SciShow Tangents - Fungi

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

Plants and animals get all the glory, but fungi are out there every day, breaking down leaf litter, making our bread nice and fluffy, and fermenting alcohols. They deserve a little thanks, so we did a whole episode about them!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:[Truth or Fail]Fungal Pesticides:https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/04/12/522068205/fungal-pesticides-offer-a-growing-alternative-to-traditional-chemicalshttps://agrochemicals.iupac.org/index.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=3&sobi2Id=31https://phys.org/news/2019-02-virus-infested-fungus-chemical-pesticides.htmlTinder Fungi:https://www.uab.cat/web/newsroom/news-detail-1345668003610.html?noticiaid=1345754508535Egyptian Medicine:https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/nyregion/secrets-of-the-mummys-medicine-chest.html[Fact Off]Whiskey mold:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18065010https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315285/https://www.wired.com/2011/05/ff-angelsshare/https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/78dyqb/kentuckys-whiskey-fungus-problem-is-out-of-controlPlastic-digesting fungus:https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/fungi-research-lifts-lid-shy-organisms-break-down-plastichttps://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202047https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749117300295http://blog.worldagroforestry.org/index.php/2017/09/12/scientists-find-fungus-appetite-plastic-rubbish-dump/[Ask the Science Couch]“Zombie” ants:https://www.pnas.org/content/114/47/12590https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187170https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3204140/https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/how-the-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants-bodies-to-control-their-minds/545864/[Butt One More Thing]Zygomycota:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0003237https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8OAmcUnm4g

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. This week, as always, we have our normal crew. I'm joined by Stephan Chin. I'm very normal. Stephan, what's your tagline? Sun's out, guns out. Sam Schultz, Butte native Sam Schultz is also here. Yeah, here I am.

If you would like to know or hear about Butte, just be in the same room as Sam. Email me. I'll tell you about it. What's your tagline? Simply having a wonderful Christmas time. And Sari Riley's here too. Hello. Sari Riley at 60%. Also very average.

And what's your tagline? New tooth. Did you buy a new tooth? I got two fillings today and my mouth has only now started being un-numb. You are. You're having a day. My whole right side of my face was numb, and so I felt like I was drooling.

It was really gross. You do sound a little numb. Oh, come on. You can't say that to a person. Well, if I sound weird on the podcast, it's because my right half of my mouth just barely got feeling. My name is Hank Green, and I'm here to hang out with my friends and talk about science.

My tagline is Porsche Buddies. Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory. We're playing to please all of those of you who are listening. And we're also playing for Hank bucks because that's all that matters anymore. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by previous conversations we've had, that won't go great. So if any of the rest of the team deems the tangent unworthy, we'll force you to give up one of your Hank Bucks, so tangent with care. Now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with a traditional

science poem this week from me, so I just get to keep talking. A fungus among us, I'm liking this liking. A cloister of oysters, so gorgeous, so striking. In my duffel, a truffle, Aunt Belle has chanterelles. These teeny porcini, clamshells and morels. You okay, guys? Instead of mutton, a button, so delish, I'm deceased. Behold, it's a mold and yeast is a beast.

By Jiminy this criminy, I bellow for Portobello. Every one of them's gold, whether white, red, or yellow. Oh, no. Poem made me mad. Sam was so mad at my cute mushroom poem. So our topic for the day is mushrooms or fungus. Yeah, much more broad than mushrooms. That's my first question.

What's the difference between a mushroom and a fungi? It's a subset. All mushrooms are fungi, but not all fungi are mushrooms. Correct. And the nice thing about fungi is it's a pretty easy thing to define. It's one of the kingdoms. Kingdom, yeah.

So domains are the biggest. You have archaea, bacteria, and then eukaryotes, eukarya. Yeah. And then under eukaryotes, animals, plants, fungi. Yeah. So they're like a whole category of the tree of life. They're not plants. They're not animals.

They're a whole other thing. And I don't actually know what makes them different, though. a whole category of the tree of life. They're not plants. They're not animals. They're a whole other thing. And I don't actually know what makes them different, though. Why, like, a yeast is different from a protist or, you know, some other tiny eukaryote. I also didn't know. This is off the top of my head.

