Jul 9, 2025 04:20 PM
https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/fung...-conscious
EXCERPTS: . . . new studies imply fungi are capable of behaviours usually reserved for humans and other animals, such as learning, remembering and decision-making.
Dr Yu Fukasawa and his team at Tohoku University in Japan observed this behaviour when ‘baiting’ the wood-decomposing fungus, Phanerochaete velutina, with wood blocks on soil.
In one 2020 study, Fukasawa and UK colleagues saw the fungi ‘decide’ when to give up one block in favour of another, bigger piece of wood. The fungi also ‘remembered’ the direction they grew in to find the wood, even after being moved to new ground.
For Fukasawa, these were expressions of intelligent behaviour. “It is, of course, not the same system as a brain,” he says, explaining that the fungi’s ability to ‘remember’ is probably based on having grown more on the side where the bait blocks were originally positioned.
“But I think we can say that it is a kind of memory in the mycelial system – a kind of structural memory.”
Slime moulds have also been said to have memory because they avoid previously explored areas when searching for food. In their case, they’re able to sense slime in the areas they’ve already covered.
Last year, Fukasawa’s team attempted a new experiment, this time exploring whether fungi could ‘recognise’ shapes...
[...] In the paper they published, the researchers call this behaviour a form of ‘pattern recognition’, a term used in computing to describe how they’re able to spot certain combinations in data, but which can also be used to describe how people recognise faces or sounds... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . new studies imply fungi are capable of behaviours usually reserved for humans and other animals, such as learning, remembering and decision-making.
Dr Yu Fukasawa and his team at Tohoku University in Japan observed this behaviour when ‘baiting’ the wood-decomposing fungus, Phanerochaete velutina, with wood blocks on soil.
In one 2020 study, Fukasawa and UK colleagues saw the fungi ‘decide’ when to give up one block in favour of another, bigger piece of wood. The fungi also ‘remembered’ the direction they grew in to find the wood, even after being moved to new ground.
For Fukasawa, these were expressions of intelligent behaviour. “It is, of course, not the same system as a brain,” he says, explaining that the fungi’s ability to ‘remember’ is probably based on having grown more on the side where the bait blocks were originally positioned.
“But I think we can say that it is a kind of memory in the mycelial system – a kind of structural memory.”
Slime moulds have also been said to have memory because they avoid previously explored areas when searching for food. In their case, they’re able to sense slime in the areas they’ve already covered.
Last year, Fukasawa’s team attempted a new experiment, this time exploring whether fungi could ‘recognise’ shapes...
[...] In the paper they published, the researchers call this behaviour a form of ‘pattern recognition’, a term used in computing to describe how they’re able to spot certain combinations in data, but which can also be used to describe how people recognise faces or sounds... (MORE - missing details)
