Surprising evidence of fungi’s ability to communicate

09/04/2022 06:35 GMT+7

Originally considered a closed species, hiding in the rotten soil, trees, but recently new research by scientists shows that the ability of fungi to communicate is really amazing.

Surprising evidence of fungi’s ability to communicate

Andrew Adamatzky, University of the West of England, who led the study, revealed that mushrooms can talk to each other and recognize around 50 words.

Researchers monitoring and analyzing the activities of four species of fungi showed that the electrical impulses they emit have a structure similar to that of a human voice, with a vocabulary of up to dozens of words.

Those are impulses along tiny filamentous structures called hyphae, similar to how human neurons transmit information to each other.

For the study, the scientists inserted microscopic electrodes into the surface where the fungi were detected to analyze the electrical output of each species.

With the wood-eating fungus, for example, when the fungus comes into contact with foreign wood, the impulses increase, indicating that it is trying to communicate with other fungi, sharing information about food or injuries.

“We’re not sure yet if there’s a direct link between these patterns of impulses and human language, but there are many similarities in information processing. This makes me curious,” Adamatzky said. speak.

Professor Adamatzky said the vocabulary of mushrooms is up to 50 words, but the core vocabulary used most often does not exceed 15 to 20 words. The average length of each word is 5.97 letters, while the average English word is 4.8 letters. According to the researchers, this shows that mushrooms have minds and consciousness.

Although they have their own language when communicating, according to Adamatzky, mushrooms still have another option, which is to say nothing.

According to Adamtzky, the cause of the electrical pulse waves is to maintain cohesion, or to notify the detection of an attraction or irritation to other parts of the mycelium. Now, scientists are looking to gather more evidence before admitting it is a form of language.

Hoang Dung (synopsis)