They’re the last ones you’d expect little communication from, yet a British professor claims that mushrooms transmit signals similar to human language.
Previous research has shown that fungi transmit electrical impulses through very thin underground structures called filaments, or filaments, similar to the way neurons transmit information in humans. In doing so, they can exchange information about food with other parts of themselves that are far away, The guard writes.
Mathematical analysis has now shown that these signals that fungi transmit to each other follow structurally similar patterns to human speech. Professor Andrew Adamatsky of the University of the West of England at Bristol has analyzed the electrical signals of four types of fungi, such as mitosis and inoki, and found that they frequently move in successive groups of activity, comparable to a vocabulary of about fifty words. The professor said this spread of communication is similar to the spread of human languages.
Keep it packaged together
The most obvious reason for these waves of electrical activity is to keep the fungi healthy, similar to how wolves howl to keep the herd together. It is also possible that the signals serve to make the attractants known to other parts of the mycelium.
Although it is a promising study, other scholars believe that more evidence must be provided before it can be classified as a form of language. For example, Dan Pepper, associate professor of life sciences at the University of Exeter, said: “It is very exciting to name this language and a lot of additional research is needed before we see ‘fungi’ as a language in Google Translate.”
sources): Watchman
