September 20, 2016 • 49 mins
Join Robert and Christian as they crack open the sacred book of the shroom and examine a half-dozen examples of magnificently weird mushrooms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. Hey,
how many times, like when you're just walking around the
city we live in Atlanta, Like you're at a park
(00:23):
or you're just walking around, maybe with your son or
something like that, do you see just these utterly bizarre mushrooms? Oh? Yes, yeah,
I I This is something I love about living in Atlanta,
or at least the slice of Atlanta I live in,
because there's plenty of you know, plenty of vegetation around,
plenty of you know, park areas, and then after a
rain typically so when you see these these strange fungal
(00:45):
bodies burst up out of the ground and take on weird,
bizarre shapes. In fact, it's something that I've I've loved
doing with with my son who's four now, but for
for years now, when we're going to the park, park
and all, if we see some sort of a weird mushroom,
like go oh, let's look at this weird mushroom and uh,
and so he'll point him out. Now I go, oh,
(01:06):
there's a weird mushroom over here, let's go look at
it and you guys try to figure out what it
is that you take pictures and then back home you
try to like match it to a database or something
like that. Yeah, you know, you just do a do
a search for Hey, what kind of mushroom looks like
a weird fallust? And uh And in fact, that mushroom
which frequently pops up in our in our own yard
out of the mulch, is one that's called mu tennis
(01:30):
caninus or dogs stink horn, because it supposedly looks like
a dog fallust and it smells really awful. Oh yeah,
that's the worst image. I don't know what a dog
stink horn looks like. The media the dog lipstick. Yeah,
that's the worst. Well, yeah, because you know, I'm from
the Northeast originally, and man, the mushrooms down here are bonkers,
(01:52):
like like, uh so some of our Facebook followers might
remember this, but I posted to our Facebook page maybe
six months ago. Took my dog to the dog park
and it was right after a rain like you described,
maybe a day, and there was this totally bizarre thing
growing up out of the ground. Didn't even look like
a mushroom. It looked like the egg from Alien and
(02:14):
it looked like the egg had opened, um, and it
was red on the inside. And so I took a
picture of it, and I was like, well, who better
to answer what this thing is than our Facebook followers.
So I uploaded the picture and said, does anybody know
what this is? And they did. Somebody figured it out.
It's the Devil's finger fungus, that's what it's called. And
like not a month later, Nurdiced did like a like
(02:37):
a feature on their site on the Devil's finger fungus
and how it looks exactly like a xenomorphag. But I
was like, I don't this looks like some alien thing
that's in the dog park. I don't want my dog
around it. What what is this thing? You know? Um?
So I was a little worried at first, but it
turns out it's relatively harmless. Yeah. There's another one that
I can't remember what this one is called, but I
(02:59):
see it in our yards sometimes where it's it's as
if there is an underworld and occasionally they use cocking
to to fill to fill in holes between our world
and there, and it kind of puffs outing bubble. Yeah,
I know, exactly which one you're talking about. I've seen
that one before, like on the sidewalking your where I live. Now,
(03:19):
now tell me this. Uh, you're a dog owner, I'm not. Um.
In various neighborhood threads that I've seen about weird mushrooms,
I've seen some people react with wonder and off and
occasionally you know, uh uh nausea. But other people's, particularly
a few dog owners, are like, oh, I hate those mushrooms.
(03:40):
How can I get rid of them? Because there's this
fear and I don't know to what extent it's it's
founded or unfounded, but uh, they're afraid their dog is
going to eat the mushrooms, which of course can have
disastrous consequences. My wife worries about that constantly. Every day
when she gets home, she does a walk through the
yard and picks every single mushroom up that's growing in
(04:01):
the yard so that our dogs won't eat them. Um,
we have a lot of mushrooms actually, because we have
a really big We've been over to my place before.
My front yard has a really big old tree. Uh.
And our landlord is actually an arborist, and so he
told us, look, this tree is really old and a
couple of years, we're gonna have to take it down because,
like the roots are rotting. And the way you can
(04:23):
tell is because of the way that these bizarrely huge
mushrooms are growing up all around the tree, and so
they're fitting on the rot of the down there. Yeah,
because of course the fun guy and mushrooms are are
excellent decomposed or something. Yeah, totally that. I mean, that's
how they get by, right. Um, And uh so you know,
(04:43):
at first I was a little worried, and I said, well, hey,
you know, you're the arborist. Is this cool for my
dogs to be around? He said it was fine, But
my wife still worries. So yeah, she's she always cleans
up that stuff. And are you talking about like next
door dot com or like those uh you know those
like message boards. This is just like a Facebook, Yeah,
because there's a lot of that chatter on our neighborhood.
(05:05):
Well even I live in a fairly close proximity to
one another, so maybe it's the same neighborhood board. But yeah,
there's concerned about those mushrooms. I haven't heard anything about
like watch out for this one. It's poisonous. But one
of the things that's fascinating about Atlanta is that there's
so many fungal spores flying around that you get these
really bizarre, kind of off the wall mushrooms that you
(05:28):
wouldn't normally see, you know, especially in a city area. So, um,
who knows. I mean, I don't know about you. But
for the mushrooms that we we're gonna talk about today,
if you guys haven't guessed yet out there, listeners, we're
gonna talk about weird mushrooms today. Of course, we can't
cover all of them by any stretch of imagination, So
we just picked three either specific mushrooms or sort of
(05:51):
a general type of mushroom or a type of mushroom behavior,
and we're gonna sort of have a you know, the
potpourri uh episode. Yeah, the none of minor poisonous. Did
you choose any poisonous ones? Um? I always chose the
death cap, which is the most poisonous one. And um,
(06:12):
I mean, there's varying levels of things you shouldn't do
with the ones that I'm going to talk about today,
but the the toxicity doesn't really factor heavily into the
areas I discuss. One of them is definitely not poisonous
because it's a it's an edible mushroom, um. The others.
It's kind of it encompasses a number of different types.
But but this is the kind of thing where if
(06:33):
you guys like us talking about mushrooms, we can come
back and do more. We can do a one speak
various poisonous mushrooms, be good. Well, I have to say
this reminded me of an episode we almost did I
think almost a year ago, uh to this week, which
was our episode about Wolfspange, and it reminded me of
(06:53):
aconite poisoning. UM. Reading through these descriptions of all the mushrooms,
and really I had no idea how in depth of
field mycology is and how precise it is. And the
entries for these mushrooms were very, very detailed. I mean
so detailed that we could do an entire episode just
on one species. So for these entries we really had
(07:17):
to I think boil them down to their essence. Again,
no pun intended. We're not actually boiling the mushrooms down here,
but but yeah, they're they're fascinating um. And it's just
this thing that we we all kind of just live with.
And you know what, I mean like they're everywhere and
we'm at the grocery store and we eat them, but like, uh,
there there there's an endless variety of them, and they
(07:40):
all do these like very different things and have incredibly
complex compounds inside of them. And I feel like we're
only like as a as a scientific society, like on
the tip of understanding fungal growth. Yeah, I mean, there's
there is so much diversity out there. We keep discovering
new species to the point where I'm I can only
(08:00):
give like a rough estimate right now, but essentially we're
looking at a hundred thousand different fungi species, and of those,
we're looking at in the neighborhood of fourteen thousand mushrooms.
And again that is that's a number that's constantly changing.
I looked at numbers from a few years back and
they were significantly less than that. So it's a it's
an amazing world. And you know they are so because
(08:23):
they're so weird, they're so alien. It's no wonder that
you you can find conspiracy theorists who think they came
from space, especially when you see ones that look like
a xenomorph. Yeah, or I can I mean, going back
to our Wolf Spain episode, right, Like, imagine all of
the folklore that sprang up out of all the various
species of mushroom. Yeah, they're so different looking. If you
(08:45):
didn't you know, have a broader scientific understanding of them,
you wouldn't even classify them as being the same thing. Yeah,
like one of my one of my favorite monsters from
the Dungeon and Dragon universe or the Mikon It's which,
of course our mushroom people, the monster science episode on them. No,
we did a Monster Science on the Mushrooms of Matanga,
(09:07):
which was a Tohoe horror film about this these spores
that turned people into walking mushrooms. It's a it's actually
a really creepy movie, totally different vibe than most of
the Toho films. Well, so full disclosure, audience. The reason
why I propose that we do an episode on weird
weird mushrooms is I'm working on like a horror story
right now that the basis is about mushrooms and spores
(09:30):
and mycology, and so I was like, you know, I'd
like to know a little bit more about this, and
I think it would be a good topic for our listeners.
So here we are Um. One of the things that
I just want to bring up before we dive into
the individual ones. The funky as an organism essentially has
a parasitic lifestyle, and that's something I think we we
forget about. We see our mushrooms in the grocery store
(09:50):
wrapped in plastic and we just go, oh, that's that's
a lot of people just think it's a vegetable, right, Um.
But they absorb soluble nutrients through sell membranes. That's how
they subsist and uh with together with bacteria, as you said,
they're responsible for the decay of organic matter. Now, some
(10:10):
estimate that of the biomass on the entire planet is
fun Guy, that's a lot. So I mean it's worth
go mycologists. It's it's worth uh studying further and us
knowing a lot more about these, especially when you get
into the health benefits that we'll talk about. Yeah, So,
without further ado, let's go ahead and kick things off.
(10:32):
I believe you have our first mushroom of the episode. Yeah,
and this is the one that is most well known
for its health benefits. It's called the Rashima mushroom. Oh,
and I want to jump in real quick and just
tell everybody that on the landing page for this episode,
I'm going to have a picture of each one that
we're discussing. So if you start wondering about it, just
(10:52):
go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah,
and you'll be able to see what each one of
these looks like, especially because we were show some really
bizarre looking The raci isn't as well known for being
bizarre looking, although it is kind of weird looking. It's
mostly known for its life extending properties. In fact, they've
been used medicinally for at least two thousand years because
they have a reputation for promoting health and longevity. Rayci,
(11:17):
I believe, is the name for it in Japan. It's
also called the ling g mushroom in China. Now you
may recognize these, Uh. They're kind of a deep reddish brown.
They're shaped sort of like saucers. The upper surface of
them looks like it's lacquered when it gets wet. Um
And because they have this glossy look, some people call
them varnished conks. And I went, what's the conk? Well,
(11:39):
conk is a mushroom that has pores instead of gills.
