86: A Fungus Among Us

Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. I'm trace curve and I'm Amy Barton. Trace, what do you call a fungus that composes music? Oh no, I have no idea. A decomposer. I have more. Do you want more now or do you want to wait? Oh, I definitely think we need to wait. Okay. Because today it's everything you never knew. You wanted to know about a fungus among us. All right, hip me Speaker 1 00:32 with another one. Okay. What would a mushroom car say? A what? Shroom. Shroom. This highbrow stuff. Sorry guys. Not even my dad will tell these jokes. My dad will be embarrassed. Oh no. Well let's talk about mushrooms. Yeah, cause really that's what, that's what fungus is, right? It's mushrooms, lots of different kinds of mushrooms. I'm trying to think like you've got one. I know since we've just left behind Halloween and the spooky season. Let's start off with the bleeding tooth. Fungus. This is totally, I wish this episode, we're airing Halloween week cause it's perfect. So take a minute right now and go to show notes. Brain junk, podcast.com and take a look at this episode. Click into it because there will be a picture of this fungus. The bleeding tooth fungus is kind of pinky and nice like strawberry shortcake. Um, but that pink and red combo is a little horrifying because it looks like little globules of red blood on the cute pink mesh room. Speaker 1 01:37 Super creepy and awesome. Wow. And isn't it also, cause when you mentioned this, I kinda, I was, I haven't gone and looked at a picture, but I was thinking about it and isn't it clear goo that's on it? I mean it's like a clear red, like yeah, it's a deep red, but it looks like a gel. Like the stuff that we would use as frosting, like that clear gel frostiness if you buy the little tubes of gel at the grocery store, you could make your own for cakes. Everyone. Oh no. It's a cap style mesh room. Um, and it's got a pale pink center and then it becomes darker as it matures. But in its early stage, it's that pretty light pink. And what scientists think is happening is that they live in wet areas and a process called <inaudible> is happening. <inaudible> it's even sounds gross does so good. Speaker 1 02:23 So the soil around the master gets really wet and so through the process of osmosis, which is diffusion through water, that diffusion, it wants to equalize the water in the mushroom, in the water, in the soil. And so the water in the soil is way more than the mushroom can handle. So it's just, but it keeps taking in cake again and taking in. And so it's pushing the other liquids in the mushroom out the cap is what they think. And it's oozing. It's using, it's totally using, it's good. I would like to see this in one of those like the Disney time lapse movies for education where they show it sped up where it's creepily oozing out. That would be cool. And are they a poisonous? So the bleeding tooth fungus is not toxic but probably not delicious either. Well, and it looks like we just, we stepped away and looked at a picture, which you absolutely should and it kind of looks like bleeding meat. Speaker 1 03:14 I mean, it is not, I think if it was, I was imagining like a really dark night and you're out in the woods with a flashlight and you're just kind of shining it around and you beeped over that thing. That would be creepy. Yes. It'd be like a thousand bug eyes or something. Oh boy. Or imagine brushing up against it in the woods and you're like, Oh, gooey. It's suddenly it's a slasher movie. No, I wouldn't like that at all. No. Let's talk about a fungus that does something a little different. Okay. Because this fungus a bioluminescent fungus, that one's much better. You would not need a flashlight to see, uh, in the dark. So bioluminescent is a, an organism that creates and emits light. Okay. So we've heard about like a bioluminescent squid. There's a lot of sea creatures that kind of shine with the light of their own plants, not so much. Speaker 1 04:06 And fungus, hardly any do it. Of the 100,000 plus species of fungus on the planet. How does a lot of fungus, yeah, that is a lot. Only around 71 of them are bioluminescent and all of them are classified as a wood rot fungus. So they're ones that grow directly on trees and tree matter and they're breaking it down. <inaudible> these have been observed and recorded for thousands of years. Aristotle described what he thought was a cold fire coming from the woods. Oh. Because most of them are some shade of green or yellow. Like if you crack a glow stick kind of greeny blue color. Yeah. In the 1500 Scandinavians supposedly used with