Obscure Fungus Shows Signs of Rudimentary Intelligence

"They have memories, they learn, and they can make decisions."

Fungus Among Us

A team of researchers in Japan has made a cool discovery while studying an obscure fungus called Phanerochaete velutina: it can not only recognize shapes, but even communicate information about its surroundings throughout its entire fungal network.

"You'd be surprised at just how much fungi are capable of," said Tohoku University forest ecology associate professor Yu Fukasawa in a statement. "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."

In a series of experiments detailed in a paper published in the journal Fungal Ecology, Fukasawa and his colleagues arranged small wood blocks in different shapes, and allowed a network of P. velutina mycelium — which typically feeds on peach and nectarine trees — to go to town on them.

What they found was startling: that the mycelium appeared to be making decisions depending on the arrangement of the blocks, rather than simply spreading from a central point — suggesting a rudimentary level of intelligence, the researchers say.

Shape Recognition

For instance, when the blocks were arranged in a cross pattern, the mycelium recognized the outermost blocks and appeared to communicate the arrangement back to the rest of the network.

And when the blocks were placed in a circle arrangement, the mycelium never bothered to venture into the center, suggesting it had figured out there were no blocks to be found there.

"These findings suggest that fungal mycelium can 'recognize' the difference in the spatial arrangement of wood blocks as part of their wood decay activity," the researchers wrote in their paper.

The researchers are hoping their findings could lead to advancements in a variety of fields, from studying other microscopic organisms such as slime molds that have similarly shown basic levels of intelligence to biological computers that are powered by organoid brain cultures.

"The functional significance of the fungal mycelia may provide insights into studying the primitive intelligence of brainless organisms, understanding its ecological impacts, and developing bio-based computers," they added.

More on fungi: Scientists Grew a Mushroom Into This Robot to Act as Its Brain