Um And again I've never heard of them referred to
as gills before, so that's a nice creepy metaphor there
as well. I have to say this one kind of
looks like they might be leathery human ears. Yeah. Well,
you know what's funny is um I don't know if
you've ever played this video game, but for but there's
(12:00):
a video game called battle Born, uh, and my wife
is addicted to it and I play it with her
a lot. Anyways, so there's this guy who's a living
mushroom person and he his head is like a mushroom
cap and his head looks like a racie mushroom and
he's the healer in the game. So he's the one who,
like he blasts the other characters with mushroom spores and
(12:23):
makes them feel better. And then he can take off
his mushroom cap and throw it down on the ground
and it acts as like a healing area buffer or
something like that. So I have to assume that the
people who made battle Born were inspired by the Racehie
mushroom when they came up with this character. Anyways, the
Racehi they grow up to be eight inches to or
(12:44):
around twenty centimeters in diameter. You usually find them in
temperate forests. These are moist areas sometimes in Asia, Europe,
South America in the US, and they typically attach themselves
to trees. So similar to what I was just talking
about with the tree in my front yard, they're probably
feeding off of the decay on these trees. Uh. So
(13:05):
here's the deal, why is it a weird mushroom? Well,
there's actually something to this life extending property thing. This
isn't just like a you know, folklore myth um. They
are prepared as teas or as infusions. You can also
get them as capsules or tinctures, and you can even
eat them in candy, chocolate bars, and coffee blends. I
(13:25):
was thinking to myself that a Racie coffee blend might
be good, But I don't know what a Rachie US
mushroom tastes like yet. Uh yeah, I guess it would
taste like a mushroom tea, which is is not generally
not that pleasant, and in my opinion, I don't know,
probably maybe yeah. Um. Now you see, so when I
went to do research on this one, you see a
(13:46):
lot of advertisements or articles pop up about them, and
kind of new age style publications about these life extending properties, right, um,
and if we are talking about traditional medicine and supplement
here so exactly, they used to be pretty rare, but
there's new cultural cultivation advances that make them more widely available. Um.
(14:09):
But the reviews of science literature do indicate that most
of the medicinal claims for these mushrooms can be validated.
So let's just talk briefly about what's the science behind them. Well,
research has found that because of unique compounds in these mushrooms,
they can stimulate our brain neurons, search and destroy cancer cells,
(14:29):
and prevent the development of fat cells in obese individuals.
So that alone is like, that's a pretty broad summaryn wow. Um.
And they've done lots of studies on mice and humans.
But studies on mice have shown that these mushrooms may
also have therapeutic effects on asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's diabetes, liver failure, and more. Now that it all
(14:54):
boils down to these three compounds that are in the
rati mushroom that give it its health be fits. And
this is this is what why I said earlier, like
these mushrooms are just incredibly complex in their organic matter.
So the three are polysaccharides. Now, these have anti aging
effects because they prevent abnormal blood vessel formation in our bodies.
(15:18):
They also boost immune system function. There's also triter penes
that protect the liver. Uh. They lower our blood pressure
and our cholesterol, and they prevent platelet clumping in the
blood that leads to heart attacks or strokes. They also
fight allergic responses that are triggered by histamines and indicate
anti cancer activity. Now, the last compound is called the
(15:41):
ganoderma lucidum peptide. We've got a lot of latin in
this episode because mycology really loves its latin. Now, that's
a protein that has strong antioxidant characteristics that are still
being studied. So there's a lot going on here with
this raci mushroom. Uh. There's other studies that indicate that
(16:02):
it can reduce the size and growth rate of tumors,
both in human and animal trials. UH, And in fact,
it's most dramatic in cases of colorectal cancer. However, I
do want to qualify that statement with there are other
studies that dispute the use of these mushrooms for treating cancer.
So it's it's kind of up in the air right
now and it requires more research. But some oncologists have
(16:24):
concerns that the mushrooms antioxidant properties may actually interfere with
chemotherapy drugs. So yes, it may have anti cancer properties,
but it may also interfere with other therapy for cancer. Um,
these mushrooms are like a mini first aid kit, Like
it seems like they're just this great thing that you
(16:44):
should take every day, you know, although there's and and
forth noting you were not in the pocket of big
fungutions no big right, she does not support the show.
I don't know. I haven't done an ad read yet
for this episode. Maybe it's there was a race dot
com And I do have to admit that when I
was doing research for this, I saw a lot of
sites that were like, Hey, buy your raciot supplements here,
(17:05):
get um, get the tease, get the chocolate bars, whatever.
So there's totally a business that thrives around this. But
there is some science to it. Well, actually a lot
of science to it. So what do you have? Well,
my first one here is not not a specific mushroom,
though I will mention a couple of different specific ones
as we go. But discussing the topic of of bioluminescent mushrooms,
(17:28):
Oh yeah, so um, I'm sure everyone's quite well acquainted
with the mushrooms elevated status in the iconography of stone
or black light post Um. I'm thinking of like every
you know metal fan, every sleep metal album poster has
like mushrooms at the bottom of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(17:49):
they kind of engage in in that kind of iconography
for sure. It's too often see it's it's either the
caterpillar from the house in Wonderland a top of mushroom,
or I've seen like bong smoking wizards with mushrooms. I've
seen aliens, gray aliens into chikis with mushrooms. Um. And
of course they all glow when you have the black
light on it. But but there are of course actual
(18:12):
mushrooms out there, and actual uh beyond mushrooms, just fung
gui that are bioluminescent, uh, and we keep discovering more
of them. Uh. Now there are there are a rarity
within just the overall fungal population, with only about its
seventy plus species. Out of again the hundred thousand fungi species,
fourteen thousand odd mushroom species and they admit like twenty
(18:37):
four hours a day, but they're only gonna be able
to really observe them at night. Now. Some of the
more common species here include the jack o lantern mushroom
or um omphilatus, which will find in North America, as
well as the honey mushroom. And they've belonged to two
separate lineages here. There's another there's another one that made
(18:57):
the rounds a few years back called my Sinna chloroffice
and that's another glowing um mushroom, specifically a mushroom in
that case. So three quarters of the glowing mushrooms belong
to the Mycena genus uh and a group of mushrooms.
And this is a group of mushrooms that decomposed organic
matter to feed themselves, like like like a lot of
(19:18):
fun guys, we've discussed um. So I know you and
I share in common that we're both playing Fallout for.
Oh yeah, you've gotten to the point yet where you
find the glowing mushrooms. Yeah, they're popping up everywhere. Yeah,
and they're I mean, I guess like in the premise
of Fallout For it's probably because of radiation that yeah,
just like the glowing feral ghouls. Yeah, yeah, but no, yeah,
you find plenty of glowing fun guy, um without nuclear fallout,
(19:43):
right yeah. Um. They even use them in the game.
I think at one point as like there's like a
community that uses them as the lights in their underground community,
like they have the mushrooms and like lanterns. Yeah, I think, um,
what is it the children of the Atom do? That's it?
And and I'm I'm actually running a Dungeons and Dragons
campaign right now. It takes place in the under dark.
(20:04):
So there's a lot of five luminescent mushrooms and that
because you gotta you know, you might have everybody in
the party with dark vision, but otherwise you need to
have a little light for people to see some light visions.
You say, oh, well, there's some luminescent mushroom right here. Now,
what kind of glow are we talking about? Generally it's
a yellowish greenish light with wavelength of five nanometers. Not
(20:28):
all of the parts of the mushrooms necessarily glow, and
some species it's only the cap for the gills. In
others it's the stem, and some species the mushrooms don't
really glow. At all. But it's the fine thread like
filaments the mycelium from which the mushrooms developed that grows
brightly and specifically, we're talking about a lucifer in lucifories
(20:49):
mediated reaction here. Now, basically what we're talking about here,
these are light emitting compounds that you can find in
many creatures like fireflies. Of course they're named sort of
named after lucifer, which means a shining one or light bearer.
Makes sense because most people find them underground. Yeah, yeah,
with the devil. But but yeah, so this is this
(21:11):
is just a common bioluminescent property, and so that's what's
it hard here. It's nothing strange and alien and out
of keeping with other glowing creatures. Now, according to San
Francisco State University biology professor Dennis de Jardine, luminescent species
of fun Guy come for about sixteen different lineages, which
suggests that luminescence evolved at a single point and some
(21:32):
species later lost the ability to close. So, in other words,
a single early origin of fungal luminescets. Okay, so why
but what, like why would a mushroom evolve to glow
to begin with? Like what evolutionary advantage is there to that. Well,
that's that's interesting. There a number of mysteries still remain. Uh.
(21:54):
De Jardine believes that some fun guy probably glow in
order to attract nocturnal animals, and these animals then you
know it's dark, they're glowing, the animals come over to
see what the glowing is about, and then they end
up helping to disperse the spores um and therefore the species.
And this is especially adaptive and closed canopy forest because
(22:16):
there's you're not gonna have winds blown through their you know,
crazy breezes to to to distribute the spores. Well, as
we've learned here on stuff to blow your mind. Like
any good parasite, they have an absolutely bizarre way of
reproducing that are complicated, I should say, rather than bizarre.
But yeah, that sounds like totally in line with what
we know about other parasites. Yeah. Now, another theory is
(22:38):
that in some cases they glow to attract the predators
of insects they eat the mushrooms, so it's kind of
an offensive mechanism. And then in other cases we just
don't know, Like we're continually finding new bioluminocent mushrooms, and
some of them may have a different game in play. Yeah, huh, fascinating.
Now I'm now, I'm like really curious if you can
(22:58):
really light up a room bioluminescent mushrooms in a lantern.
Probably not, it'ld still be pretty gloomy. Well, it would
be like tracking like a goth nightclub, but probably not
in office space. It would have it would be the
same sort of situation as trying to fill a lantern
with lightning bugs and light your way, or or if
you're in the original Riddick movie, like bioluminescent grubs. Yeah, well,
(23:24):
we're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back,
we're going to talk about the puff ball mushroom. All right,
we're back. Now. This one is This one is the
phone because I have a lot of fond memories of
this because when I was a when I was a kid,
I was in boy Scouts, and it seemed like we
(23:45):
were always having our scout trips out to this area.
They had a bunch of cows. So there was something
about the puff balls were always growing up around the
cows because of the manure. I don't know, I mean,
I know, so I certainly know that some mushrooms and
including psychedelic mushrooms, depend on comedy or and that's where
you go to find them. But in this case, I think,
(24:07):
I don't know. They're just growing in the same fields
with them. And so everyone got a big kick out
of stepping on the puff balls and or stepping on
the dried cow patties. Right, Because the spores puff out,
that's why they're called called puff balls. I thought they
were called puffballs because they looked like these little puffy clouds.
Well that's when they grow up there. Actually, I would
say of the mushrooms we're talking about today, these are
(24:28):
probably the ones that people are most visually familiar with. Um.