glowing fungus for light during long winter nights. Oh really? Hey, just go out and dig them up. Bring them in. You know, you've got some glowing, they're not super bright, but I mean if you didn't have anything it would probably be a good, and then according to a Dutch physician in the 16 hundreds Indonesian cultures might have used them as torches. Speaker 1 05:07 Really? Yeah. But he was only one source, so I don't know. I don't know. It's supposed to be this sort of thing where if you put it by the corner of something, you bump into a lot. That's a good thing. You'd probably see it in the light. Yeah. And this is one of those things where scientists are still puzzling over exactly what is making them glow. They think that there's a molecule called Lusa Farren, uh, it and oxygen make this loose, a fairer ACE. Uh, and it's a cold light. So fun fact. It's the same compound found in fireflies. Oh, underwater creatures and go, yeah. So it's, we think, huh? We're pretty sure it's the same thing. That's interesting. But what I wanted to tell you about was, I don't know about you, but it seems like a lot of the cool stuff you and I look up. Speaker 1 05:51 Art is not in North America. Yeah. No. It's like, Oh, there's this cool thing in Brazil or this cool thing in Australia. Well, we actually have one of these, the Western jack-o-lantern mushroom. Ooh. Is it in our pockets in the Pacific Northwest? Is there a brain junk nighttime field trip happening? Well, it's on the other side of the mountains mostly. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah. When I, when I head over my, I was like, dad, you should go look for this orange to Brown Guild mushroom. And when I say Guild, when you pick up a mushroom, like your stereotypical mushroom, it's got that cap on top and then this big thick STEM, right? Yes. When you flip over the cap underneath, you're going to see either what looks like a sponge G I L L Guild knots or gills and they look like little lines, you know, and they radiate out from the center. Speaker 1 06:39 Okay. Well these are Guild mushrooms and they smell delicious and are extremely poisonous. Ah yeah. But the gills of the Western jack-o-lantern mushroom glow, a greedy yellow color. Wow. Yeah. What was funny is I was on a, it was one of those message boards where people were talking about different mushrooms and this guy posted a fabulous photo and it's the gills underneath. And then part of the STEM that glow with this yellow. Yeah. And the fellow had posted a picture and one of the comments underneath was stop Photoshopping your mushrooms. This is ridiculous. There was this huge argument back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and about 15 comments down. The original guy who had complained that it was photo-shopped was like, Oh, Hey, I just read about these mushrooms. I'm really sorry I'm researching this episode. I had no idea that there was such a big fungus and mushroom community, but when I looked up an article to look up a fact about one of our subjects, it popped up board after board, the mushroom group and the eye. Speaker 1 07:40 So, and now it's not just a little Brown yard mushrooms, I'm learning. It's a big and it's interesting and mysterious and yeah, my dad was for a time president of the Jefferson County, Micheal logical society. Ooh, yes. Up in port Townsend and still find mycological mycological our mushrooms. Oh, okay. Yeah, I research was extensive, everyone and they would go out and hunt for mushrooms, which is, this is one very important takeaway fact. There are a lot of mushrooms that look a lot like other mushrooms. And so this is not something where you go, Hey, I'm going to go out and pick one of these and try eating it because you just don't. Very sure. Yeah, I'd be very, very sure. So even if we talk about one that is edible and you think, wow, that would be really, really fun, please at least get a book or an expert to help you find these things because yeah, it's not cool if you've watched any British mystery show, you know, people die from mushrooms, everybody. Speaker 1 08:37 So please go review your British mystery shows so that you don't die. Have some caution. Yeah, that would be bad. So, um, don't eat them. Let's talk about another kind of mushroom, which has the most adorable name. I remember when I was a kid, my dad would talk about these and it made me think of chicken in a biscuit. Crackers. That is exactly what they made me think of. And this is another one where, um, chicken of the woods mushroom, it's got one that looks like it. And so everything I read there like don't just eat