I had a Month to Write the Paper and I still Procrastinated so This is What you get – A Story About Life

Ember Frost
Biology
Mr. Gagnon
04/30/2025

Mushroom Communication

       Mushrooms – a type of living organism that is neither plant nor animal. These decomposers are more than a tasty pizza topping. Indeed, they are also intelligent beyond what many comprehend. Underground, miles of connective fibers act as information transmitters, allowing mushrooms to communicate with one another. How does this work? What do mushrooms need to communicate about that is so important? Why does this matter? This essay will explore the communication methods unique to mushrooms and the implications of this underground network.

       Every mushroom is made of mycelium and other fibrous materials. This gives the mushroom its unique shape. Despite being only a few inches tall on average, they extend for miles through the dirt (Florence, 1989). Each fiber sends an electric signal from one mushroom to another, traveling between a few feet and a few miles at a time. Oftentimes, the signals are warnings to mushrooms connected to the same network that danger is coming. It can also be used as a way to transmit food energy to connected mushrooms (Gayle, 2020).

       While that covers the most well-known communications between mushrooms, scientists have recently discovered that mushrooms possess the ability to think, feel and express emotions, and make decisions based on a moral compass. Mushroom researcher Yvonne Yvette (2024) wrote in her article entitled “The Emotional Lives of Mushrooms,” she states that mushrooms are “complex, emotional creatures. They have in-depth personalities entirely distinct from one another… The conversations they hold are like conversations between humans: back-and-forth communication on a specific topic, gossip, even side tangents.” This intricate social network underground mirrors the reality of mankind down to the way they treat each other with their words. They can be kind or mean, gossips or trustworthy, maybe even good or evil.

       Beyond the social intelligence of mushrooms, experiments have demonstrated that they are able to solve complex equations as well as moral dilemmas that stump many humans. Timothee Gayle and Howard Night (2021) ran an experiment on mushrooms grown in a lab and compared them with mushrooms found and left in the wild. They wanted to determine whether the intelligence levels of mushrooms varied based on location. Prongs were attached to each mushroom head and asked various levels of questions from an intelligence quotient (IQ) test. What they found is that mushrooms in the wild who have multiple mushrooms connected to the same network were able to solve the questions on average ten seconds faster than mushrooms grown in a lab.

       To test whether it was the mushrooms being grown in a lab that limited the IQ or the lack of a social network, they ran the experiment again on mushrooms from both environments that had been removed from their networks. Once again, mushrooms from the wild outperformed mushrooms grown in the lab. This time, however, the wild mushrooms only beat them by five seconds on average. This shows that, while the social network does help boost the collective IQ of the mushrooms, wild mushrooms are superior in intellect to their lab-grown counterparts. Night went as far as to hypothesize that the average IQ of a wild mushroom ranges from 100-130 when disconnected from the network and 130-200+ when connected (Gayle & Night, 2021). Bear in mind, the average IQ in humans ranges from 90-120 (Lang, 2010).

       The most significant finding in Gayle’s and Night’s (2021) study was the ability of mushrooms to understand abstract concepts like love and morality. Each mushroom was also asked questions based on the famous Trolley Problem. Gayle summarized this, stating the following:

Mushrooms that never had connection to a social network deliberated far less than their connected counterparts. Those that were connected demonstrated what can only be described as empathy for their fellow mushrooms that would be hurt based on their decisions. When given details [about the mushrooms on either track] the study mushrooms made decisions that correlated with the assumed status and characteristics of them. They were more likely to cause harm to mushrooms that had previously caused harm or who did not work to help the social network. Less variation was observed in the lab-grown mushrooms.

       Not only are mushrooms emotionally and intellectually gifted, but they also experience morality in a manner comparable to that of the human experience. They mourn, fear, love, and hate just as humans do. Moreover, these complex emotions and abstract concepts derive from the mushrooms’ connections to one another.

       This begs the question: What are the implications of mushrooms reaching and potentially surpassing the intelligence of humans? At this point, further research is necessary to better understand the impact of mushrooms on the greater environment. They may have evolved to a point where their intelligence supersedes humans, but they have not yet reached the point where they can do anything with that intelligence. If and when they do reach that point, then humans will have something to fear.