Someone plugged electrodes into the mushroom and intercepted a hand of mushroom language

You may have heard such a story about mushrooms. A mentally ill person likes to squat in a damp corner under an umbrella and stay silent all year round. Many doctors did not understand why he was obsessed with holding an umbrella, until one day a psychiatrist followed his example and squatted beside him with an umbrella. The patient slowly came over and asked: Are you a mushroom too? The mushroom played by the umbrella speaks, opening up the patient's psychological defense against the doctor. But recently, a group of scientists from the UK was surprised to find that those real mushrooms seem to have their own language!

Who heard the mushroom talk?

Some time ago, a piece of news from the British "Guardian" stated that a research team from the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, conducted electrophysiological experiments on four types of mushrooms, showing that mushrooms may "speak" through hyphae, and initially Deciphered their language system: about 50 English words.

Did they really hear the mushrooms? The chattering kind?

That's not the case. Before that, let's get some background on mushrooms. Mushrooms are classified as large fungi, and the mushrooms we usually eat are only their fruiting bodies, which are the aerial parts of mushrooms. In the substrate where mushrooms grow, entangled hyphae are still spreading in the underground part.

Mushroom structure diagram, mycelium winding underground ©️Nebraska Statewide Arboretum

Mycelium acts like a plant's roots, they spread everywhere, absorb nutrients from the host or the soil, and sometimes deliver nutrients to other mushrooms. Some types of mushrooms also make mycelium form special nets to catch insects.

Even if there is only one mold in the bread, the mycelium may have spread everywhere, so don't eat it. Source: YouTube@Science Insider

Beyond their basic function, the scientists discovered an additional property of the hyphae: They transmit electrical signals, like electrical impulses on nerve fibers. Animals with a nervous system transmit signals through neurons, where information is transmitted in the form of electrical signals on a single neuron. But this does not mean that electrical signals only belong to the nervous system. In addition to mushrooms, protozoa, hydra, and even plants can spontaneously generate electrical impulse signals.

In other words, electrical signals may be a ubiquitous means of communication in the biological world. So, the researchers inserted dense electrodes into the hyphae and fruiting bodies of Flammulina velutipes, Cordyceps militaris, Omphalotus nidiformis, and Schizophyllum commune.

Group photo of four mushrooms: Flammulina velutipes (upper left), Cordyceps sinensis (upper right), Umbilatus (lower left), Schizophyllum (lower right) Source: Wikipedia

They want to record the electrical signals of these mushrooms and try to analyze the rules.

Mushroom plug electrode map source: reference "1"

Modern Mushroom Dictionary

All 4 types of mushrooms did produce electrical signals, and the waveforms had their own characteristics. But no matter what kind of mushroom, the electrical signals emitted are clustered and regular, full of rhythm. The average interval between each potential spike was 1.5 h, and the peak average potential was about 0.3 mV. Such firing behavior can't help but remind people of brain neurons.

Four mushroom discharge diagrams, different colors represent different electrode channels Source: reference "1"

The researchers then converted the collected electrical signals into binary data. Then, according to the logic of linguistics, compared with English grammar and language habits, these digital signals were transformed by algorithm fitting.

Although they couldn't decipher what those electric currents meant, they had a preliminary understanding of the Mushroom language lexicon. There are about 50 words in the mushroom lexicon, including 15-20 high-frequency words. Interestingly, the languages ​​of the different mushrooms are not mutually intelligible. Schizophyllum has the most complicated language structure. It not only talks densely but also likes to use difficult sentences. In contrast, Flammulina velutipes and Cordyceps are more taciturn.

"We are not a kind of mushroom, I don't understand what you are talking about..." Source: pixabay

In addition to communicating with each other through hyphae, experimental data also recorded electrical signals between mushrooms and nearby fruits through mycelium. So they speculated that electrical language might be a way for mushroom populations to keep in touch and exchange information about their environment. In addition, there are other pulses in mushrooms: nutrient transport pulses, so another interpretation of these electrical pulses is that they are related to the way the mushrooms are nourished. Of course, there is a third explanation: this mushroom language dictionary is actually nothing, humans think too much, and mushrooms are too lazy to talk.

The high-frequency vocabulary of Flammulina velutipes may have 3 English words: See You XXX picture source pixabay

Beyond Mushrooms and Screaming Tomatoes

In the comments section of the paper’s web page, a professional who claimed to have 8 years of mushroom-picking experience said,

I have long thought that mushrooms communicate with each other, and they seem to predict the weather.

Although on the dinner table, you will regard mushrooms as vegetarian dishes, but from the perspective of biological kinship, they are closer to animals. From this point of view, there may still be many high-level secrets in the mushroom world.

But other studies have found that pure plants seem to speak too. This time it was real sound, not electricity. Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel have placed sound-receiving devices near tobacco and tomato plants and found that these plants occasionally emit ultrasonic waves with a frequency of 20-150 kHz.

If the plant is cut, the frequency of ultrasonic waves will increase significantly, and the average tomato will scream 25 times per hour. And if the water is not watered for 10 consecutive days, the hungry tomato plants will scream 35 times an hour. Miraculously, by analyzing the waveform and frequency of the sound waves, the researchers found that the sound waves emitted by plants in different states have their own characteristics. It looks like it is "crying for pain" or "crying for thirst".

As for why the tomato screams, the reason is still unknown. The research team gave a guess: it may be the sound of bubbles bursting in the liquid flowing on the plant. It's normal not to know what tomatoes and mushrooms are talking about. After all, more than 90% of the world's 3.8 million species of fungi are currently unknown to science. After all, you can't even understand what the cat is saying, so what mushroom language are you talking about?