anything that looks kinda like this. You need to be sure. Yeah. The chicken of the woods mushroom is called Latta porous, so phoresis and it's nicknamed the chicken of the woods cause nobody says Latin very much says that. And it really does taste like chicken is what I'm here and it needs to be cooked. Speaker 1 09:26 And so there's a lot of recipe articles out there for this one. But I had no idea that were mushrooms that tastes like chicken. But apparently this is a vegetarian favorite for beef up your meals and having that bulkier taste and something with umami. Yes. And I will agree that a lot of like, um, so I remember I've eaten chicken of the woods, but I don't remember what it tasted like. Uh, but like morels and chanterelles and all these kinds of mushrooms, they do kind of have that meaty quality. Well even like crime in either Brown mushrooms or the, you know, they, they definitely add something that if you're taking the meat out, I feel like we need to start talking like the kitchen sisters. Oh, you guys were talking about rests a recipe. I know, which is funny because when I called my dad and say, Hey, we're doing this whole thing on mushrooms, do you have any cool mushroom facts? Speaker 1 10:16 And he was like, well, if you take Emeril and you boil it and then toss it with butter. And I'm like, no, no, no, we're not doing recipes. Okay, well if you have a Shantrelle and you, and I'm like, dad, we're not doing recipes. This isn't that episode. Nope. So let's see. We've talked about singular mushrooms. Why don't we talk about, um, the thing that you had and then we're going to segue into something else that kind of connects with it. But the talking about the thing and then the thing, yeah, the thing and the thing. So the guy absolutely keeping up guys, keep up the largest organism. Yes. We're going to do word pronouncing again. Our malaria <inaudible> the largest living thing on earth and it's largely underground. So you don't actually see this. So size wise it's almost four miles across or it's, its breadth is measured almost four miles. And that would be three times the size of central park. So I've not been, but you see the beautiful big pictures of central park in New York and it is in the Malheur national forest in Oregon. So you can go to Oregon and stand on top of it. Speaker 1 11:24 Sorry. Giant thing. Right diameter. Actually though it is, um, sort of cannibalistic if you consider like plant life eating plant life. So it's sort of dangerous. That's exciting, right? It's okay to stand on this one. It's got a bad intentions or is it the way that this one has grown so big? It's under a giant forest in Oregon and it grows by feeding off of tree roots and leaching off of them. And so that actually eventually kills them. And in that death process, you will see the mushrooms pop up around the roots of trees. That means the mushrooms winning an organism this size can do some significant damage to a forest area. In theory, if it really was successful, like forest service didn't intervene and it killed its whole forest, it would die to cause that sort of a symbiotic, right? It needs the needs of the forest. But I like that you see the mushrooms creeping up around is sort of Stephen King to me. I like that. Yeah. Speaker 1 12:26 Yeah. What's interesting is, okay, so all that stuff that's underneath the dirt and this kind of links into what I was going to talk about. Yeah. The mycelium that are under there, because mushrooms aren't just the cool caps that we see growing up. That's just the F what they call the fruiting body. Oh, uh, that's the part that comes up and release the spores so you can make more mushrooms. All the action is, like you said, happening underground. And if you've ever dug in a garden and flipped up some dirt and then you see all these like white threads through the dirt, Oh, that is your mycelium. That is the real part of the mushroom, the fungus that's going on. I have seen that. Yeah. And that's what this giant thing is this, uh, what was his name again? Our malaria. A story. A, yes. Speaker 1 13:12 Okay. So that's what all that is. When they say it makes up four miles, that's the mycelium that's underground. But not all mushrooms are being like, they don't all want to take over the world. They don't all want to take over the world, you know, they're just living their lives. But here's something super cool. Would you believe that those mycelium threads are also acting like the barbwire phones that we talked about? Oh really? Yeah. Okay. So the barbwire phones, you know, they were using their fence line and then hooking their