume that fungi do communicate through electrical signal peaks, and on this basis, they encode the peaks one by one, and found that these peaks are like words.

The study found that the distribution of "fungal words" is very consistent with the distribution of human language, and the vocabulary can reach as many as 50 words. Among the 50 words, 15 to 20 are the most commonly used.

Of course, the language complexity of different fungi is different. Among the four fungi involved in the study, the sentence composed of words of Schizophyllum is the most complex, followed by Cordyceps sinensis, while Enoki mushroom and ghost fungus are relatively simple. In the further study, scientists found that when fungi encounter danger or find food, the electrical signals emitted by them increase significantly. For example, when the hyphae of fungi touch wood, they will emit a large number of electrical signals, as if they are busy notifying friends far away: "There is food here, everyone come quickly."

Of course, current research alone cannot confirm that mushrooms can really talk.

Because the above research is based on an assumption, that is, mushrooms can talk. Only if "mushrooms can talk" is the premise that the peaks of the electrical signals they emit can be encoded and arranged, and these arranged "mushroom words" can be translated. However, there is no way to prove the correctness of the assumption, so it is too early to conclude that mushrooms have their own language. In order to determine whether the peaks of electrical signals emitted by fungi are indeed a language or a way of communication, a lot of related research must be done. Of course, the peaks of electrical signals exist objectively, and the coding order of the peaks also exists objectively, so even if this is not the language of mushrooms, it must have other meanings.

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