From them you can make hats, ice cream, bricks and missile fuel, and millions of years ago they were generally the owners of the planet.
1. There are predicted mushrooms
Hydnellum Peck. This mushroom is not predatory or even poisonous, it just looks brutal. Image: Wikimedia Commons
It may seem that mushrooms for the most part are not dangerous. Well, perhaps eat some kind of poisonous and poison. But the appearance is deceiving: there are more than 200 types of predatory mushrooms that literally catch prey into their nets and devour.
Fortunately, they do not hunt for people and specialize more in the worms-non-drama. Scientists believe that these are the most common animals on the planet, so mushrooms do not have a shortage of prey.
Farm species appeared no earlier than 100 million years ago and during this time invented many tricks. For example, some of them intertwine the loops from their threads and wait until some worm crawls there, and then tighten the knot and digest the victim.
Others monitor the chemicals allocated by prey in order to control in which directions to scatter their sticky hunting mushrooms nets.
But don’t think bad, mushrooms are not bloodthirsty on their own. They switch to predation only if the substrate on which they grow was exhausted. If there are enough nutrients, mushrooms live peacefully and do not touch the worms.
2. You can make ice cream from mushrooms
Freeze horn. Image: Heather Barnes / Unsplash
Someday it happened to you-they took ice cream from the refrigerator, bit off a little, and it resembles sand by consistency? This happens when the dessert is slightly tapping, and then freezes again. As a result, ice crystals are formed in it. And it’s not very tasty.
But scientists from Universities Edinburgh and Dundi have found a way to solve the problem. They found that the BSLA protein produced by mold is significantly slows down the process of melting ice cream and allows you to effectively maintain its consistency.
Just add mold to dessert, you have to act thinner.
The genes of mycelial fungi combined with bacteria genes and received crops producing BSLA in large quantities. Ice cream made from it retains a pleasant texture even after repeated defrosting.
And the taste of this dessert can be given by a low -calorie sweetener eryrit. It is also prepared with mold. And straw. The fungus decomposes straw into sugar and cellulose: the first can be eaten, the second – processed. And the fruits of the life of mold are not only tasty, but also do not cause caries.
3. And building materials
Sample material. It remains only to shut the hats. Image: Ecovative Design
Ecovative Design has developed a natural substitute for polystyrene from mycelium, that is, mushroom roots. And this material is stronger than concrete.
It is made like that. We take agricultural waste – straw and corn husk. We wet, add nutrients and cultures of specially selected fungi and leave in a cool, wet dark place for several days. Then we turn on the heating that kills the fungus, and cut the resulting mass on the bricks.
The result is a fireproof and non -toxic material, which is also resistant to mold. Apparently, mushrooms do not touch their.
It also preserves heat well – better than fiberglass. And this material is environmentally friendly. So, perhaps, the day is the day when you live in a mushroom.
By the way, the experimenters argue that, in addition to agricultural garbage, mushrooms also process pile from linen, jelly, lobster shell and human hair. It smells terribly, but when ventilated, it turns out excellent material. So mushrooms will not only provide us with housing, but also cleanse the world from garbage.
Mushroom -mycelium. Image: Ecovative Design
In addition to banal bricks, mycelium in Ecovative Design also make furniture. For example, chairs.
4. With the help of mushrooms, you can light a fire
Temptor. Image: Wikimedia Commons
Of the mushrooms-laborers, people have long made a flammable fraudulent material for roding a fire. True was found even among the things of an ancient person of the age of 5,000 years. Then they have not yet invented lighters – they got out as they could.
The sparks were knocked out on a piece of the mushroom with a flint fire, it flared up, and you could breed a fire when you want, and not wait until the gods send lightning.
5. And even make a hat out of them
Hat from the mushroom. Image: Wikimedia Commons
In addition to roding bonfires, a tinder -beer is used to create different crafts and souvenirs, because after drying and processing it becomes solid. For example, in Germany, smoking tubes are made from it.
