A new study has pointed out that fungi possess a considerable level of intelligence and are even capable of making decisions.
A group of scientists tested the growth patterns of fungi on a cube-shaped pattern and found that they exhibit strategic and resource-conserving growth, indicating their ability to communicate across the entire mycelial network.
These findings not only enhance people’s understanding of these relatively mysterious organisms but also deepen the knowledge of intelligence itself.
“Who are we? What are we doing? How do we think? And why do we think?” These questions are closely related to the internal workings of the human brain. The brain remains one of the biggest mysteries that humans continue to explore. It is a truly extraordinary organ, and people are only beginning to gradually understand themselves and how to enhance their intelligence levels.
As scientists delve further into exploring the human brain, they are increasingly aware that the existence of intelligence does not have universality. For example, octopuses are highly intelligent animals, but their brains are completely different from humans. Instead, they possess what is known as “decentralized intelligence,” allowing each of their tentacles to think independently.
Beyond the animal kingdom, these scenarios become even more intriguing. According to a new study set to be published in December 2024 in the journal “Fungal Ecology,” fungi may have their own unique metrics for measuring intelligence, enabling them to perform basic shape recognition and decision-making within their constructed networks.
“You would be amazed at how powerful fungi’s capabilities are,” said Yu Fukasawa, the lead author of the study, in a press release. “They have memory, can learn, and make decisions. Frankly, the way they solve problems is astonishingly different from humans.”
When biologists discuss fungi, they are not just referring to mushrooms. While mushrooms are visible fungi, they are far from the main part of the organism. Most fungi exist underground in the form of a root-like system called mycelium. Mycelial networks consisting of elongated filamentous structures called hyphae can be extremely vast— in fact, the largest organism on Earth is a fungus known as the “humongous fungus” located in Malheur National Forest in Oregon, USA, covering nearly four square miles.
In addition to their massive size, mycelial networks are believed to transmit information within their network much like neurons in the human brain, a capability that motivated the authors of this new paper to study them. The scientists focused on a wood-eating fungus called Phanerochaete velutina. They placed wood blocks as the source of nourishment for the fungi in two different arrangements, circular and cross-shaped, to observe how the mycelium formed on them. Each wood block already had fungi living on it, serving as the starting points for mycelial growth.
In theory, if these fungi grew like plants, they would spread outward around each wood block independently, unaffected by the positions of other blocks in the experiment, continuously extending from a central point.
However, the reality was different. Instead, the mycelium opted for efficiency. According to a news release by the research group, “In the cross-shaped arrangement, there was a higher degree of connection between the outermost four wood blocks. We believe this is because the outermost blocks serve as ‘pioneers’ for mycelial networks to forage, thus requiring denser connections. In the circular arrangement, all wood blocks had the same degree of connection. However, the center of the ring had no connections whatsoever. We believe this is because the mycelial network did not see the benefit of extending excessively in an already densely populated area.”
Based on this data, the researchers concluded that mycelial networks can communicate with other parts of themselves like neural networks in the brain, conveying the situations they experience to other parts of themselves and making decisions based on this information. They strategically grow to avoid wasting resources and convey how to achieve this to other parts of the network.
The authors of this paper hope that their findings will provide a starting point for people to better understand these extraordinary organisms and even deepen their understanding of intelligence. Especially in the age of artificial intelligence, the desire to delve into understanding how real intelligence operates is growing stronger. ◇