They do kind of look like the mushrooms that we
you know, the just generic mushrooms that you buy at
the grocery store and at to your salad or whatever,
but they're sort of like a bigger, mutated version of them. Um.
And yeah, like I said, they're called puffballs not because
of how they look, but because the spores puff out
(24:48):
of them in a cloud when they're hit, even by
falling rain drops. That's nuts to me. Any kind of
impact amidst these spores. So again reproduction. Uh, they're found worldwide,
but when they desiccate, they release their spores when they're agitated,
and only one puffball species can produce psychoactive affection. Might
(25:10):
be wondering why I'm bringing that up, Well, it's important
to a case study that I'm gonna bring up in
a little bit here. Um, there are a lot of
different varieties of puffball mushrooms. They all belong in the
Bassie dio micada division, and they all have the following
characteristics in common. They do not grow an open cap
with the spore bearing gills, so that's why they have
(25:31):
to you know, emit their spores when they're when they're agitated. Instead,
the spores are grown internally and the mushroom develops an
aperture or it splits open to release the spores outward.
Puffballs are a variety of sizes. Some can be as
small as a marble, and others can be as big
as a basketball. I saw a picture of a guy
holding one that was as big as a basketball, and
(25:52):
I was I was kind of shocked by that. Um.
But they're white and round. They look a lot like
what you think mushrooms look like. Sometimes they're smooth than
other times. They have large wartz or or even like
little spikes on their surface, and there's very little stems,
so they're pretty close to the ground. The term puff
ball refers to three genera of fungi Calvadia, calbo vista,
(26:15):
and leco perdon. Now leco pernn is the one that
I really want to focus on today. Um, but really
make sure so for instance, like if you're out there,
like Robert, you just said you saw them when you
were you know, going to look at cows and stuff
like that, Right, So some people go and forage for
puffballs and they you know, by all accounts it's it's edible.
(26:36):
And uh we did actually an episode here at How
Stuff Works about foraging in the woods for various foods.
So I'm just gonna leave you with this disclaimer, like
you should really make sure you know exactly what kind
of mushroom you're picking before you just go out into
the woods and grab a mushroom and throw it into
a salad or pop it in your mouth. I don't
don't go picking odd mushrooms based on anything we've told
(26:59):
you here. If you're gonna engage in that, and make
sure you are following the footsteps of a true expert.
And the reason why, especially with puffballs, is because you
can get quite sick even from just breathing in their spores.
So this is the main mushroom that's responsible for something
called lycoperdonosis. This is a really rare respiratory illness that's
(27:22):
caused by inhaling mushroom spores. And this is the case
study that I wanted to mention to you. Uh In
eight teenagers in southeastern Wisconsin had inhaled and chewed the
spores of puffball mushrooms at a party. Now, according to
the study that I read, there were no other illicit
drugs that were found at this party. But it's hard
(27:44):
for me to believe that these kids weren't eating these
mushrooms because they thought they would have some psychoactive properties.
That's why I mentioned earlier there's only one of these
that has any kind of properties like that. Three of
these people reported nausea within six to thirteen hours. Within
three to seven days, all of the patients had a cough, fever,
shortness of breath, muscle pain, and fatigue. Five of them
(28:08):
were hospitalized too, had to be intovated. They had to
have a tube put down their throat. Three had to
undergo various kinds of lung biopsies to figure out what
was going on with them. This revealed that their lungs
were inflamed and they had formed yeast like structures in
between the flesh of their lungs that were like mushroom spores,
(28:30):
but there were no fungal cultures found in their lungs.
The spores got in there and and either replicated or
just we're clogging up their lungs or something. It really
didn't make them feel well. Uh so, I really want
to warn you about this. This is like, this is
a species that seems harmless, we see it all the time,
and yet like it can make people quite sick. The
(28:51):
other hand, this is very rare. Um. The people were
given cotocosteroids, they got better. Four of them received antifungal
therapy with rugs. All of them recovered between a week
and a month. But despite this, there isn't a lot
of evidence for what in the literature was referred to
as the efficacy of using anti fungal agents to treat
(29:12):
this disease. When you breathe in these spores, they don't
know if it really works. No. And in fact, there
other than this, there's only been three other recorded cases
of this, so two of them were in children in
one and an adolescent. And remember these these were teenagers,
so it seems to be something that affects younger people more.
And I just want to point out to like, yes,
(29:33):
I'm I'm focusing in on the puff ball here because
it has these rare cases of this disease, right, and
they make people quite ill. But in general, the spores
of mushrooms may contain microtoxins. Okay, uh, there are several
diseases that are associated with inhaling fungal spores, including toxic numonitis, hypersensity, pneumonitis, tremors,
(29:54):
chronic fatigue, syndrome, kidney failure, and even cancer. So you know,
before again, before you got into the woods and you
just start picking up mushrooms and breathing them in or
chopping them up and putting them in a salad, you
really want to make sure you know what you're getting. UM.
Make sure you've either got an expert with you or
I don't know, you're consulting a book or something like that. Um.
(30:15):
But yeah, I mean, just consider fungi have a parasitic lifestyle.
Like I said, so imagine this, like you breathe in
their spores. Of course, when they get inside your lungs,
their cell membranes are going to start absorbing nutrients through
your lungs. So, yeah, they've ended up in the wrong place,
but that doesn't mean they're They're not gonna attempt to
carry out their basic program. Yeah, absolutely so. Puff Ball,
(30:37):
it's a cool, weird kind of It reminds me of
jiggly Puff the Pokemon. I have to imagine that that
Pokemon was probably a designed after the puff Ball. But
but yeah, it's a cute, little weird mushroom. But you
don't want to necessarily inhale those spores. Right. Well, if
you're wonderable, what what mushrooms can I eat? Well, the
(30:59):
one I'm going to talk about you can definitely eat.
Um It is the edible oyster mushroom or Plerotis austriatis.
And this, uh, I mean, I think I'm a lot
most of us have had this before. Oysterroom mushroom. You'll
typically find it in various stir fries. It's delicious. But
the really cool thing about it, and what I'm gonna
(31:19):
talk about here is that this is essentially a carnivorous mushroom.
So before it ends up on your your grocery store shelf,
it's out there eating things. Now, I mean, obviously we
eat things that eat other things, unless you're just eating
straight up you know, plants that are absorbing um solar radiation.
But but the thing here is that you don't necessarily
(31:39):
think about what the mushrooms are consuming, and you don't think, oh,
they are essentially catching and consuming live nematodes and or spiders. Yeah,
so there's UM so when you eat them, you're getting
a little bit of spider well you know, I mean yeah,
I mean it's it kind of comes back around to
when you eat your food, how how far back are
(32:01):
you're going to try and trace the heritage of your
your nutrients? Um? You know it's gonna go to something
dead at some point, right, But this isn't like, UM,
I'm thinking of the fig wasp, which you and I
have both research before, you know, which which ends up
in most figs that you eat. But of course insects
wind up in most foods of the eat. So what
can you do UM in this particular case, though essentially
(32:24):
the idea is that the mushrooms will eat these nematodes
or these spiders. Uh. Probably is a way to supplement
low levels of nitrogen available available in the wood because
they tend to grow on like the size of trees
and stuff they have that you know, they look like
a little oysters, like little like like a little overhangs
that you know, yeah, no, might hang under to get
(32:45):
away from the from the rain the radio. Yeah, I
know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. So according to
a two thousand fifteen study from ARC Imaging Center at
Monash University and Brickbeck College published in Plos Biology, the
shrooms employ special membrane attack complex paraffin like proteins or
(33:07):
m A CPF proteins to punch holes in the cells
of its prey. And what's crazy here is this is
the very tactic the human immune cells us against bacterial invaders. So,
like I'm trying to imagine this, So a spider crawls
across this and these these cells start poking tiny little
holes through it. Well, the better examples probably with it
(33:30):
with the nematodes um and and there's actually a whole
classification of nemoto phagees fun guy, And this covers nematode
eating fungi in general. Uh. They often use um my
cilial trap structures or spores to trap the nematodes, or
they use special branching structures known as hypel tips to
(33:51):
attack nematode eggs and cysts. Uh. So the yeah, they're
actively engaging in I've seen some write ups even go
so far as to say they're they're hunting and killing nematodes,
they're hunting and killing spiders and in some cases as well. Uh.
And it's and it goes beyond just like near grotesque
curiosity here because their potential medical applications here, learning how
(34:13):
to to damp in immune response and people with autoimmune disease,
stopping listeria escaping our immune cells, and preventing malaria from
infecting the liver. Those are just a few possible um
treasures we can unlock with the fungal key here. Yeah,
it seems like the m A CPF that you you
mentioned earlier, those proteins, the functionality of those can sort
(34:37):
of be reverse engineered for our benefit. Yeah, that's the
that's the hope that the researchers have. But even if
we never get there it is. It is fascinating to
think that this this mushroom that we love is essentially
feeding itself in part on nematodes, which nobody really wants
to think about the role of nematodes uh in their diets.
But of course there are other animals that eat nematodes
(34:57):
as well. What can you do some people? Maybe this
next mushroom is the one that I have the hardest
time looking at pictures of. And so we mentioned earlier
we're gonna have pictures of all of these on stuff
to blow your mind dot com. You should definitely go
look at what this time looks beautifully bizarre. Yeah, they're
called the bleeding tooth mushroom, uh. And the reason why
(35:21):
is because, well, it basically looks like a white mushroom
that is bleeding all over the place. It has little droplets.
Basically that's a younger specimens of this mushroom they quote
bleed a bright red juice. And here's the crazy thing.
That juice has anticoagulant properties. Now, the blood itself, it's
(35:44):
not actual blood, uh, isn't because the mushrooms damaged. That's
just what it really looks like. It's a it's a
red sap that emerges from this mushroom because of high
root pressure. When they get older, the pressure eases and
the fungus turns brown own. But they're about three to
eight centimeters in diameter summer round but more often not
(36:05):
their oval or maybe multi lobed. They're white or pale pink.
They become deeper pink and then brown as they did decay.
But yeah, I mean it basically looks like, uh, it's
the stigmata of mushrooms. Like it's a it's a mushroom.
It's it's a kind of bizarrely shaped mushroom too. It's
a little pinkish, a little whitish, but there's just little
(36:26):
dots of what looks like blood coming out of this thing,
sometimes so much so that it drips down the side
of these mushrooms. They're just utterly creepy looking. Yeah, the
thing they really remind me of if we have any
Mystery Science Theater three thousand fans out there. Uh, there
was a film, a nine film titled Attack of VV
(36:46):
Eye Creatures that had two vs in the title and
that one. Yeah, it's wonderfully bad film and it it
involves a number of these shambling eye creatures and they
look like bleeding tooth mushrooms. Okay, okay, yeah, they're real weird. Um.