phone to it and within a limited area they could communicate well the trees are hooked together via this mycelium under the ground. Wow. And not only that, in 1997 Suzanne Simard of the university of British Columbia in Vancouver published a paper about how Douglas fir and paper Birch were transferring carbon and sugar between trees via the mycelium. Speaker 1 14:09 Oh, now, okay, let's remember. This is one of those things where they are not doing it sentient Lee. Right? They are not thinking, I would like to do this. This process seems to be happening. So there's <inaudible> gotta be, we gotta be careful about that. Touch an electrical wire. It did not intentionally shock you, but things have happened in the last fire. And here's the thing that's super cool. So in the summer, the fir trees that were in the shade, we're getting carbon and sugar from Birch that were in the sunshine. So the, the food that that was needed being processed by the Birch, probably extra is going through the mycelium. The mushroom is getting some bonus out of that cause it's picking up some of that. And then it's going to these furs that were in the shade. And then in the autumn when the Birch started losing their leaves, <inaudible> the firs were sending carbon and sugar back the other way. Speaker 1 15:02 So it's like fungus, intranet. So then theoretically this largest mushroom in the world, if things are going well, maybe they're sharing. I have a feeling they're probably doing sharing. Yes. So then when it kills the tree, it's like a vampire that just took too much. That's so dramatic. Or is it that, you know? Yeah, because that's the, that's the difficult thing. Like the wood, like the bioluminescent mushrooms that are wood. What's the word I'm looking for? <inaudible> wood. Decomposers. Yeah, they are. Although generally they're supposed to be eating stuff that's already dead. But if you're growing on it, you're going to be taking nutrients out of a live tree. Yeah. Oh, and then also, this is even cooler. Uh, Suzanne Simard of the university of British Columbia also hypothesized that older trees seem to be helping out smaller, younger trees by getting them the most nutrients. Wow. Aw, that's so nice. Speaker 1 15:58 So that hasn't quite been proved yet, but it seems like, you know, when you look at the data that that seems to be happening. Wow. Yeah. And then this is really going to blow your mind. So in 2010, Ren cen Zhang of South China agriculture university was experimenting with tomato plants. Okay. So they grew pairs of plants in pots and they waited for the plants until micro rise a, that's, that's that fungal network until it formed underneath the soil. So they knew the tomatoes, the two tomatoes in the pot were connected under the soil with this fungal network. So then one tomato plant was put in a plastic bag all the way down to the dirt. And then the other one was sprayed with a fungus that causes blight. So different fungus then from what was underneath the soil. Okay. And the one that got blight, it got sick. Speaker 1 16:47 It'd be like if we gave, you know, a person, the flu <inaudible> 65 days later, the bag is removed from the isolated plant. Okay. It did not get sick because this is something that's sprayed on the leaves and then they sprayed it with the same fungus. The ones that had the micro rise a between them got less sick. Ah, like immunity. Well yeah, it was almost like they think that um, they're less susceptible to disease. They have less damage. Jangs group hypothesize that the tomato plants are eavesdropping on defense responses. So they're like, Oh, this one's getting sick. I need to get prepared. So they're increasing their resistance to a pathogen. Wow. Could you please read the sentence about pairs of plants in pots again or that phrase pairs of plants in pots? Yeah. Because I really like alliteration and so you lost me there for a second cause I'm like pairs of plants in pot, hair proliferating predominantly at the polar <inaudible>. Speaker 1 17:46 I can't go any further. Well yeah, but the communication piece was interesting and there's some thought that this fungal mycelium internet can help plants send toxic chemicals out to kill other plants. They also think that like if these trees are getting attacked by insects, that one's on the other side of the wood that are still connected, might start building a defense so that the bugs come their way. They're leaves are bitter. Exactly. Wow. Yeah, it's super cool. That is amazing. I kind of wish we had fungus to communicate with. Yeah, you might except your toes lately. Well except it could