And if you treat the mushroom with nitrate and soda, on the contrary, it will be soft and smooth to the touch-exactly like artificial skin. It is allowed to make various accessories.
For example, the famous mushroom researcher Pol Gumets became famous.
So he not only protects his head from the sun and rain, but also gives the mushroom mycelium direct access to his brain to provide constant telepathic connection with its owners … joke.
6. Mushrooms produce rocket fuel
The line is ordinary. Produces hydrazine. Image: Wikimedia Commons
There is such a substance – giromitrin. It is produced by some types of mushrooms – for example, lines. And they are deadly poisonous. If a person eats soup of such paces, in his body, girometrin is hydrolyzed to monomethylhydrasin.
This substance destroys the central nervous system, liver and gastrointestinal tract. In addition, it is a strong carcinogen. However, with all its shortcomings, the substance is used as a rocket fuel.
Monomethylhydrazine is used in the SpaceX Dragon ship, many Russian and Chinese missiles;earlier American shuttles flew on it.
True, from the lines you are unlikely to squeeze enough juice to refuel shuttle, but there is an alternative, moreover, less toxic.
Researchers at the University of Washington discovered that with the help of some types of fungi, you can produce high -quality hydrocarbon biofules from sawdust, wood chips, waste, oats and other cellulose. So, perhaps in the future we will ride, fly and swim on fuel from mushrooms and oatmeal.
7. Mushrooms control insects to multiply
Enslaved, stupefied and devoured by a mushroom of cicada. Image: Wikimedia Commons
There are mushrooms that prefer to parasitize on the bodies of other living creatures. They literally devour the hosts alive. And some carriers even like it.
For example, a parasitic mushroom of the mass dispore lives on cicada. Unfortunate insects literally decompose while he eats them. But they do not worry – after all, the mass disposal introduces them into the circulatory system of psilocybin and Katinone (analogue of amphetamine).
Dudged by these substances, cicadas stop feeding and trying only to multiply. Of course, nothing comes of them, since the fungus eats their insides and genitals. But inadequate insects do not cast attempts. With courtship, they infect more and more healthy cicades. As a result, the mushroom successfully spreads until the unfortunate insect will die from damage and exhaustion.
Another interesting mushroom, practicing parasitism, is Cordyceps.
He infects ants. Its mycelium penetrates the circulatory system (it does not touch the nervous, which is interesting) and forces the insect to climb higher on some branch. Firstly, so the mushroom selects the best temperature and humidity parameters. Secondly, from a height more handy to infect healthy inhabitants of the anthill.
Ant. Like in Last of US, only smaller. Image: Andreas Kay / Flickr
Then Cordyceps grows a fruit body in the ant on the ant and kills the insect. So it hangs, irrigating everything around. Ants, however, are not fools. Cemeteries littered with corpses of comrades affected by the fungus, they try to avoid with all their might.
In addition to cicades and ants, mushrooms parasitize on other insects. And they do this even on spiders, turning the poor into the likeness of figures from cotton sticks – this is called muskardin disease. And sometimes they find larger prey – for example, turtles – and they are amazing for their lungs.
Scientists believe that these fungi can be used to destroy mosquitoes and bugs. Think, madmen! They will eat them and switch to us.
8. Mushrooms produce clouds
Mushrooms on a forest litter. Image: Pascal Debrunner / Unsplash
As you know, mushrooms use disputes to reproduce their similar. Hats on their legs are just fruiting bodies, reproduction organs. They ripen disputes carried by the wind. And for this we need special indicators of temperature and humidity.
Some types of mushrooms are waiting for the onset of favorable weather. Others create suitable conditions on their own.
Researchers at the Institute of Chemistry to them. Max Planck in Germany discovered an entertaining fact. In the forests of the Amazons, some types of mushrooms launch organic particles into the air that rise into the sky and fall into the clouds.