But they are eukaryotic, which means they have a nucleus inside. I think the two things that set them apart is that they reproduce with spores. Oh. So like the little powdery stuff in mushrooms or things like that. They all, all fungi reproduce with spores. Is there a fancy word for that? Sporogenesis?

Yeah. Something like that? Is that the word? No, I just made that up. Sporogenesis is the process of spore formation. Hey! Maybe I probably knew that. I probably had heard that up. Sporogenesis is the process of spore formation. Hey, maybe I probably knew that. I probably had heard that before. But also like a lot of biology words. It's pretty easy to guess.

Easy. Yeah. Once you get how they do it. And then the other thing that sets them apart? Their cell walls. So like plants, their cells have more structure than an animal cell, but their cell walls specifically have chitin inside, so they're more rigid. And they don't have chloroplasts, which plants have. So they're heterotrophic. They can't make their own food. This source that I found said it may include 1.5 million species. And we've only named and described about 80,000 of them. Oh, so if you want to start naming and describing some species, fungus is where it's at.

Yeah, it seems like the taxa are very fraught. Like, there are old fungus researchers where they were like, we're gonna name all these things. And then modern fungus researchers are like, what the heck were people doing? They just looked at all this black moldy stuff and lumped it together without looking at anything

genetic about it, but they're actually a very different species. You don't get paid if you describe a new fungus. No. You can name it after yourself. That's what people do. Well, what if I name it after sponsors? So I'll discover and describe a fungus

and then you can pay me to name you after it. Because I don't really, I'm not interested in doing science if I'm not getting that money. Just like the stars and planets. Yeah. It's like that when people buy those. I named a star after you, except it's a slime mold.

I think that's a great idea. Do you have any other questions about fungus? No, I've learned everything about them. Sam knows everything now. So it's time for Tudor Fail. One of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment, but only one of those facts is real. And the other three panelists have to figure out by deduction or wild guess which is the true fact. If you do, you get a Hank Buck.

If you're tricked, then Stefan will get your Hank Buck. Give me the cash. These days we use fungi for all kinds of different things, like yeast is a fungi, so we use it for fermentation. Spaghetti sauce. Spaghetti sauce. Sure. As medication, food, research we use it for fermentation. Spaghetti sauce. Spaghetti sauce. Sure. Medication, food, research, all kinds of things.

But which of these three things did ancient humans use fungi for? Number one. As a pesticide, by spreading a parasitic fungi to their crops that grow inside an insect's body, eating away all the internal tissues until they die. Number two. About 7,000 years ago in what is now Spain,

people were using fungus as tinder to start and transport fire. Hmm. Or number three, ancient Egyptians bound moldy bread to people's nether regions to treat genital warts. No! Why not? Yeah, why not? Oh, why not? Yeah, why not? So what I'm saying is that using fungus as a crop enhancement is not unheard of in modern society either.

But I feel like it would be hard to get enough fungus to spread it around. So we have, they used it as a pesticide, spreading a parasitic fungi over their crops. We're saying both fungi and fungi here on tangents because both of those are correct pronunciations. Number two, 7,000 years ago in what is now Spain, people were using fungus as tinder to start and transport fire. Or three, ancient Egyptians put moldy bread on people's crotches to treat genital warts. The fire one sounds familiar to me, so I'm just going to go with that one. Oh, wow, you're already in. You're done. Oh, you're guessing?

Yeah. Oh. I'm locked in. You're locked in? Does that mean we're going to stop discussing? No, discuss all you want. You're just locked in? I just have a good feeling about that one.