They were first described by an American mycologist in nineteen twelve.
His name was Howard James Banker, and they are found
(37:08):
in North America, Europe, Iran, in Korea. In Britain, it's
mainly known as a woodland mushroom, so they mostly grow
near coniferous trees. Um. They're not poisonous, despite how bizarre
they look. Yeah, it looks like the last mushroom you
would yeah. Well, okay, so one of the nicknames that
it has, especially in Britain is strawberries and cream. Well,
(37:33):
that's the last thing that I would call it. It
doesn't at all look appetizing. Um. There's another nickname for
it is devil's tooth um. But yeah, they're not poisonous,
but they are pretty bitter. They have an accumulation of
an element called c c M one seven in them,
which doesn't make them very pleasant to eat. Their formal
name is hyddenell um. Again, here we are with the Latin.
(37:55):
Let me see if I can get this hydenylum pecky
I believe is what it is is, but so yeah,
they go by a number of names. That's the formal name,
Devil's Tooth, Strawberries and Cream, or bleeding tooth. Now here's
the thing. Remember I said it had anticoagulant properties in it,
So this blood the same blood. It actually has something
in it called atromanan which is an effective anti coagulation
(38:19):
that's similar to heperin. It is anti bacterial against strepto
coxus pneumonia. That this is the main bacteria that causes
pneumonia and people. Uh. And you can even use this
stuff to stimulate smooth muscles. I don't know what that means,
but it was in the literature, and it causes apoptosis
(38:43):
in certain leukemia cells, which we were We've talked about
apoptosis before when we've mentioned m D M A on
the show before. So M D M A also has
a poptosis properties, but this is specific to leukemia. It
might be a way to treat it. All these properties
were discover it in nineteen sixty five by a team
of researchers published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Science. So
(39:06):
we've known for a while now that it has these
anticoagulant properties. To it. The other thing that it made
me think of was when we've talked about bats before
on the show and how their saliva has anti coagulant
properties in't it. I know. I love how that sixty
five article that you reference here it includes mentioned of
heiden Ellum diabolus. Yeah, so is that I'm wondering, is
(39:26):
that's another species of it that is diabolic in nature,
or maybe that was an earlier term for it, or yeah,
maybe that was what its name was earlier. So from
what I remember loosely from the notes was that hyden
Ellum Pecky was named as such because there was a guy,
a well known mycologist with the last name peck Uh,
(39:47):
and this it was like sort of like an honor
to him by naming it after him. But I wonder
if maybe diabolus was what its name was first, or
maybe there's different difference between the devil's tooth and the
bleeding tooth, like are the same species but different genera.
I'm not sure about that that that is a good
point that it has a different name in there, but
(40:08):
I believe they all have that same anticoagon kind of
seeping blood property to them. So yeah, if you see
one of these. I mean, you could pop it in
your mouth. It's gonna taste pretty gross, but it's not.
But absolutely do not pop it in your mouth. Do
not pop any mushrooms in your mouth. Because you heard
us talking about the Yeah that too. Uh no, So
(40:29):
speaking of the devil, we're gonna get to our our
last selection here and again with me. This is not
a specific mushroom, but a type of behavior, if you will,
manifestation that you see with with mushrooms and fun guy,
and that is the fairy ring. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's lots of folklore that pops up out of the ferry. Yeah,
(40:52):
and it shows up a gosh. It's in Shakespeare, right,
and it's in Dungeons and Dragons. It's basically cultures around
the world most important literally area achievements of human kind.
Shakespeare douches. Yeah, you's encountered in cultures around the world
because essentially what we're taught, fairy rings essentially just means
strange circles on the ground or in the ground that
you find in nature. And uh, we've the causes we
(41:16):
attribute fairies dancing around and around on the spot, or
perhaps it's witches or devils. Hey, maybe it's a ufo.
If you're using a modern interpretation of it, it's whatever,
whatever the attributed supernatural cause. However, the basic idea is
that some unseen force is causing the circle to manifest.
I want to say, have you ever seen is it
pronounced haxon? I always get the pronunciation room because the
(41:38):
old devil worshiping hasn't whom loud over the a. Is
it hawks in? I'm not sure what the proper pronunciation
is of it, but yeah, it's it's this old documentary
about sort of the folklore around witches. Yeah, I've never
watched it in in full, but it has some wonderful
images in it. Yeah, I want to say that fairy
rings show up in that, but I might be wrong.
But but but because of the reasons you just meant,
(42:00):
because of the idea that which is did like rituals,
that they danced around the ferry ring right now, Absolutely
no fairy rings are caused by fairies or aliens or
the devil or the devil. Sorry, but that's the truth. Um,
But there there are accounts of fairy rings that are
that are not trum related, not directly funk related. So
(42:22):
I ran across one, for instance, from Nambia, and there
apparently fairy rings here that are caused by termite constructed
water traps. Uh. But other instances of fairy rings are
definitely tied to fungal activity and and not the dancing
micons that you encounter in Disney's Fantasium. So there are
(42:43):
essentially two varieties of fungal fairy rings. Then the first
is more mysterious, and I don't think I've ever seen
one of these in person. But this is just a
circle of dark green grass in a lawn or meadow, okay,
and with surrounding grass it's somewhat lighter. The culprit here
is subsurface fungal mycelia that caused the darker color due
(43:04):
to increased nitrogen produced by the fungus. Interesting, and you
also find other fun guy that caused in a chronic
ring of dead vegetation due to nitrogen depletion right, which
you know again back to the parasitic aspect of Guy. Right,
And the massilia is just kind of threading through underneath
the grass. So you can imagine where you look at this,
(43:24):
you're like, why is this grass screen or why is
this grass dead or it must be some sort of
supernatural force. Um. And then of course there's the more
overt form, and that's where you have actual surface mushrooms,
identifiable mushrooms that are lined up more or less in
a rough surface. You know what I just realized is, uh,
in my head, fairy rings combined two of the mushrooms
(43:46):
you've mentioned today, the fairy rings and then the phosphorescent mushrooms.
But I guess they don't necessarily right, they don't glow.
I did not in my research. I did not run
across a species of mushroom that was both. But but
I'm not sure it's it's possible, as you'll see when
I describe you know, what exactly is going on here.
(44:08):
So in either case, whether we're talking about subservice mushrooms
surface mushrooms, uh, the cause of the circle has nothing
to do with fairy kingdom and everything to do with
spore dispersal. So this is this is a fabulous model here.
So you can start with a single spore, al right,
it lands in a field, and then it grows, Okay,
it eventually produces a mushroom, or at least it reaches
(44:29):
this as adult form, and then it spreads out more spores. Uh.
And then this causes the growing colony to spread only
outward since the inner circle uh is the territory that
it's ravaged. Okay, this is a there's no more nutrients there,
so it can only spread out. So it's kind of
like theoretically the circle is going to get larger. Yes,
(44:50):
the circle gets larger and larger, and the inside of
the circle is depleted of the nutrients. That it doesn't
mean that the grass is all dead. It just means
that there's nothing else. Yeah, nothing else that the to
this particular fun guy can feed off of. So the
circle continues to grow and grow and uh. And sometimes
there are additional circles so you'll actually get uh, you know,
like figure eights and whatnot. Yeah, I was thinking, like,
(45:11):
I wonder if there's like a ven diagram one out
there somewhere maybe. But I love this because wonders of nature.
But I love this one because it makes me think of, say,
what have you had a like a sci fi or
fantasy scenario with say, say zombies or vampires, you know,
whatever your your breed of destructive monster that reproduces rapidly
(45:32):
might be. You can have a similar scenario where it
starts at one point and then it begins to spread outward,
but it's spreading as a as a ring because it
has to feed and it cannot continue to survive in
the area that it has ravished. That would all right,
producers of the new movie Rings that's coming out, I
think pretty soon. Right, They didn't pay us to say this,
but that would be a good spin on that mythos.
(45:56):
The idea of the girl across on the television and
kills me her ring forms in like an actual geographic
area as she kills everybody around, only people in that
ring like area can watch the video and it grows
further and further, or you know what show it would
It would work really well on a strain. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(46:18):
It reminds me a lot two of these creatures known
as the shrunk in Um in our Scott Baker's books,
because these are these are kind of the Orcs of
his world, except there there seemed to be just they're
particularly bred, particularly created to just ravage the land and
so I get a mad and they bread rapidly, So
they would be a good model for this, Like they're
(46:39):
in one area and then they spread outward in this
in this Ring of desolation. You know, I like to
think that I'm there's still obviously a lot for me
to read, But I like to think that I've read
a lot of horror, and I think you have to.
And I can't really think of a ton of mushroom
based horror. And yet it seems to me that there's
something fun mentally creepy. You have mushrooms and just have
(47:04):
their formations are just their life process in general. Off
the top of my head, I cannot think of a
good one. Maybe I'll think of one after we go
off off offline here. Maybe you out there have one.
You're you're screaming at your podcast right now and saying,
Robert Christian, what you forgot about whatever? I mean? Well,
the most obvious one is that just the fun guy
(47:25):
from you go with that believe that Themigo and Lovecraft
stories are technically funguses, right, Okay, But but but that's
the only example that's instantly coming to mind. So there
may be some other great ones out there. Yeah, maybe
there are alright. Well, on that note, we're gonna go
ahead and close it out here again. We can only
discuss a few different mushrooms a few different types of
of mushroom behavior, if you will. So, if you have
(47:48):
some other amazing mycological specimens that you would like us
to discuss, let us know. Especially if you're a mycologist,
we'd love to hear from you. I'd be really curious
what your favorites are that and like, what what's the
daily life of a mycologists? Like it just sounds it
sounds charming to kind of go around and identify mushrooms
(48:09):
and examine them and write about them and with lots
of and occasionally get to name them. So, Hey, check
out stuff to bow your mind dot com. That's where
we'll find all the podcasts. You'll find blog posts, you'll
find videos, uh, you'll find all sorts of content, including
links out to our very social media accounts. Yeah, we
are on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. We post lots
(48:29):
of things to those channels, not just the podcasts that
you're listening to, but also articles that we write, videos
that we write or star in, and lots of other
stuff that we find in our travels across the internet
when we find bizarre science audities and we want you
to know about them. As I mentioned earlier. I take
pictures of weird mushrooms in the dog parks sometimes and
(48:51):
post them to our Facebook page, and hey, you can do.
