Now I want him to teach me about mushrooms.
He just did!
Anyone knows what that allergic reaction thing references? Sounds interesting
The part about them being too closely related to Humans sounds like BS, but there is a mushroom that is perfectly safe the first few times you eat it, and then eventually makes your immune system attack your blood cells.
There’s a Paul Stamets video where he talks about how mushrooms are so closely related to humans that we both fight off similar pathogens and that is why they are so useful to us for medicine (penicillin for example.)
In the Paul Stamets TED talk, he never says that humans specifically are genetically close to fungi. He said that between all the different kingdoms of life, animals and fungi were more biologically similar than any other two kingdoms.
That definitely explains why we can borrow useful defenses from fungi, like antibiotics, but it’s definitely not a reason to believe that our immune systems would have any difficulties differentiating between certain fungi and our own bodies, at least not for reasons related to direct genetic similarities.
There’s an enormous difference between kingdoms, so being more similar still leaves us very far apart.
That’s true. To even get to the mushroom kingdom you have to jump into a lot of pipes.
Yeah the similarities make sense when you look at sponges and sea lilies and the like, but the difference between a mushroom and a mammal is incredibly vast
TIL Stamets is named after a real mycologist.
I was thinking, “he is a real mycologist,” before I figured out to whom you were referring.
Yeah, I don’t know if @Stamets@lemmy.world is a mycologist but he’s certainly named after one.
Named after an Astromycologist anyway. I try to distance myself as much as I can from the Union busting real world mushroom man
Also, you cannot kill them in a way that matters
Reminds me: In the roguelike game Cataclysm DDA, there’s fungus monsters. Basically once they’re on the map, the best strategy was to just run and keep running until they were out of the game’s “simulation bubble.”
They would spread fungal colonies uncontrollably, creating fungal towers, spawning more spores, and fungal versions of monsters, which would spread more spores…
You could hack away at them or burn them sure, but all of them? Unlikely. You could also get infected with spores! They’d rapidly take over the entire game basically lol … Dunno if that’s been nerfed now.
Spores are freaky. Really freaky…
40k Orcs work like that. It leaves open the question if Orc burgers are vegan or not.
Break mycelium in half, now is just two mycelium. Mycelium win every time.
Throw it into the sun
Then the sun develops a fungal infection, and don’t scratch that itchy rash, it’ll only make it worse.
Mycelium > yourcelium
Why not ourcelium, comrade
Burning them seems to kill them. As does fungicide.
But he did just teach us about mushrooms!
He sounds like a fun guy.
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What’s an immortal mushroom look like? And how does it, like… Work?
A web of mycelium that permeates the ground and constantly regenerates itself, occasionally producing visible fruiting bodies.
It’s “immortal” only in the sense that an organism with distinct genetics doesn’t die of old age, but fungi aren’t really individual organisms like we are.They’re more like the Zerg than the Terran, or Protoss, that’s for sure.
There is mushroom for research
Fun fact: Every mushroom is edible… at least once.
Thats so badass
“live saving”
They’re just very exited, give them a break.