Sam's like, look, I want to guess and stop thinking about it. I don't want to be involved in a conversation about genital warts. No, that's fine. So I'm not going to be. I'd like to explore genital warts. So I'm not going to be. I'd like to explore genital warts. Okay. I explore genital warts too much while researching this. I went to the

Wikipedia page and I was not expecting the visuals that I got. Oh, yeah. They don't shy away. This is medicine. This sounds not unlikely to me. Yeah, there's like a whole idea in old medicine where it's like treat the thing with a thing that looks like the thing

that was the worst way to phrase that no it makes sense though warty bread, warty genitals yeah next time you see a piece of bread just think that looks like genitals to me I like the visual of an ancient Greece person walking around

with nothing on except some moldy bread. They're like, I don't need to put anything on. Yeah, he's soaked my moldy bread in a little bit of water so it's more comfy. What? No, that's like putting wet socks on. I refuse to believe that wet moldy bread is more comfortable than dry moldy bread. You want like a fluffy loaf, not a sourdough. Good fluffy bread is a modern invention.

Dang it. All their bread was hard and crusty and you wouldn't want it on your parts. And it couldn't be fresh out of the oven because it had to be moldy.

It had to be moldy. It had to be old bread. Old hard bread. You might as well soak it. No, old hard bread over soaked bread. 100%. Okay.

You just have very hard underwear on. You have to walk really carefully. Better than soggy underwear. I don't know. I was feeling good about moldy bread until we had the conversation.

Now I think it's too hard. What are you even going to do? There's nothing to gain by knowing too much about something. You gotta just guess. Now I'm going to go with moldy bread. Okay, I'm also going to go with Tinder. Because that also sounds realistic. But all of us are saying no to pestic with tinder because that also sounds realistic. Yeah. I don't know.

All of us are saying no to pesticide. I feel like no pesticide. Stefan, what do we have? So it was the tinder. So they found at this site, the Ladraga site on the Iberian Peninsula in northeastern Spain. It's one of the oldest agricultural sediments in that area. And it exists below the water table because it's like, like, wet, it preserved a lot of, like, soft tissue stuff. And so they have found all these, like, fungi samples.

And there were, like, six different species. And I think all of them were known to be used as tinder in other, like, points throughout history. And they call them tinder fungi. Not super creative, but, you know, it's fine. And they're basically like non-edible species that have a sort of woody structure to them so they're super flammable a lot of them seem to be like slow burning they would catch fire easily and then they would burn for a long time so you could like transport the fire somewhere else or whatever

probably lighter than wood i'd imagine yeah uh one of the species is Daldinia concentrica. It's called King Alfred's cake or cramp balls. What? It looks kind of like... I don't know. Cramp balls? Cramp balls? You're going to have to spell cramp balls for me. Cramp?

They look like cramp balls. It looks like doo-doo. Oh, yeah. I can see that. We can link to that. Those are some cramp balls. Definitely not a can see that. We can link to that. Cramp balls? Yeah. Those are some cramp balls.

Definitely not a cake. I was looking at these others. Who's King Alfred? Why is he eating this? Yeah. I don't get it. There have been very few cases of fungi in general discovered in relation to ancient humans, and oftentimes it's not possible to know what they were using it for. But since these weren't edible and some of them were actually burned,

there was evidence of carbonization. And they like clearly harvested them from around the area. They came from like different ecosystems and were like transported to this site. They think they're pretty confident that it was used for fire. And that it was a useful, helpful thing that people wanted. Probably I could, if I was an ancient person, maybe I could specialize in that, trade those. And then be like, and also I'll name the species after you that'll be twenty dollars oh wow king alfred king alfred i actually named it twice i named it after king alfred and after cramp balls

back in the day cramp balls was a perfectly legitimate thing to name your child yep seven seventy three hundred ago. That was number one in the book of baby names. Maybe. They were naming him something. As an extra bonus fact, apparently, Ötzi,

the Iceman, is that how you say it? He had some dried fungi on him. He had some cramp balls. I don't know if it was cramp. I think it was a different species. Was there any legitimacy to this crotch fungus that I got suckered into?

Not really. They did. There was an ancient Egyptian medical manuscript from 4,000 years ago that suggested putting moldy bread on wounds. Yeah. And so they didn't give a lot of detail, but modern peoples are hypothesized that they were harnessing the power of something similar to penicillin. Right, they were aware of the bacterial properties. They didn't know about microbes, but if you put this moldy bread on a thing, sometimes that makes it better. I just changed it to genital warts because genital warts came up at some point in my research, and then I was like, yeah, all right.