That's a great place to share them. And you can
also send your weird mushroom photos, your mushroom horror suggest
to what have you to blow the mind and how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
(49:13):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. Hey,
how many times, like when you're just walking around the
city we live in Atlanta, Like you're at a park
(00:23):
or you're just walking around, maybe with your son or
something like that, do you see just these utterly bizarre mushrooms? Oh? Yes, yeah,
I I This is something I love about living in Atlanta,
or at least the slice of Atlanta I live in,
because there's plenty of you know, plenty of vegetation around,
plenty of you know, park areas, and then after a
rain typically so when you see these these strange fungal
(00:45):
bodies burst up out of the ground and take on weird,
bizarre shapes. In fact, it's something that I've I've loved
doing with with my son who's four now, but for
for years now, when we're going to the park, park
and all, if we see some sort of a weird mushroom,
like go oh, let's look at this weird mushroom and uh,
and so he'll point him out. Now I go, oh,
(01:06):
there's a weird mushroom over here, let's go look at
it and you guys try to figure out what it
is that you take pictures and then back home you
try to like match it to a database or something
like that. Yeah, you know, you just do a do
a search for Hey, what kind of mushroom looks like
a weird fallust? And uh And in fact, that mushroom
which frequently pops up in our in our own yard
out of the mulch, is one that's called mu tennis
(01:30):
caninus or dogs stink horn, because it supposedly looks like
a dog fallust and it smells really awful. Oh yeah,
that's the worst image. I don't know what a dog
stink horn looks like. The media the dog lipstick. Yeah,
that's the worst. Well, yeah, because you know, I'm from
the Northeast originally, and man, the mushrooms down here are bonkers,
(01:52):
like like, uh so some of our Facebook followers might
remember this, but I posted to our Facebook page maybe
six months ago. Took my dog to the dog park
and it was right after a rain like you described,
maybe a day, and there was this totally bizarre thing
growing up out of the ground. Didn't even look like
a mushroom. It looked like the egg from Alien and
(02:14):
it looked like the egg had opened, um, and it
was red on the inside. And so I took a
picture of it, and I was like, well, who better
to answer what this thing is than our Facebook followers.
So I uploaded the picture and said, does anybody know
what this is? And they did. Somebody figured it out.
It's the Devil's finger fungus, that's what it's called. And
like not a month later, Nurdiced did like a like
(02:37):
a feature on their site on the Devil's finger fungus
and how it looks exactly like a xenomorphag. But I
was like, I don't this looks like some alien thing
that's in the dog park. I don't want my dog
around it. What what is this thing? You know? Um?
So I was a little worried at first, but it
turns out it's relatively harmless. Yeah. There's another one that
I can't remember what this one is called, but I
(02:59):
see it in our yards sometimes where it's it's as
if there is an underworld and occasionally they use cocking
to to fill to fill in holes between our world
and there, and it kind of puffs outing bubble. Yeah,
I know, exactly which one you're talking about. I've seen
that one before, like on the sidewalking your where I live. Now,
(03:19):
now tell me this. Uh, you're a dog owner, I'm not. Um.
In various neighborhood threads that I've seen about weird mushrooms,
I've seen some people react with wonder and off and
occasionally you know, uh uh nausea. But other people's, particularly
a few dog owners, are like, oh, I hate those mushrooms.
(03:40):
How can I get rid of them? Because there's this
fear and I don't know to what extent it's it's
founded or unfounded, but uh, they're afraid their dog is
going to eat the mushrooms, which of course can have
disastrous consequences. My wife worries about that constantly. Every day
when she gets home, she does a walk through the
yard and picks every single mushroom up that's growing in
(04:01):
the yard so that our dogs won't eat them. Um,
we have a lot of mushrooms actually, because we have
a really big We've been over to my place before.
My front yard has a really big old tree. Uh.
And our landlord is actually an arborist, and so he
told us, look, this tree is really old and a
couple of years, we're gonna have to take it down because,
like the roots are rotting. And the way you can
(04:23):
tell is because of the way that these bizarrely huge
mushrooms are growing up all around the tree, and so
they're fitting on the rot of the down there. Yeah,
because of course the fun guy and mushrooms are are
excellent decomposed or something. Yeah, totally that. I mean, that's
how they get by, right. Um, And uh so you know,
(04:43):
at first I was a little worried, and I said, well, hey,
you know, you're the arborist. Is this cool for my
dogs to be around? He said it was fine, But
my wife still worries. So yeah, she's she always cleans
up that stuff. And are you talking about like next
door dot com or like those uh you know those
like message boards. This is just like a Facebook, Yeah,
because there's a lot of that chatter on our neighborhood.
(05:05):
Well even I live in a fairly close proximity to
one another, so maybe it's the same neighborhood board. But yeah,
there's concerned about those mushrooms. I haven't heard anything about
like watch out for this one. It's poisonous. But one
of the things that's fascinating about Atlanta is that there's
so many fungal spores flying around that you get these
really bizarre, kind of off the wall mushrooms that you
(05:28):
wouldn't normally see, you know, especially in a city area. So, um,
who knows. I mean, I don't know about you. But
for the mushrooms that we we're gonna talk about today,
if you guys haven't guessed yet out there, listeners, we're
gonna talk about weird mushrooms today. Of course, we can't
cover all of them by any stretch of imagination, So
we just picked three either specific mushrooms or sort of
(05:51):
a general type of mushroom or a type of mushroom behavior,
and we're gonna sort of have a you know, the
potpourri uh episode. Yeah, the none of minor poisonous. Did
you choose any poisonous ones? Um? I always chose the
death cap, which is the most poisonous one. And um,
(06:12):
I mean, there's varying levels of things you shouldn't do
with the ones that I'm going to talk about today,
but the the toxicity doesn't really factor heavily into the
areas I discuss. One of them is definitely not poisonous
because it's a it's an edible mushroom, um. The others.
It's kind of it encompasses a number of different types.
But but this is the kind of thing where if
(06:33):
you guys like us talking about mushrooms, we can come
back and do more. We can do a one speak
various poisonous mushrooms, be good. Well, I have to say
this reminded me of an episode we almost did I
think almost a year ago, uh to this week, which
was our episode about Wolfspange, and it reminded me of
(06:53):
aconite poisoning. UM. Reading through these descriptions of all the mushrooms,
and really I had no idea how in depth of
field mycology is and how precise it is. And the
entries for these mushrooms were very, very detailed. I mean
so detailed that we could do an entire episode just
on one species. So for these entries we really had
(07:17):
to I think boil them down to their essence. Again,
no pun intended. We're not actually boiling the mushrooms down here,
but but yeah, they're they're fascinating um. And it's just
this thing that we we all kind of just live with.
And you know what, I mean like they're everywhere and
we'm at the grocery store and we eat them, but like, uh,
there there there's an endless variety of them, and they
(07:40):
all do these like very different things and have incredibly
complex compounds inside of them. And I feel like we're
only like as a as a scientific society, like on
the tip of understanding fungal growth. Yeah, I mean, there's
there is so much diversity out there. We keep discovering
new species to the point where I'm I can only
(08:00):
give like a rough estimate right now, but essentially we're
looking at a hundred thousand different fungi species, and of those,
we're looking at in the neighborhood of fourteen thousand mushrooms.
And again that is that's a number that's constantly changing.
I looked at numbers from a few years back and
they were significantly less than that. So it's a it's
an amazing world. And you know they are so because
(08:23):
they're so weird, they're so alien. It's no wonder that
you you can find conspiracy theorists who think they came
from space, especially when you see ones that look like
a xenomorph. Yeah, or I can I mean, going back
to our Wolf Spain episode, right, Like, imagine all of
the folklore that sprang up out of all the various
species of mushroom. Yeah, they're so different looking. If you
(08:45):
didn't you know, have a broader scientific understanding of them,
you wouldn't even classify them as being the same thing. Yeah,
like one of my one of my favorite monsters from
the Dungeon and Dragon universe or the Mikon It's which,
of course our mushroom people, the monster science episode on them. No,
we did a Monster Science on the Mushrooms of Matanga,
(09:07):
which was a Tohoe horror film about this these spores
that turned people into walking mushrooms. It's a it's actually
a really creepy movie, totally different vibe than most of
the Toho films. Well, so full disclosure, audience. The reason
why I propose that we do an episode on weird
weird mushrooms is I'm working on like a horror story
right now that the basis is about mushrooms and spores
(09:30):
and mycology, and so I was like, you know, I'd
like to know a little bit more about this, and
I think it would be a good topic for our listeners.
So here we are Um. One of the things that
I just want to bring up before we dive into
the individual ones. The funky as an organism essentially has
a parasitic lifestyle, and that's something I think we we
forget about. We see our mushrooms in the grocery store
(09:50):
wrapped in plastic and we just go, oh, that's that's
a lot of people just think it's a vegetable, right, Um.
But they absorb soluble nutrients through sell membranes. That's how
they subsist and uh with together with bacteria, as you said,
they're responsible for the decay of organic matter. Now, some
(10:10):
estimate that of the biomass on the entire planet is
fun Guy, that's a lot. So I mean it's worth
go mycologists. It's it's worth uh studying further and us
knowing a lot more about these, especially when you get
into the health benefits that we'll talk about. Yeah, So,
without further ado, let's go ahead and kick things off.
(10:32):
I believe you have our first mushroom of the episode. Yeah,
and this is the one that is most well known
for its health benefits. It's called the Rashima mushroom. Oh,
and I want to jump in real quick and just
tell everybody that on the landing page for this episode,
I'm going to have a picture of each one that
we're discussing. So if you start wondering about it, just
(10:52):
go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah,
and you'll be able to see what each one of
these looks like, especially because we were show some really
bizarre looking The raci isn't as well known for being
bizarre looking, although it is kind of weird looking. It's
mostly known for its life extending properties. In fact, they've
been used medicinally for at least two thousand years because
they have a reputation for promoting health and longevity. Rayci,
(11:17):
I believe, is the name for it in Japan. It's
also called the ling g mushroom in China. Now you
may recognize these, Uh. They're kind of a deep reddish brown.
They're shaped sort of like saucers. The upper surface of
them looks like it's lacquered when it gets wet. Um
And because they have this glossy look, some people call
them varnished conks. And I went, what's the conk? Well,
(11:39):
conk is a mushroom that has pores instead of gills.