There, these microscopic compounds of carbon and potassium due to chemical processes attract and condensate water. This leads to the formation of clouds, and then rains. That is, tropical mushrooms literally form a suitable moist environment for themselves.
9. And create the wind
Mushrooms on a tree. Image: Amy Humphries / Unsplash
Previously, scientists believed that the reproduction strategy for mushrooms is simple: you throw disputes and rely on the wind.
But researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles and the American Physical Society in Pittsburgh discovered a curious fact. It turned out that mushrooms growing in areas where the wind is weak can literally create air flows on their own in order to more effectively spread their offspring.
. Steam causes weak air movements. So the cells are carried somewhere 10 centimeters further than with a full calm.
It may seem to you that the figure is insignificant, but for small gags this is a serious achievement, you know.
Mycologists believe that this mechanism to one degree or another involves all the mushrooms that form fruit bodies.
10. Once upon a time there were huge forests of mushrooms on Earth
Lichens in Tasmania, Australia. Image: David Clode / Unsplash
We are used to thinking that mushrooms are small. And this is despite the fact that the largest organism that now lives on the planet is 8,000 years old. It grows in the reserve of Malor in Oregon and consists of a giant multi -ton mushroom in 910 hectares.
But this tile is just a trifle compared to the monsters who lived on Earth in Silurian and Devonian periods.
Protototaxites, giant mushrooms up to 8.8 meters high and up to 1 meter thick, grew on our planet from 470 to 360 million years ago. For comparison: the highest plant of that time, Kuksonia, was not higher than 100 centimeters.
Imagine whole forests in which there is not a single tree. Mushrooms and mosses then covered the only supercontinent of Gondvan. The thick trunks of prototactsites were fruit bodies, and what was the mushroom lord from the intertwined filaments of mycelium under the soil – it’s scary to even imagine. However, it has not been preserved.
Some scientists suggest that prototactsites are not pure mushrooms, but lichens are symbiotic organisms from mushrooms and algae. So, perhaps, they knew how not only to eat a substrate through a mycelium, but also photosynthese.
1. There are predicted mushrooms
Hydnellum Peck. This mushroom is not predatory or even poisonous, it just looks brutal. Image: Wikimedia Commons
It may seem that mushrooms for the most part are not dangerous. Well, perhaps eat some kind of poisonous and poison. But the appearance is deceiving: there are more than 200 types of predatory mushrooms that literally catch prey into their nets and devour.
Fortunately, they do not hunt for people and specialize more in the worms-non-drama. Scientists believe that these are the most common animals on the planet, so mushrooms do not have a shortage of prey.
Farm species appeared no earlier than 100 million years ago and during this time invented many tricks. For example, some of them intertwine the loops from their threads and wait until some worm crawls there, and then tighten the knot and digest the victim.
Others monitor the chemicals allocated by prey in order to control in which directions to scatter their sticky hunting mushrooms nets.
But don’t think bad, mushrooms are not bloodthirsty on their own. They switch to predation only if the substrate on which they grow was exhausted. If there are enough nutrients, mushrooms live peacefully and do not touch the worms.
2. You can make ice cream from mushrooms
Freeze horn. Image: Heather Barnes / Unsplash
Someday it happened to you-they took ice cream from the refrigerator, bit off a little, and it resembles sand by consistency? This happens when the dessert is slightly tapping, and then freezes again. As a result, ice crystals are formed in it. And it’s not very tasty.
But scientists from Universities Edinburgh and Dundi have found a way to solve the problem. They found that the BSLA protein produced by mold is significantly slows down the process of melting ice cream and allows you to effectively maintain its consistency.
Just add mold to dessert, you have to act thinner.
The genes of mycelial fungi combined with bacteria genes and received crops producing BSLA in large quantities. Ice cream made from it retains a pleasant texture even after repeated defrosting.