go really, really wrong. Do you want to know how wrong so much. Okay, let's talk about aunt zombies. So I got this book. This is what love is. Okay. You know when you're in a relationship with someone and they're like, I didn't buy you flowers. Speaker 1 18:41 I got you a book called the wasp that brainwashed the Caterpillar by Matt Simon and it's an entire book about the horrible things that animals and plants do to each other. Mostly animals. Yes. And my favorite chapter get ready for gross is about the Oh FEO, cordyceps or quarter steps for short. I'm just going to call it quarter steps cause it's easier. Quarter steps, fungus and the carpenter ant. Awesome. So you've got an aunt Dan life and aunt. She's out there, she's collecting food, she's minding her own business. She's in the tropics and a single spore of <inaudible> lands on the ant, this tiny, tiny, teeny like tinier than a little poked hole from a pin. Okay. And over three weeks, this quarter steps begins to grow and fill the inside of the aunt's body while it is still alive. Wow. That already is super yucky. Yeah. The ant begins to trip and collapse and stagger around. Speaker 1 19:40 If other aunts notices they will take it and carry it far away, but often they don't notice cause it's pretty subtle. Like the beginning of Shauna. The dead. Yes. And then one day around noon, which seems to be a pretty consistent time. The ant will leave the colony CLIMA leaf approximately 10 inches off the ground, right over a colony path lamp, its jaws onto the underside of the leaf, and then the real horror movie starts. The fungus can take up to three weeks to grow out of the aunt's head. It's the STEM that grows out of the back of its head. I feel like I know where this, I know it sends up a stock that's that fruiting body, right? And it's showers spores down onto the unsuspecting ants below. So it doesn't actually like explode the enter or anything, but something has come out of the Rose out of the back. Speaker 1 20:31 Wow. Yeah. And that's very doctor who, well, what's even worse is scientists have found leaves over 48 million years old that have bite marks in them from what they believe are zombie ants. Wow. Yeah. What do you do for a living? I find leaves that are millions of years old with some Beate bites by specialty where they've died, this tragic, tragic death. Okay. So my thing is, how in the hell does this even happen? Yeah. Okay. Cause you've got this quarter steps fungus and it's, it's a mushroom and it's growing inside this ant. It's getting into the brain and it's, it makes compounds that mess with the neurons and the ants brain. And this is one of those things, again, scientists aren't exactly sure what's going on. I mean how, because it's not, it's not driving the ant, but it's messing with its programming. <inaudible> yeah, it's crazy. It's super scary. Speaker 1 21:27 And we thought this fungus was only in the rainforest. Turns out a woman discovered a variety of <inaudible> in her backyard in South Carolina. Yeah. And I just saw this, I was looking before you came over and David Attenborough has this great thing all about the quadriceps fungus and there are thousands of these fungi and each of them specialize on one particular species. Oh really? So they were running through and there'd be like this moth and it stuck on a leaf and it's got all these little fruiting bodies coming out of it or a, Oh my gosh, it's a little like a grasshopper. And something orange. It just like boom, exploded out of it and um, it's terrifying. This is morphed from doctor who to alien. For me, it's, it's just I wish you, I should take a selfie right now because my shoulders are hunched in my face. Speaker 1 22:17 I need to take a shower. I need to take a shower. I feel like we need a dad joke right now. We need something to kind of perk us up a little bit. Why did the fun guy leave the party? I don't know. There wasn't much room. Ah, I had to dig deep for those three because the rest of them are about being a fun guy. Oh, there are. They're just variations of that. I don't know. That was painful. It was horrible and I loved every moment that to emergent of Chuck Norris jokes pretty soon if you let me to Oh no. Oh no. How is excellent unexpectedly interesting. <inaudible> in ants. I'm finding there's a whole world of interesting stuff about tiny things that we don't even notice underneath their feet. Yeah. We're on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcast, and you can find us on Twitter as at my brain junk trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored. Probably creeped out maybe.