The forest can talk, and it’s judging your $10 green smoothie and patchouli oil. Don’t worry, the trees aren’t actually talking, at least, not in the way we talk to each other. All living organisms, including plants, trees, and fungi, communicate in one way or another. Animals have physical and vocal cues: speech, hand signals, intricate dances, and facial cues. Plants and trees use chemical signals through their leaves and roots - a secret kind of telephone system. Fungi, though, like mushrooms, spread electrical impulses through special nerves and root systems, a natural Wifi system or the “Wood Wide Web.”
Types of Fungi
When we think of fungi, the first thing that comes to mind is likely mushrooms, or that cheesy shirt dudes wear; you know the one - “I’m a fun-gi.” But fungi isn’t just an overused pun, it’s one of the five main kingdoms and consists of over 144,000 species of organisms. Some of the most common include yeasts, molds, mildews, rusts, and, of course, mushrooms. Fungi is also the most widely distributed organism on Earth, occurring almost everywhere on land, buried in the soil, lounging in lakes and oceans, working in your gut, and probably growing in your shower drain.
They have diverse properties, ranging in size from microscopic to massive, and play significant roles environmentally and medically. Your charcuterie board would be pretty much just meat without fungi to proof your crostini, stink up your cheese, and ferment your beer and wine. That run of the mill infection might not be so innocuous without the penicillin to kill the bacteria. And the world would probably be a much stinkier place without fungi to break down organic matter into soil.
The Internet of Mushrooms
Despite often being a single celled organism, fungi may have one of the most complex communication systems of any organism. Found just about everywhere, fungi are the IT crowd of the natural world, managing to have detailed conversations just under our feet through a complex system of wires - think Thomas Edison’s direct current for communication. Similar to the way we send and receive emails or text messages, research indicates fungi use underground, nerve-like filaments called hyphae to send and receive distinct electrical impulses that when deciphered, resemble our human language.
Andrew Adamatzky, a scientist at the University of the West of England’s unconventional computing laboratory tested four varieties of fungi using tiny electrodes on the hyphae and was able to translate their language based on timing, amount, and pattern of pulses. He identified up to 50 words, some unique to the species of fungi, with about 15-20 used most often. He found the speed and amount of pulses increased greatly when wood-digesting fungi encountered a wooden block, indicating it’s not just millennials that like to tell people what they had for lunch and where they can get it. It wasn’t just food the fungi chatted about. Adamatzky indicated the fungi could be alerting each other to dangers, sending each other nutrients, or just saying hey. Other scientists were skeptical about the fungi language saying the electrical pulses may just be nutrient pulses found in other fungi.
Nature’s Bodyguard
Communication among fungi is not necessarily new, and if you think fungi only speak to each other, think again. Evidence has long indicated mycorrhizal fungi - tiny fungi that form mutually beneficial relationships with plant roots - tip off their plant partners to impending danger. Through the same connections that allow the transfer of nutrients and moisture, the mycorrhizal fungi serves as bodyguard and mailman, delivering the stress triggers indicating danger like attack or disease from one plant to the next. The stress signals move rapidly, allowing the receiving plant to respond quickly and adapt to potential danger.
Putting It To Use
Adamatzky wasn’t just eavesdropping on mushrooms for fun. The way fungi can send stress signals in response to danger or risk could be put to good use. It may be possible to take the science behind fungi communication and turn it into technology that could sense illness or toxins and alert us to them. So don’t discount the lowly mushroom, the simple celled yeast, or the pesky rust. The next time you take a hike in the forest or go for a picnic, the fungi are watching.