Fungi are everywhere. They are transforming soil, growing food, making medicine, and communicating in a language we don’t fully understand.
More than 90 percent of their species remain undocumented. The best estimate suggests that there are between 2.2 and 3.8 million species of fungi in the world – six to ten times the estimated number of plant species - meaning that only 6 percent of all fungal species have been described. [1]
We haven’t made so much effort to observe them. Not even considering they’ve been here much longer than we have ever existed.
The book Entangled Life, which deepens in the fascinating world of fungi, argues they are among the largest and oldest organisms in the world.
They served as the root system for plants 500 million years ago, allowing them to make it out of the water. There is even evidence of what may have been giant fungi, taller than a two-story building (when plants were barely one meter tall)—the largest living structures on dry land for at least 40 million years, twenty times longer than the genus Homo has existed.
Cover of the book Entangled Life (2020) by Merlin Sheldrake, which was the inspiration for this article🍄
What can we learn from these life forms that have survived through extreme temperatures, nuclear explosions, and other planetary challenges?
Across time they have evolved and continue to sustain plant life, through a wide variety of relationships, providing them with nutrients and communicating them in what is known as the Wood Wide Web.
Fungi excel in resilience (a desirable concept that has pretty much become a buzzword in urbanism, architecture, and politics), and perhaps we will get some clues on how to thrive and adapt if we pay attention to fungi and their intriguing qualities.
“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species becomes at doing the things they need to survive.”
Magical metabolizing
The ability of fungi to prosper in such a variety of habitats depends on their diverse metabolic abilities. Metabolism is the art of chemical transformation.
Fungi are metabolic wizards and can explore, scavenge and salvage ingeniously, their abilities rivaled only by bacteria. Using cocktails of potent enzymes and acids, fungi can break down some of the most stubborn substances on the planet, from lignin (an organic polymer in wood) to rock, polyurethane plastics, and explosives like TNT.
Few environments are too extreme. A number of radio-tolerant species (found in locations like Chernobyl’s blasted nuclear reactor) even grow towards radioactive 'hot' particles and appear to be able to harness radiation as a source of energy.
Voracious fungal appetites can be deployed to break down pollutants such as crude oil from oil spills, in a process known as 'mycoremediation', which could be helpful in managing our cities’ residues, digesting and cleaning up waste flows.
Ecofilter, a Mexican startup, found a way to degrade cigarette filters by letting oyster mushrooms feed on them.
Fungi transforms waste through its growth, cleaning up toxins and what remains is cellulose pulp that can be turned into paper products.
Super strength
A hypha is a long, branching, filamentous structure of a fungus. In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth and are collectively called mycelium.
Fruiting bodies, such as mushrooms, arise from the felting together of hyphal strands. These organs can perform many feats besides expelling spores. Some, like truffles, produce aromas that have made them among the most expensive foods in the world.
Others, like the shaggy ink cap mushrooms (Coprinus comatus), use pressure to insinuate themselves. Fungi can push their way through asphalt and lift heavy paving stones, although they are not themselves a tough material. They develop special penetrative hyphae which can reach pressures of fifty to eighty atmospheres and exert enough force to penetrate the tough plastics Mylar and Kevlar.
One study estimated that if a hypha was as wide as a human hand, it would be able to lift an eight-tonne school bus [2].
A close-up of a mycelium network from the documentary "Fantastic Fungi” (2019).
Photography: Moving Art.
Environment and body sensing
We still don’t quite understand how they do it, but we do have proof of mycelium organisms being able to transmit electric signals and interconnect with each other, exchanging valuable nutrients and information.
They also have an exceptional awareness of their environment, responding to stimuli like light, wind, pollutants, humidity, and temperature.
What would it be like if we could also be more attuned to our bodies and our environment?
Observations of fungal behavior have also triggered a wave of scientific studies of its potential applications in a variety of fields such as sensors, medical devices, and soft robotics.
In the paper Fungal electronics, Adamatzky et. al. (2021) study the creation of living electronic devices made of mycelium-bound composites or pure mycelium. Fungal (flexible) electronics can be embedded into fungal materials and wearables or used as stand-alone sensing and computing devices.
The advantages are low production costs, simple maintenance, durability, and adaptability: a living fungal material patch can be as small as a few millimeters or it can be grown to several meters in size.
Image: Adamatzky, A et al. (2021), axriv. Experimental setup and response to chemical stimuli (dextrose)
Free-form rapid growth
Hyphae grow by getting longer. The hyphae of some species grow so fast that you could watch them extend in real-time.
Mycelium also has the unique capacity to use agricultural waste (e.g., sugarcane bagasse, rice husks, cotton stalks, straw, etc.) as a substrate for its growth, creating composite materials without energy input or generating extra waste in the production, through what is know as mycofabrication.
It can grow in any shape according to the mold, in a matter of days.
Growing mycelium in a gravity shaped DIY mold - Radical Craft, Mycomatters Lab @mycomatterslab Photography: Jonathan Dessi Olive
We can already find promising solutions and some commercial alternatives of mycelium based materials for the construction, fashion and packaging industries.
It can be used to create plastic films and sheets, foams, and semi-structural materials (e.g., paneling, flooring, furniture, decking) that can also be compostable and disintegrate as nutrients in biological cycles.
The material function of these composites can be further tuned by controlling the species of fungus, the growing conditions, and the post-growth processing method to meet a specific mechanical requirement in applications (e.g., structural support, acoustic and thermal insulation).
Samples of mycelium acoustic panels (pink) and composite resilient and tiles flooring, commercially available for interior applications. Brand: Mogu
Mycelium facade panels, The Growing Pavilion, Company New Heroes (2019)
Mycelium packaging by Ecovative
Clothes made from vegan, lab-grown Mylo™️ mushroom leather. Collection by Stella McCartney
From growing more sustainable materials to learning to communicate with other senses, fungal life shows us a new perspective of doing things.
Our definitions of intelligence use humans as a measure against all other species, placing ourselves at the top of the rankings. Because these organisms don't look like us or have brains like us, they have traditionally been placed somewhere at the bottom of the scale. They are thought of as the inert backdrop to animal life. Yet fungi’s sophisticated symbiotic behavior suggests intelligence forms beyond our understanding, that could inspire us to be more connected to the roots of life.
References:
Merlin Sheldrake (2020) Entagled Life. The Bodley Head, London.
Nicholas P. Money (2004) The fungal dining habit: A biomechanical perspective. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222422488_The_fungal_dining_habit_A_biomechanical_perspective
Adamatzky et. al. (2021) Fungal electronics.