Um And again I've never heard of them referred to
as gills before, so that's a nice creepy metaphor there
as well. I have to say this one kind of
looks like they might be leathery human ears. Yeah. Well,
you know what's funny is um I don't know if
you've ever played this video game, but for but there's
(12:00):
a video game called battle Born, uh, and my wife
is addicted to it and I play it with her
a lot. Anyways, so there's this guy who's a living
mushroom person and he his head is like a mushroom
cap and his head looks like a racie mushroom and
he's the healer in the game. So he's the one who,
like he blasts the other characters with mushroom spores and
(12:23):
makes them feel better. And then he can take off
his mushroom cap and throw it down on the ground
and it acts as like a healing area buffer or
something like that. So I have to assume that the
people who made battle Born were inspired by the Racehie
mushroom when they came up with this character. Anyways, the
Racehi they grow up to be eight inches to or
(12:44):
around twenty centimeters in diameter. You usually find them in
temperate forests. These are moist areas sometimes in Asia, Europe,
South America in the US, and they typically attach themselves
to trees. So similar to what I was just talking
about with the tree in my front yard, they're probably
feeding off of the decay on these trees. Uh. So
(13:05):
here's the deal, why is it a weird mushroom? Well,
there's actually something to this life extending property thing. This
isn't just like a you know, folklore myth um. They
are prepared as teas or as infusions. You can also
get them as capsules or tinctures, and you can even
eat them in candy, chocolate bars, and coffee blends. I
(13:25):
was thinking to myself that a Racie coffee blend might
be good, But I don't know what a Rachie US
mushroom tastes like yet. Uh yeah, I guess it would
taste like a mushroom tea, which is is not generally
not that pleasant, and in my opinion, I don't know,
probably maybe yeah. Um. Now you see, so when I
went to do research on this one, you see a
(13:46):
lot of advertisements or articles pop up about them, and
kind of new age style publications about these life extending properties, right, um,
and if we are talking about traditional medicine and supplement
here so exactly, they used to be pretty rare, but
there's new cultural cultivation advances that make them more widely available. Um.
(14:09):
But the reviews of science literature do indicate that most
of the medicinal claims for these mushrooms can be validated.
So let's just talk briefly about what's the science behind them. Well,
research has found that because of unique compounds in these mushrooms,
they can stimulate our brain neurons, search and destroy cancer cells,
(14:29):
and prevent the development of fat cells in obese individuals.
So that alone is like, that's a pretty broad summaryn wow. Um.
And they've done lots of studies on mice and humans.
But studies on mice have shown that these mushrooms may
also have therapeutic effects on asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's diabetes, liver failure, and more. Now that it all
(14:54):
boils down to these three compounds that are in the
rati mushroom that give it its health be fits. And
this is this is what why I said earlier, like
these mushrooms are just incredibly complex in their organic matter.
So the three are polysaccharides. Now, these have anti aging
effects because they prevent abnormal blood vessel formation in our bodies.
(15:18):
They also boost immune system function. There's also triter penes
that protect the liver. Uh. They lower our blood pressure
and our cholesterol, and they prevent platelet clumping in the
blood that leads to heart attacks or strokes. They also
fight allergic responses that are triggered by histamines and indicate
anti cancer activity. Now, the last compound is called the
(15:41):
ganoderma lucidum peptide. We've got a lot of latin in
this episode because mycology really loves its latin. Now, that's
a protein that has strong antioxidant characteristics that are still
being studied. So there's a lot going on here with
this raci mushroom. Uh. There's other studies that indicate that
(16:02):
it can reduce the size and growth rate of tumors,
both in human and animal trials. UH, And in fact,
it's most dramatic in cases of colorectal cancer. However, I
do want to qualify that statement with there are other
studies that dispute the use of these mushrooms for treating cancer.
So it's it's kind of up in the air right
now and it requires more research. But some oncologists have
(16:24):
concerns that the mushrooms antioxidant properties may actually interfere with
chemotherapy drugs. So yes, it may have anti cancer properties,
but it may also interfere with other therapy for cancer. Um,
these mushrooms are like a mini first aid kit, Like
it seems like they're just this great thing that you
(16:44):
should take every day, you know, although there's and and
forth noting you were not in the pocket of big
fungutions no big right, she does not support the show.
I don't know. I haven't done an ad read yet
for this episode. Maybe it's there was a race dot
com And I do have to admit that when I
was doing research for this, I saw a lot of
sites that were like, Hey, buy your raciot supplements here,
(17:05):
get um, get the tease, get the chocolate bars, whatever.
So there's totally a business that thrives around this. But
there is some science to it. Well, actually a lot
of science to it. So what do you have? Well,
my first one here is not not a specific mushroom,
though I will mention a couple of different specific ones
as we go. But discussing the topic of of bioluminescent mushrooms,
(17:28):
Oh yeah, so um, I'm sure everyone's quite well acquainted
with the mushrooms elevated status in the iconography of stone
or black light post Um. I'm thinking of like every
you know metal fan, every sleep metal album poster has
like mushrooms at the bottom of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(17:49):
they kind of engage in in that kind of iconography
for sure. It's too often see it's it's either the
caterpillar from the house in Wonderland a top of mushroom,
or I've seen like bong smoking wizards with mushrooms. I've
seen aliens, gray aliens into chikis with mushrooms. Um. And
of course they all glow when you have the black
light on it. But but there are of course actual
(18:12):
mushrooms out there, and actual uh beyond mushrooms, just fung
gui that are bioluminescent, uh, and we keep discovering more
of them. Uh. Now there are there are a rarity
within just the overall fungal population, with only about its
seventy plus species. Out of again the hundred thousand fungi species,
fourteen thousand odd mushroom species and they admit like twenty
(18:37):
four hours a day, but they're only gonna be able
to really observe them at night. Now. Some of the
more common species here include the jack o lantern mushroom
or um omphilatus, which will find in North America, as
well as the honey mushroom. And they've belonged to two
separate lineages here. There's another there's another one that made
(18:57):
the rounds a few years back called my Sinna chloroffice
and that's another glowing um mushroom, specifically a mushroom in
that case. So three quarters of the glowing mushrooms belong
to the Mycena genus uh and a group of mushrooms.
And this is a group of mushrooms that decomposed organic
matter to feed themselves, like like like a lot of
(19:18):
fun guys, we've discussed um. So I know you and
I share in common that we're both playing Fallout for.
Oh yeah, you've gotten to the point yet where you
find the glowing mushrooms. Yeah, they're popping up everywhere. Yeah,
and they're I mean, I guess like in the premise
of Fallout For it's probably because of radiation that yeah,
just like the glowing feral ghouls. Yeah, yeah, but no, yeah,
you find plenty of glowing fun guy, um without nuclear fallout,
(19:43):
right yeah. Um. They even use them in the game.
I think at one point as like there's like a
community that uses them as the lights in their underground community,
like they have the mushrooms and like lanterns. Yeah, I think, um,
what is it the children of the Atom do? That's it?
And and I'm I'm actually running a Dungeons and Dragons
campaign right now. It takes place in the under dark.
(20:04):
So there's a lot of five luminescent mushrooms and that
because you gotta you know, you might have everybody in
the party with dark vision, but otherwise you need to
have a little light for people to see some light visions.
You say, oh, well, there's some luminescent mushroom right here. Now,
what kind of glow are we talking about? Generally it's
a yellowish greenish light with wavelength of five nanometers. Not
(20:28):
all of the parts of the mushrooms necessarily glow, and
some species it's only the cap for the gills. In
others it's the stem, and some species the mushrooms don't
really glow. At all. But it's the fine thread like
filaments the mycelium from which the mushrooms developed that grows
brightly and specifically, we're talking about a lucifer in lucifories
(20:49):
mediated reaction here. Now, basically what we're talking about here,
these are light emitting compounds that you can find in
many creatures like fireflies. Of course they're named sort of
named after lucifer, which means a shining one or light bearer.
Makes sense because most people find them underground. Yeah, yeah,
with the devil. But but yeah, so this is this
(21:11):
is just a common bioluminescent property, and so that's what's
it hard here. It's nothing strange and alien and out
of keeping with other glowing creatures. Now, according to San
Francisco State University biology professor Dennis de Jardine, luminescent species
of fun Guy come for about sixteen different lineages, which
suggests that luminescence evolved at a single point and some
(21:32):
species later lost the ability to close. So, in other words,
a single early origin of fungal luminescets. Okay, so why
but what, like why would a mushroom evolve to glow
to begin with? Like what evolutionary advantage is there to that. Well,
that's that's interesting. There a number of mysteries still remain. Uh.
(21:54):
De Jardine believes that some fun guy probably glow in
order to attract nocturnal animals, and these animals then you
know it's dark, they're glowing, the animals come over to
see what the glowing is about, and then they end
up helping to disperse the spores um and therefore the species.
And this is especially adaptive and closed canopy forest because
(22:16):
there's you're not gonna have winds blown through their you know,
crazy breezes to to to distribute the spores. Well, as
we've learned here on stuff to blow your mind. Like
any good parasite, they have an absolutely bizarre way of
reproducing that are complicated, I should say, rather than bizarre.
But yeah, that sounds like totally in line with what
we know about other parasites. Yeah. Now, another theory is
(22:38):
that in some cases they glow to attract the predators
of insects they eat the mushrooms, so it's kind of
an offensive mechanism. And then in other cases we just
don't know, Like we're continually finding new bioluminocent mushrooms, and
some of them may have a different game in play. Yeah, huh, fascinating.
Now I'm now, I'm like really curious if you can
(22:58):
really light up a room bioluminescent mushrooms in a lantern.
Probably not, it'ld still be pretty gloomy. Well, it would
be like tracking like a goth nightclub, but probably not
in office space. It would have it would be the
same sort of situation as trying to fill a lantern
with lightning bugs and light your way, or or if
you're in the original Riddick movie, like bioluminescent grubs. Yeah, well,
(23:24):
we're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back,
we're going to talk about the puff ball mushroom. All right,
we're back. Now. This one is This one is the
phone because I have a lot of fond memories of
this because when I was a when I was a kid,
I was in boy Scouts, and it seemed like we
(23:45):
were always having our scout trips out to this area.
They had a bunch of cows. So there was something
about the puff balls were always growing up around the
cows because of the manure. I don't know, I mean,
I know, so I certainly know that some mushrooms and
including psychedelic mushrooms, depend on comedy or and that's where
you go to find them. But in this case, I think,
(24:07):
I don't know. They're just growing in the same fields
with them. And so everyone got a big kick out
of stepping on the puff balls and or stepping on
the dried cow patties. Right, Because the spores puff out,
that's why they're called called puff balls. I thought they
were called puffballs because they looked like these little puffy clouds.
Well that's when they grow up there. Actually, I would
say of the mushrooms we're talking about today, these are
(24:28):
probably the ones that people are most visually familiar with. Um.