And the taste of this dessert can be given by a low -calorie sweetener eryrit. It is also prepared with mold. And straw. The fungus decomposes straw into sugar and cellulose: the first can be eaten, the second – processed. And the fruits of the life of mold are not only tasty, but also do not cause caries.
3. And building materials
Sample material. It remains only to shut the hats. Image: Ecovative Design
Ecovative Design has developed a natural substitute for polystyrene from mycelium, that is, mushroom roots. And this material is stronger than concrete.
It is made like that. We take agricultural waste – straw and corn husk. We wet, add nutrients and cultures of specially selected fungi and leave in a cool, wet dark place for several days. Then we turn on the heating that kills the fungus, and cut the resulting mass on the bricks.
The result is a fireproof and non -toxic material, which is also resistant to mold. Apparently, mushrooms do not touch their.
It also preserves heat well – better than fiberglass. And this material is environmentally friendly. So, perhaps, the day is the day when you live in a mushroom.
By the way, the experimenters argue that, in addition to agricultural garbage, mushrooms also process pile from linen, jelly, lobster shell and human hair. It smells terribly, but when ventilated, it turns out excellent material. So mushrooms will not only provide us with housing, but also cleanse the world from garbage.
Mushroom -mycelium. Image: Ecovative Design
In addition to banal bricks, mycelium in Ecovative Design also make furniture. For example, chairs.
4. With the help of mushrooms, you can light a fire
Temptor. Image: Wikimedia Commons
Of the mushrooms-laborers, people have long made a flammable fraudulent material for roding a fire. True was found even among the things of an ancient person of the age of 5,000 years. Then they have not yet invented lighters – they got out as they could.
The sparks were knocked out on a piece of the mushroom with a flint fire, it flared up, and you could breed a fire when you want, and not wait until the gods send lightning.
5. And even make a hat out of them
Hat from the mushroom. Image: Wikimedia Commons
In addition to roding bonfires, a tinder -beer is used to create different crafts and souvenirs, because after drying and processing it becomes solid. For example, in Germany, smoking tubes are made from it.
And if you treat the mushroom with nitrate and soda, on the contrary, it will be soft and smooth to the touch-exactly like artificial skin. It is allowed to make various accessories.
For example, the famous mushroom researcher Pol Gumets became famous.
So he not only protects his head from the sun and rain, but also gives the mushroom mycelium direct access to his brain to provide constant telepathic connection with its owners … joke.
6. Mushrooms produce rocket fuel
The line is ordinary. Produces hydrazine. Image: Wikimedia Commons
There is such a substance – giromitrin. It is produced by some types of mushrooms – for example, lines. And they are deadly poisonous. If a person eats soup of such paces, in his body, girometrin is hydrolyzed to monomethylhydrasin.
This substance destroys the central nervous system, liver and gastrointestinal tract. In addition, it is a strong carcinogen. However, with all its shortcomings, the substance is used as a rocket fuel.
Monomethylhydrazine is used in the SpaceX Dragon ship, many Russian and Chinese missiles;earlier American shuttles flew on it.
True, from the lines you are unlikely to squeeze enough juice to refuel shuttle, but there is an alternative, moreover, less toxic.
Researchers at the University of Washington discovered that with the help of some types of fungi, you can produce high -quality hydrocarbon biofules from sawdust, wood chips, waste, oats and other cellulose. So, perhaps in the future we will ride, fly and swim on fuel from mushrooms and oatmeal.
7. Mushrooms control insects to multiply
Enslaved, stupefied and devoured by a mushroom of cicada. Image: Wikimedia Commons
There are mushrooms that prefer to parasitize on the bodies of other living creatures. They literally devour the hosts alive. And some carriers even like it.
For example, a parasitic mushroom of the mass dispore lives on cicada. Unfortunate insects literally decompose while he eats them. But they do not worry – after all, the mass disposal introduces them into the circulatory system of psilocybin and Katinone (analogue of amphetamine).
