- A new study claims that fungi possess great intelligence to the point that they can make decisions.
- A group of scientists tested how fungi would grow across patterns of blocks, and found that they grew in strategic, resource-preserving ways that indicate the ability for communication across the entire mycelial network.
- These findings could not only lead to a better understanding of these relatively mysterious organisms, but to better comprehension of intelligence itself.
Who we are, what we do, how we think, and why we think are all wrapped up in the inner workings of our brains. Still the source of some of the biggest mysteries we as humans are investigating, the brain is a truly remarkable organ that is only just now starting to understand itself and the intelligence it facilitates.
As we continue to probe the depths of our own brains, we’re realizing more and more that intelligence is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Octopuses, for instance, are highly intelligent animals that don’t have a brain that looks anything like our own. Instead, they have what is called “distributed intelligence,” which allows each of their arms to literally think for itself.
But it gets (arguably) even weirder—especially when you leave behind the animal kingdom altogether. According to a new study, published in the journal Fungal Ecology, fungi may have their own unique measure of intelligence, making them capable of basic shape recognition and decision-making throughout the networks they build.
“You’d be surprised at just how much fungi are capable of,” Yu Fukasawa, lead author of the study, said in a press release. “They have memories, they learn, and they can make decisions. Quite frankly, the differences in how they solve problems compared to humans is mind-blowing.”
When biologists talk about fungus, they don’t just mean mushrooms. Mushrooms are the parts of most fungi that you can see, but they’re far from the majority of the organism. Most of a fungus is located underground in the form of a root-like system known as the mycelium. Networks of mycelium, made up of thin, thread-like strands called hyphae, can be extraordinarily vast—in fact, the largest organism on Earth is a fungus known colloquially as the Humongous Fungus. Residing in the Malheur National Forest in Oregon, its mycelial network covers nearly four square miles.
In addition to being large, mycelial networks are known to be able to communicate information along their networks much like neurons do in a human brain. And it’s this ability that the scientists behind this new paper wanted to put to the test. So, they put out a few wood-block food sources for their fungus (the wood-eating Phanerochaete velutina) in two different arrangements—one circle and one cross— to see how they would form their mycelia. Each block was pre-colonized with the fungus and could provide a jumping-off point for the development of the mycelium.
Theoretically, if these fungi were growing like a plant does, they would just grow out in a circle around each of the blocks, not at all influenced by the positions of the other blocks in the experiment. They would just keep reaching from a central point.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, the mycelia chose efficiency. According to the press release:
“For the cross arrangement, the degree of connection was greater in the outermost four blocks. It was hypothesized that this was because the outermost blocks can serve as ‘outposts’ for the mycelial network to embark in foraging expeditions, therefore more dense connections were required. In the circle arrangement, the degree of connection was the same at any given block. However, the dead center of the circle remained clear. It was proposed that the mycelial network did not see a benefit in overextending itself in an already well-populated area.”
From this data, the researchers reached the conclusion that the mycelial network was able to communicate with other parts of itself much like a neural network in a brain, communicating what it was experiencing to the rest of itself and making decisions based on that information. It was growing strategically so as not to waste resources, and communicating to other parts of the network exactly how to do just that.
The authors of this paper hope that their findings will provide a jumping-off point for us to move towards a better understanding of these remarkable organisms, and a better understanding of intelligence in general. Especially in the age of AI, there is an ever-growing desire to deeply understand exactly how true intelligence works. But there’s also just the drive to truly understand ourselves—maybe a humble fungus will someday be the key to comprehending the workings of our own minds.
Originally printed in Popular Mechanics