They do kind of look like the mushrooms that we
you know, the just generic mushrooms that you buy at
the grocery store and at to your salad or whatever,
but they're sort of like a bigger, mutated version of them. Um.
And yeah, like I said, they're called puffballs not because
of how they look, but because the spores puff out
(24:48):
of them in a cloud when they're hit, even by
falling rain drops. That's nuts to me. Any kind of
impact amidst these spores. So again reproduction. Uh, they're found worldwide,
but when they desiccate, they release their spores when they're agitated,
and only one puffball species can produce psychoactive affection. Might
(25:10):
be wondering why I'm bringing that up, Well, it's important
to a case study that I'm gonna bring up in
a little bit here. Um, there are a lot of
different varieties of puffball mushrooms. They all belong in the
Bassie dio micada division, and they all have the following
characteristics in common. They do not grow an open cap
with the spore bearing gills, so that's why they have
(25:31):
to you know, emit their spores when they're when they're agitated. Instead,
the spores are grown internally and the mushroom develops an
aperture or it splits open to release the spores outward.
Puffballs are a variety of sizes. Some can be as
small as a marble, and others can be as big
as a basketball. I saw a picture of a guy
holding one that was as big as a basketball, and
(25:52):
I was I was kind of shocked by that. Um.
But they're white and round. They look a lot like
what you think mushrooms look like. Sometimes they're smooth than
other times. They have large wartz or or even like
little spikes on their surface, and there's very little stems,
so they're pretty close to the ground. The term puff
ball refers to three genera of fungi Calvadia, calbo vista,
(26:15):
and leco perdon. Now leco pernn is the one that
I really want to focus on today. Um, but really
make sure so for instance, like if you're out there,
like Robert, you just said you saw them when you
were you know, going to look at cows and stuff
like that, Right, So some people go and forage for
puffballs and they you know, by all accounts it's it's edible.
(26:36):
And uh we did actually an episode here at How
Stuff Works about foraging in the woods for various foods.
So I'm just gonna leave you with this disclaimer, like
you should really make sure you know exactly what kind
of mushroom you're picking before you just go out into
the woods and grab a mushroom and throw it into
a salad or pop it in your mouth. I don't
don't go picking odd mushrooms based on anything we've told
(26:59):
you here. If you're gonna engage in that, and make
sure you are following the footsteps of a true expert.
And the reason why, especially with puffballs, is because you
can get quite sick even from just breathing in their spores.
So this is the main mushroom that's responsible for something
called lycoperdonosis. This is a really rare respiratory illness that's
(27:22):
caused by inhaling mushroom spores. And this is the case
study that I wanted to mention to you. Uh In
eight teenagers in southeastern Wisconsin had inhaled and chewed the
spores of puffball mushrooms at a party. Now, according to
the study that I read, there were no other illicit
drugs that were found at this party. But it's hard
(27:44):
for me to believe that these kids weren't eating these
mushrooms because they thought they would have some psychoactive properties.
That's why I mentioned earlier there's only one of these
that has any kind of properties like that. Three of
these people reported nausea within six to thirteen hours. Within
three to seven days, all of the patients had a cough, fever,
shortness of breath, muscle pain, and fatigue. Five of them
(28:08):
were hospitalized too, had to be intovated. They had to
have a tube put down their throat. Three had to
undergo various kinds of lung biopsies to figure out what
was going on with them. This revealed that their lungs
were inflamed and they had formed yeast like structures in
between the flesh of their lungs that were like mushroom spores,
(28:30):
but there were no fungal cultures found in their lungs.
The spores got in there and and either replicated or
just we're clogging up their lungs or something. It really
didn't make them feel well. Uh so, I really want
to warn you about this. This is like, this is
a species that seems harmless, we see it all the time,
and yet like it can make people quite sick. The
(28:51):
other hand, this is very rare. Um. The people were
given cotocosteroids, they got better. Four of them received antifungal
therapy with rugs. All of them recovered between a week
and a month. But despite this, there isn't a lot
of evidence for what in the literature was referred to
as the efficacy of using anti fungal agents to treat
(29:12):
this disease. When you breathe in these spores, they don't
know if it really works. No. And in fact, there
other than this, there's only been three other recorded cases
of this, so two of them were in children in
one and an adolescent. And remember these these were teenagers,
so it seems to be something that affects younger people more.
And I just want to point out to like, yes,
(29:33):
I'm I'm focusing in on the puff ball here because
it has these rare cases of this disease, right, and
they make people quite ill. But in general, the spores
of mushrooms may contain microtoxins. Okay, uh, there are several
diseases that are associated with inhaling fungal spores, including toxic numonitis, hypersensity, pneumonitis, tremors,
(29:54):
chronic fatigue, syndrome, kidney failure, and even cancer. So you know,
before again, before you got into the woods and you
just start picking up mushrooms and breathing them in or
chopping them up and putting them in a salad, you
really want to make sure you know what you're getting. UM.
Make sure you've either got an expert with you or
I don't know, you're consulting a book or something like that. Um.
(30:15):
But yeah, I mean, just consider fungi have a parasitic lifestyle.
Like I said, so imagine this, like you breathe in
their spores. Of course, when they get inside your lungs,
their cell membranes are going to start absorbing nutrients through
your lungs. So, yeah, they've ended up in the wrong place,
but that doesn't mean they're They're not gonna attempt to
carry out their basic program. Yeah, absolutely so. Puff Ball,
(30:37):
it's a cool, weird kind of It reminds me of
jiggly Puff the Pokemon. I have to imagine that that
Pokemon was probably a designed after the puff Ball. But
but yeah, it's a cute, little weird mushroom. But you
don't want to necessarily inhale those spores. Right. Well, if
you're wonderable, what what mushrooms can I eat? Well, the
(30:59):
one I'm going to talk about you can definitely eat.
Um It is the edible oyster mushroom or Plerotis austriatis.
And this, uh, I mean, I think I'm a lot
most of us have had this before. Oysterroom mushroom. You'll
typically find it in various stir fries. It's delicious. But
the really cool thing about it, and what I'm gonna
(31:19):
talk about here is that this is essentially a carnivorous mushroom.
So before it ends up on your your grocery store shelf,
it's out there eating things. Now, I mean, obviously we
eat things that eat other things, unless you're just eating
straight up you know, plants that are absorbing um solar radiation.
But but the thing here is that you don't necessarily
(31:39):
think about what the mushrooms are consuming, and you don't think, oh,
they are essentially catching and consuming live nematodes and or spiders. Yeah,
so there's UM so when you eat them, you're getting
a little bit of spider well you know, I mean yeah,
I mean it's it kind of comes back around to
when you eat your food, how how far back are
(32:01):
you're going to try and trace the heritage of your
your nutrients? Um? You know it's gonna go to something
dead at some point, right, But this isn't like, UM,
I'm thinking of the fig wasp, which you and I
have both research before, you know, which which ends up
in most figs that you eat. But of course insects
wind up in most foods of the eat. So what
can you do UM in this particular case, though essentially
(32:24):
the idea is that the mushrooms will eat these nematodes
or these spiders. Uh. Probably is a way to supplement
low levels of nitrogen available available in the wood because
they tend to grow on like the size of trees
and stuff they have that you know, they look like
a little oysters, like little like like a little overhangs
that you know, yeah, no, might hang under to get
(32:45):
away from the from the rain the radio. Yeah, I
know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. So according to
a two thousand fifteen study from ARC Imaging Center at
Monash University and Brickbeck College published in Plos Biology, the
shrooms employ special membrane attack complex paraffin like proteins or
(33:07):
m A CPF proteins to punch holes in the cells
of its prey. And what's crazy here is this is
the very tactic the human immune cells us against bacterial invaders. So,
like I'm trying to imagine this, So a spider crawls
across this and these these cells start poking tiny little
holes through it. Well, the better examples probably with it
(33:30):
with the nematodes um and and there's actually a whole
classification of nemoto phagees fun guy, And this covers nematode
eating fungi in general. Uh. They often use um my
cilial trap structures or spores to trap the nematodes, or
they use special branching structures known as hypel tips to
(33:51):
attack nematode eggs and cysts. Uh. So the yeah, they're
actively engaging in I've seen some write ups even go
so far as to say they're they're hunting and killing nematodes,
they're hunting and killing spiders and in some cases as well. Uh.
And it's and it goes beyond just like near grotesque
curiosity here because their potential medical applications here, learning how
(34:13):
to to damp in immune response and people with autoimmune disease,
stopping listeria escaping our immune cells, and preventing malaria from
infecting the liver. Those are just a few possible um
treasures we can unlock with the fungal key here. Yeah,
it seems like the m A CPF that you you
mentioned earlier, those proteins, the functionality of those can sort
(34:37):
of be reverse engineered for our benefit. Yeah, that's the
that's the hope that the researchers have. But even if
we never get there it is. It is fascinating to
think that this this mushroom that we love is essentially
feeding itself in part on nematodes, which nobody really wants
to think about the role of nematodes uh in their diets.
But of course there are other animals that eat nematodes
(34:57):
as well. What can you do some people? Maybe this
next mushroom is the one that I have the hardest
time looking at pictures of. And so we mentioned earlier
we're gonna have pictures of all of these on stuff
to blow your mind dot com. You should definitely go
look at what this time looks beautifully bizarre. Yeah, they're
called the bleeding tooth mushroom, uh. And the reason why
(35:21):
is because, well, it basically looks like a white mushroom
that is bleeding all over the place. It has little droplets.
Basically that's a younger specimens of this mushroom they quote
bleed a bright red juice. And here's the crazy thing.
That juice has anticoagulant properties. Now, the blood itself, it's
(35:44):
not actual blood, uh, isn't because the mushrooms damaged. That's
just what it really looks like. It's a it's a
red sap that emerges from this mushroom because of high
root pressure. When they get older, the pressure eases and
the fungus turns brown own. But they're about three to
eight centimeters in diameter summer round but more often not
(36:05):
their oval or maybe multi lobed. They're white or pale pink.
They become deeper pink and then brown as they did decay.
But yeah, I mean it basically looks like, uh, it's
the stigmata of mushrooms. Like it's a it's a mushroom.
It's it's a kind of bizarrely shaped mushroom too. It's
a little pinkish, a little whitish, but there's just little
(36:26):
dots of what looks like blood coming out of this thing,
sometimes so much so that it drips down the side
of these mushrooms. They're just utterly creepy looking. Yeah, the
thing they really remind me of if we have any
Mystery Science Theater three thousand fans out there. Uh, there
was a film, a nine film titled Attack of VV
(36:46):
Eye Creatures that had two vs in the title and
that one. Yeah, it's wonderfully bad film and it it
involves a number of these shambling eye creatures and they
look like bleeding tooth mushrooms. Okay, okay, yeah, they're real weird. Um.
