[vmception]

Sometimes I feel like we are sharing the world with fungus. As in, fungus consciously doesn't generate spores on us because it figured out that we will just grow it and put it in drinks and spread it any way. So using our mental processing power just let fungus realize it didn't have to try to use all its energy on the host capture and spore release routine.

And of course, the observation that it has nothing to do with us humans.

[tastyfreeze]

What we consider lower forms of life have been around a lot longer than us. Fungus predate plants and originally ate minerals. They created the soil for plants to even evolve. Plants evolved in an environment created and controlled by fungus. Many plants have a symbiotic relationship with fungus. Entire ecosystems are connected and communicate by a mycorrhizal network. We owe our entire existence to fungus.

[pmoriarty]

Not only that, but our own cells are similar to fungal cells, which is one reason that it's so difficult to create antifungal medication that isn't also toxic to humans.

[hinkley]

Up until the green revolution, all land agriculture on earth was mediated by fungi. Lichen are basically fungi farming cyanobacteria, and some people suspect there's an unbroken chain all the way down the plant evolutionary tree. It's not outside of the realm of possibility that trees are just a very long breeding program by fungi as well.

We, as cousins to fungi, get to enjoy the literal and figurative fruits of their labor.

[rvbissell]

Some podcast -- RadioLab I think -- did an episode on how climate change (specifically, warming) has been putting selective pressure on fungi to make them hardier towards infecting warm-blooded animals... at the very same time that the average human body temperature has been trending down.

Not a good thing.

[berberous]

It was RadioLab and it was probably the scariest thing I’ve heard about global warming yet.

[malshe]

By any chance do you know the name of the episode or the episode number? Thanks!

[rvbissell]

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/fungu...

[rasz]

bacteria instead of fungus, but similar premise:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/10/02/when-the-yogurt-took-...

[vmception]

bizarre and brilliant!

[jschwartzi]

Have you ever had athlete's foot or jock itch?

[vmception]

From what we can tell they don’t take us over and obviously change our behavior. Someone has to tell us they are on psychadelic mushrooms or took a cordyceps energy drink.

Skin infections occur.