Mushrooms can communicate with each other using up to 50 words, according to a UK scientist.

A professor has theorized that electrical impulses sent by mushrooms could be similar to human language. He believes that these mycological organisms could communicate with each other using up to 50 words!

Fungi, often found in forest litter or growing on trees, may seem quiet and solitary. However, new research suggests these organisms might be able to communicate with each other.

A scientist has discovered that fungi use electrical signals to communicate with each other, and that these signals form patterns that are structurally similar to human speech. By using mathematical analysis, the scientist identified patterns in these electrical signals and determined that fungi may be able to communicate with each other.

Earlier studies have shown that fungi use hyphae, which are long, underground filamentous structures, to conduct electrical impulses, similar to how nerve cells transmit information in humans.

When the hyphae of wood-digesting fungi encounter wooden blocks, the firing rate of electrical impulses increases. This suggests that fungi may use electrical signals to communicate information about food or injury to distant parts of themselves, or to connected partners like trees. But are these electrical activity patterns similar to human language?

Professor Andrew Adamatzky of the Unconventional Computing Laboratory in Bristol analyzed the electrical spiking patterns of four fungi species – enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar fungi to investigate how they communicate.

He inserted tiny microelectrodes into substrates colonized by mycelia, which are the patchwork of hyphae threads, to conduct his research.

“We do not know if there is a direct relationship between spiking patterns in fungi and human speech. Possibly not,” Adamatzky said.

“On the other hand, there are many similarities in information processing in living substrates of different classes, families and species. I was just curious to compare.”

Research published in the Royal Society Open Science journal in 2022 discovered that mushrooms communicate with each other using electrical impulses sent through underground thread-like structures called mycelium. These impulses cluster into patterns that resemble vocabularies of up to 50 words, with the distribution of these 'fungal word lengths' mirroring those found in human languages.

The most intricate 'sentences' were produced by split gills, which thrive on decaying wood and generate fruiting bodies that resemble undulating waves of densely packed coral.

Adamtzky suggested that these waves of electrical activity are most likely used to keep the fungi's integrity (similarly to how wolves howl to maintain pack integrity) or to inform other parts of their mycelia about newly discovered attractants and repellants.

“There is also another option – they are saying nothing,” he said, “Propagating mycelium tips are electrically charged, and, therefore, when the charged tips pass in a pair of differential electrodes, a spike in the potential difference is recorded.”

Whatever these 'spiking events' represent, they do not appear to be random, he added.

The pulsing behavior observed in fungal networks may be due to rhythmic growth as fungi search for nutrients, such as the pulsing transport of nutrients. This has been noted by scientists who believe more evidence is needed before this pulsing behavior can be accepted as a form of language.

“This new paper detects rhythmic patterns in electric signals, of a similar frequency as the nutrient pulses we found,” said Dan Bebber, an associate professor of biosciences at the University of Exeter, and a member of the British Mycological Society’s fungal biology research committee.

The interpretation of this communication as language appears overly enthusiastic and requires further research and testing before we can add 'Fungus to Google Translate.

While the research does not definitively prove that mushrooms communicate in the same way humans do, it does suggest that they have a complex system of electrical signaling that could potentially be used for communication. This could include sharing information about food sources, threats, or other important factors for their survival.

Further research is needed to fully understand the nature of these electrical signals and their potential implications for our understanding of fungal behavior and intelligence. However, the findings of this study open up exciting possibilities for future research and could potentially lead to new discoveries about the fascinating world of fungi.