They were first described by an American mycologist in nineteen twelve.
His name was Howard James Banker, and they are found
(37:08):
in North America, Europe, Iran, in Korea. In Britain, it's
mainly known as a woodland mushroom, so they mostly grow
near coniferous trees. Um. They're not poisonous, despite how bizarre
they look. Yeah, it looks like the last mushroom you
would yeah. Well, okay, so one of the nicknames that
it has, especially in Britain is strawberries and cream. Well,
(37:33):
that's the last thing that I would call it. It
doesn't at all look appetizing. Um. There's another nickname for
it is devil's tooth um. But yeah, they're not poisonous,
but they are pretty bitter. They have an accumulation of
an element called c c M one seven in them,
which doesn't make them very pleasant to eat. Their formal
name is hyddenell um. Again, here we are with the Latin.
(37:55):
Let me see if I can get this hydenylum pecky
I believe is what it is is, but so yeah,
they go by a number of names. That's the formal name,
Devil's Tooth, Strawberries and Cream, or bleeding tooth. Now here's
the thing. Remember I said it had anticoagulant properties in it,
So this blood the same blood. It actually has something
in it called atromanan which is an effective anti coagulation
(38:19):
that's similar to heperin. It is anti bacterial against strepto
coxus pneumonia. That this is the main bacteria that causes
pneumonia and people. Uh. And you can even use this
stuff to stimulate smooth muscles. I don't know what that means,
but it was in the literature, and it causes apoptosis
(38:43):
in certain leukemia cells, which we were We've talked about
apoptosis before when we've mentioned m D M A on
the show before. So M D M A also has
a poptosis properties, but this is specific to leukemia. It
might be a way to treat it. All these properties
were discover it in nineteen sixty five by a team
of researchers published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Science. So
(39:06):
we've known for a while now that it has these
anticoagulant properties. To it. The other thing that it made
me think of was when we've talked about bats before
on the show and how their saliva has anti coagulant
properties in't it. I know. I love how that sixty
five article that you reference here it includes mentioned of
heiden Ellum diabolus. Yeah, so is that I'm wondering, is
(39:26):
that's another species of it that is diabolic in nature,
or maybe that was an earlier term for it, or yeah,
maybe that was what its name was earlier. So from
what I remember loosely from the notes was that hyden
Ellum Pecky was named as such because there was a guy,
a well known mycologist with the last name peck Uh,
(39:47):
and this it was like sort of like an honor
to him by naming it after him. But I wonder
if maybe diabolus was what its name was first, or
maybe there's different difference between the devil's tooth and the
bleeding tooth, like are the same species but different genera.
I'm not sure about that that that is a good
point that it has a different name in there, but
(40:08):
I believe they all have that same anticoagon kind of
seeping blood property to them. So yeah, if you see
one of these. I mean, you could pop it in
your mouth. It's gonna taste pretty gross, but it's not.
But absolutely do not pop it in your mouth. Do
not pop any mushrooms in your mouth. Because you heard
us talking about the Yeah that too. Uh no, So
(40:29):
speaking of the devil, we're gonna get to our our
last selection here and again with me. This is not
a specific mushroom, but a type of behavior, if you will,
manifestation that you see with with mushrooms and fun guy,
and that is the fairy ring. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's lots of folklore that pops up out of the ferry. Yeah,
(40:52):
and it shows up a gosh. It's in Shakespeare, right,
and it's in Dungeons and Dragons. It's basically cultures around
the world most important literally area achievements of human kind.
Shakespeare douches. Yeah, you's encountered in cultures around the world
because essentially what we're taught, fairy rings essentially just means
strange circles on the ground or in the ground that
you find in nature. And uh, we've the causes we
(41:16):
attribute fairies dancing around and around on the spot, or
perhaps it's witches or devils. Hey, maybe it's a ufo.
If you're using a modern interpretation of it, it's whatever,
whatever the attributed supernatural cause. However, the basic idea is
that some unseen force is causing the circle to manifest.
I want to say, have you ever seen is it
pronounced haxon? I always get the pronunciation room because the
(41:38):
old devil worshiping hasn't whom loud over the a. Is
it hawks in? I'm not sure what the proper pronunciation
is of it, but yeah, it's it's this old documentary
about sort of the folklore around witches. Yeah, I've never
watched it in in full, but it has some wonderful
images in it. Yeah, I want to say that fairy
rings show up in that, but I might be wrong.
But but but because of the reasons you just meant,
(42:00):
because of the idea that which is did like rituals,
that they danced around the ferry ring right now, Absolutely
no fairy rings are caused by fairies or aliens or
the devil or the devil. Sorry, but that's the truth. Um,
But there there are accounts of fairy rings that are
that are not trum related, not directly funk related. So
(42:22):
I ran across one, for instance, from Nambia, and there
apparently fairy rings here that are caused by termite constructed
water traps. Uh. But other instances of fairy rings are
definitely tied to fungal activity and and not the dancing
micons that you encounter in Disney's Fantasium. So there are
(42:43):
essentially two varieties of fungal fairy rings. Then the first
is more mysterious, and I don't think I've ever seen
one of these in person. But this is just a
circle of dark green grass in a lawn or meadow, okay,
and with surrounding grass it's somewhat lighter. The culprit here
is subsurface fungal mycelia that caused the darker color due
(43:04):
to increased nitrogen produced by the fungus. Interesting, and you
also find other fun guy that caused in a chronic
ring of dead vegetation due to nitrogen depletion right, which
you know again back to the parasitic aspect of Guy. Right,
And the massilia is just kind of threading through underneath
the grass. So you can imagine where you look at this,
(43:24):
you're like, why is this grass screen or why is
this grass dead or it must be some sort of
supernatural force. Um. And then of course there's the more
overt form, and that's where you have actual surface mushrooms,
identifiable mushrooms that are lined up more or less in
a rough surface. You know what I just realized is, uh,
in my head, fairy rings combined two of the mushrooms
(43:46):
you've mentioned today, the fairy rings and then the phosphorescent mushrooms.
But I guess they don't necessarily right, they don't glow.
I did not in my research. I did not run
across a species of mushroom that was both. But but
I'm not sure it's it's possible, as you'll see when
I describe you know, what exactly is going on here.
(44:08):
So in either case, whether we're talking about subservice mushrooms
surface mushrooms, uh, the cause of the circle has nothing
to do with fairy kingdom and everything to do with
spore dispersal. So this is this is a fabulous model here.
So you can start with a single spore, al right,
it lands in a field, and then it grows, Okay,
it eventually produces a mushroom, or at least it reaches
(44:29):
this as adult form, and then it spreads out more spores. Uh.
And then this causes the growing colony to spread only
outward since the inner circle uh is the territory that
it's ravaged. Okay, this is a there's no more nutrients there,
so it can only spread out. So it's kind of
like theoretically the circle is going to get larger. Yes,
(44:50):
the circle gets larger and larger, and the inside of
the circle is depleted of the nutrients. That it doesn't
mean that the grass is all dead. It just means
that there's nothing else. Yeah, nothing else that the to
this particular fun guy can feed off of. So the
circle continues to grow and grow and uh. And sometimes
there are additional circles so you'll actually get uh, you know,
like figure eights and whatnot. Yeah, I was thinking, like,
(45:11):
I wonder if there's like a ven diagram one out
there somewhere maybe. But I love this because wonders of nature.
But I love this one because it makes me think of, say,
what have you had a like a sci fi or
fantasy scenario with say, say zombies or vampires, you know,
whatever your your breed of destructive monster that reproduces rapidly
(45:32):
might be. You can have a similar scenario where it
starts at one point and then it begins to spread outward,
but it's spreading as a as a ring because it
has to feed and it cannot continue to survive in
the area that it has ravished. That would all right,
producers of the new movie Rings that's coming out, I
think pretty soon. Right, They didn't pay us to say this,
but that would be a good spin on that mythos.
(45:56):
The idea of the girl across on the television and
kills me her ring forms in like an actual geographic
area as she kills everybody around, only people in that
ring like area can watch the video and it grows
further and further, or you know what show it would
It would work really well on a strain. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(46:18):
It reminds me a lot two of these creatures known
as the shrunk in Um in our Scott Baker's books,
because these are these are kind of the Orcs of
his world, except there there seemed to be just they're
particularly bred, particularly created to just ravage the land and
so I get a mad and they bread rapidly, So
they would be a good model for this, Like they're
(46:39):
in one area and then they spread outward in this
in this Ring of desolation. You know, I like to
think that I'm there's still obviously a lot for me
to read, But I like to think that I've read
a lot of horror, and I think you have to.
And I can't really think of a ton of mushroom
based horror. And yet it seems to me that there's
something fun mentally creepy. You have mushrooms and just have
(47:04):
their formations are just their life process in general. Off
the top of my head, I cannot think of a
good one. Maybe I'll think of one after we go
off off offline here. Maybe you out there have one.
You're you're screaming at your podcast right now and saying,
Robert Christian, what you forgot about whatever? I mean? Well,
the most obvious one is that just the fun guy
(47:25):
from you go with that believe that Themigo and Lovecraft
stories are technically funguses, right, Okay, But but but that's
the only example that's instantly coming to mind. So there
may be some other great ones out there. Yeah, maybe
there are alright. Well, on that note, we're gonna go
ahead and close it out here again. We can only
discuss a few different mushrooms a few different types of
of mushroom behavior, if you will. So, if you have
(47:48):
some other amazing mycological specimens that you would like us
to discuss, let us know. Especially if you're a mycologist,
we'd love to hear from you. I'd be really curious
what your favorites are that and like, what what's the
daily life of a mycologists? Like it just sounds it
sounds charming to kind of go around and identify mushrooms
(48:09):
and examine them and write about them and with lots
of and occasionally get to name them. So, Hey, check
out stuff to bow your mind dot com. That's where
we'll find all the podcasts. You'll find blog posts, you'll
find videos, uh, you'll find all sorts of content, including
links out to our very social media accounts. Yeah, we
are on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. We post lots
(48:29):
of things to those channels, not just the podcasts that
you're listening to, but also articles that we write, videos
that we write or star in, and lots of other
stuff that we find in our travels across the internet
when we find bizarre science audities and we want you
to know about them. As I mentioned earlier. I take
pictures of weird mushrooms in the dog parks sometimes and
(48:51):
post them to our Facebook page, and hey, you can do.
That's a great place to share them. And you can
also send your weird mushroom photos, your mushroom horror suggest
to what have you to blow the mind and how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
(49:13):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
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