It may seem unbelievable, but a study has revealed that mushrooms can communicate with one another. This is most likely the first research to claim that fungus communicates with one another.
Researchers have discovered that mushrooms, yes, mushrooms, can communicate with one another. They also have a vocabulary of roughly 50 words. Researchers discovered 'oscillations of extracellular electrical potential' in four different fungal species: ghost fungi (Omphalotus nidiformis), Enoki fungi (Flammulina velutipes), split gill fungi (Schizophyllum commune), and caterpillar fungi (Cordyceps militaris).
Researchers discovered that the electrical impulses of these four species of fungus were structurally similar to human speech and mimicked the vocabulary of hundreds of words when studying the electrical activity of these four species of fungi.
Surprisingly, researchers discovered that when wood-digesting fungi came into touch with wood, their impulses increased, suggesting that they transfer info or injury via electrical signals.
In the study, published in Royal Society Open Science, professor Andrew Adamatzky stated, "Assuming that peaks of electrical activity were being used by fungi to share information and process the information in mycelial growth networks, we group spikes into words as well as provide a linguistic and information complexity analysis of the fungal spiking activity." We show that the distributions of fungal word lengths reflect those of human languages."
"We should not expect quick results," Professor Adamatzky advised, "since we have failed to interpret the language of cats and dogs despite living with them for generations, and research into electrical communication of fungus is in its infancy."
