#fungi

#fungi

Do Mushrooms Communicate with Each Other with Electrical Impulses as "Words"?The short answer is: sort of. The rest of the scientific community still wants more studies to be conducted, though.Experts have noticed that fungi tend to send electric signals to one another. A mathematical analysis of these signals shows a pattern that is somehow similar to human speech. Scientists hypothesized that there is a possibility that fungi use this electrical “language” to share information about food or injury with distant parts of themselves, or with hyphae-connected partners such as trees.Sure, it's like a messaging system. With the similarities noticed in the electrical signals sent by fungi and human speech, an interesting question was raised: do they actually use human words [or the equivalent of it]?University of the West of England’s Andrew Adamatzky aimed to answer this question by analyzing the signals sent by a species of fungi – enoki, split gill, ghost, and caterpillar fungi. “We do not know if there is a direct relationship between spiking patterns in fungi and human speech. Possibly not,” Adamatzky said. “On the other hand, there are many similarities in information processing in living substrates of different classes, families and species. I was just curious to compare.”Image credit: Hans Veth#fungi #mushroom #communication #science #research #electricsignals 

The Worm With A Thousand ButtsThe story of Ramisyllis multicaudata begins in a simple manner. It lives inside the water passages of a sponge called Petrosia, with its head buried deep inside it. From there, the story starts to take a weird turn.The Ramisyllis starts to branch repeatedly inside the sponge, with no pattern whatsoever, and the bristle worm begins to reveal its rather grotesque nature. Scientists remark that, despite being an animal, Ramisyllis lives as though it were a fungus, noting the similar appearance of the worm’s branching tubes to that of a fungus under a microscope.To describe the worm as bizarre is an understatement.(Image Credit: Sarah Faulwetter/ Wikimedia Commons)#Worm #Fungi #Weird #sponge