Dudged by these substances, cicadas stop feeding and trying only to multiply. Of course, nothing comes of them, since the fungus eats their insides and genitals. But inadequate insects do not cast attempts. With courtship, they infect more and more healthy cicades. As a result, the mushroom successfully spreads until the unfortunate insect will die from damage and exhaustion.
Another interesting mushroom, practicing parasitism, is Cordyceps.
He infects ants. Its mycelium penetrates the circulatory system (it does not touch the nervous, which is interesting) and forces the insect to climb higher on some branch. Firstly, so the mushroom selects the best temperature and humidity parameters. Secondly, from a height more handy to infect healthy inhabitants of the anthill.
Ant. Like in Last of US, only smaller. Image: Andreas Kay / Flickr
Then Cordyceps grows a fruit body in the ant on the ant and kills the insect. So it hangs, irrigating everything around. Ants, however, are not fools. Cemeteries littered with corpses of comrades affected by the fungus, they try to avoid with all their might.
In addition to cicades and ants, mushrooms parasitize on other insects. And they do this even on spiders, turning the poor into the likeness of figures from cotton sticks – this is called muskardin disease. And sometimes they find larger prey – for example, turtles – and they are amazing for their lungs.
Scientists believe that these fungi can be used to destroy mosquitoes and bugs. Think, madmen! They will eat them and switch to us.
8. Mushrooms produce clouds
Mushrooms on a forest litter. Image: Pascal Debrunner / Unsplash
As you know, mushrooms use disputes to reproduce their similar. Hats on their legs are just fruiting bodies, reproduction organs. They ripen disputes carried by the wind. And for this we need special indicators of temperature and humidity.
Some types of mushrooms are waiting for the onset of favorable weather. Others create suitable conditions on their own.
Researchers at the Institute of Chemistry to them. Max Planck in Germany discovered an entertaining fact. In the forests of the Amazons, some types of mushrooms launch organic particles into the air that rise into the sky and fall into the clouds.
There, these microscopic compounds of carbon and potassium due to chemical processes attract and condensate water. This leads to the formation of clouds, and then rains. That is, tropical mushrooms literally form a suitable moist environment for themselves.
9. And create the wind
Mushrooms on a tree. Image: Amy Humphries / Unsplash
Previously, scientists believed that the reproduction strategy for mushrooms is simple: you throw disputes and rely on the wind.
But researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles and the American Physical Society in Pittsburgh discovered a curious fact. It turned out that mushrooms growing in areas where the wind is weak can literally create air flows on their own in order to more effectively spread their offspring.
. Steam causes weak air movements. So the cells are carried somewhere 10 centimeters further than with a full calm.
It may seem to you that the figure is insignificant, but for small gags this is a serious achievement, you know.
Mycologists believe that this mechanism to one degree or another involves all the mushrooms that form fruit bodies.
10. Once upon a time there were huge forests of mushrooms on Earth
Lichens in Tasmania, Australia. Image: David Clode / Unsplash
We are used to thinking that mushrooms are small. And this is despite the fact that the largest organism that now lives on the planet is 8,000 years old. It grows in the reserve of Malor in Oregon and consists of a giant multi -ton mushroom in 910 hectares.
But this tile is just a trifle compared to the monsters who lived on Earth in Silurian and Devonian periods.
Protototaxites, giant mushrooms up to 8.8 meters high and up to 1 meter thick, grew on our planet from 470 to 360 million years ago. For comparison: the highest plant of that time, Kuksonia, was not higher than 100 centimeters.
Imagine whole forests in which there is not a single tree. Mushrooms and mosses then covered the only supercontinent of Gondvan. The thick trunks of prototactsites were fruit bodies, and what was the mushroom lord from the intertwined filaments of mycelium under the soil – it’s scary to even imagine. However, it has not been preserved.
Some scientists suggest that prototactsites are not pure mushrooms, but lichens are symbiotic organisms from mushrooms and algae. So, perhaps, they knew how not only to eat a substrate through a mycelium, but also photosynthese.