A study found unique facts about mushrooms. It turns out that these plants have the ability to communicate with each other, and have a vocabulary of up to 50 words. Just found out, right?
Mathematical research has identified patterns in the electrical signals that the fungi seem to send to each other. These signals have striking structural similarities to human speech and resemble a vocabulary of dozens of words. But of course these are not words in human language but rather a signal of 'mushroom language'.
Quoted from Express.co.uk, Thursday (7/4/2022) a researcher analyzed the electrical activity patterns of four fungal species, namely enoki, split gill, ghost, and caterpillar mushrooms.
The study, published in the Royal Society Open Science, found a spike in activity, resembling a human vocabulary of up to 50 words. It is also said that the distribution of the 'word length' of this fungus is very compatible with human language.
Professor Andrew Adamatzky, from the University of the West of England, found the average length of the 'word' that the mushroom 'spoke' was 5.97 letters.
In contrast, the average word length in English is 4.8 letters, while Russian has an average of six letters. The data also found that the fungus split gill, and researchers suspect this condition produces the most complex 'sentence' of all.
The data shows that the fungus can use electrical transmission to share information about its food or injury. Although there does not appear to be a 'direct relationship' between fungal spiking patterns and human speech, he points out that there are many similarities in information processing across living substrates of different classes, families and species.
The study found that spikes in activity were conveyed along the roots of fungi called mycelium. Whatever this spike event signals, according to Prof Adamatzky, doesn't appear to have happened randomly. He said it showed the mushroom had 'mind and consciousness'.
"Assuming that spikes in electrical activity are used by fungi to communicate, we show that the mushroom word length distribution matches human language," he said.
"We found that the mushroom vocabulary size can reach 50 words, however, the core vocabulary of the most frequently used words does not exceed 15 to 20 words," he concluded.