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Mushrooms: The Wood Wide Web
We’re so much closer to mushrooms than you think.
You’re closer to that shiitake in your pasta than you may think — and that relationship’s got a lot to teach you.
Mushrooms are closer to humans as a species than you probably realize — although seemingly vegetative in their habits, “animals and fungi share a common evolutionary history and […] their limb of the genealogical tree branched away from plants perhaps 1.1 billion years ago” (Natalie Anger, New York Times).
On a purely evolutionary basis, mushrooms are closer to us in their evolution than either of us are to plants.
The common ancestor of animals and fungi was a single-celled alga that most probably possessed both animal and fungal characteristics, made its way to shore, and lost its chlorophyll.
Animals and fungi first took a step away from photosynthesis and only then began developing into what we are. Scientists have found that the same material that makes up an insect’s outer carapaces — chitin — makes up fungal cell walls. Further, fungal proteins bear a closer resemblance to animal proteins than plant proteins.