And then the pesticide one, we use them now. I couldn't find any evidence of ancient people using them. Apparently, ancient humans use sulfur, arsenic, mercury, and lead as pesticides. This was like maybe 4,500 years ago up to that long ago. Some of those sound like a bad idea.

Which are, yeah, not great. We also used to paint our houses with arsenic. So, same difference. Yeah, it was better than not having a crop, I guess. Yeah. If you didn't have a crop, everyone died. Yep. And if you got lead poisoning, everyone died.

But like a longer time passed. So biopesticides are kind of a growing part of modern pesticide use, which includes pesticides based on fungi, bacteria, and other like plant-derived toxic things as sort of a push to move away from synthetic chemicals. And my first thought about this was like, isn't there potential to like infect humans with like the fungi or whatever that you're spreading? But apparently like most fungi aren't harmful at all. But you just, I don't know, in common exposure, like mold on the bread. I should not eat that. Just for clarity, you shouldn't eat moldy bread. You don't know for sure whether one of those things has produced some chemicals that are going to negatively affect you. I don't think you'll get colonized by and be made sick by the little fungi themselves.

Fungi. Fungi. But they might have produced a chemical that will make you sick. Yeah. There are chemicals called mycotoxins, which is, like, the broadest word to say, like, fungus is bad. Bad thing. A fungus made this, and you will puke. All right.

Well, next up, we're going to take a short break, and then to the Fact Off. We're back. Hank Buck totals. We're all tied with one. Everyone's tied. That's kind of good. I'm happy about that. Yeah, let's just stay like this. Let's end the podcast.

Let's walk out friends still. Or we'll do the fact off. Two of our panelists have brought science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow our minds. And the person who blows our minds the most will get a Hank Buck, is basically how it works. And it's Sam versus Sari. The person

who's gonna go first is the person who can name the most edible mushrooms. Sari, go. Portobello. Sam. Crimini. Crimini?

Crimini. I said a bunch of them at the beginning of the podcast. I know you did. Truffles. Yeah. Shiitake. Yeah. Hey, I got more button.

Is that one? Button is a mushroom. White. White. I think that's a mushroom. I was about to say that, but I was like, that's just a color. Well, I think that means you failed better answer. I was about to say that, but I was like, that's just a color. Well, I think that means you failed. Yes, I think I lost.

I think loser should go first. Okay, that's fine. So there was a weird phenomenon that was first reported in a pamphlet in 1872 and a paper in 1881 in Cognac, France, where the walls and roofs of buildings and even trees in one particular area of town were covered in a mysterious black grime. And then over the next century and some, we found similar black grimy residue on fences, street signs, cars, houses, and even stainless steel in suburbs like Shively, Kentucky or Lakeshore, Ontario or in places all over the world like the UK, Korea, Trinidad, Barbados. And we didn't like people who lived there were inconvenienced by this thing but it wasn't until like the mid-2000s where people were actually concerned about it being like what what actually is this thing yeah uh can we

bring in a scientist to study it and what all these places have in common is that they're all near alcohol distilleries making stuff like brandy or whiskey where liquid is fermented packed into barrels and like let to evaporate over time so like chemicals evaporate off including a not insignificant amount of ethanol and when that ethanol meets cool damp air it's prime growing conditions for a particular type of mold that we now call whiskey fungus it was previously called terula compneais when it was first identified in France. But because of the complicated field of mycology, that's an obsolete genus nowadays. And so the researchers had looked back in time and they were like, they called it this one thing, but that doesn't exist anymore.

This was just what everyone called black fungus. As you said in the beginning of the podcast, the taxa were fraught. Nowadays, the new scientist who studied it named it Bodwania Compneasensis after Antonin Bodwan, who is the director of agriculture and industrial chemistry of cognac, who discovered this in the first place.

So he was like, this mushroom man way back when discovered this. He was great. I'm going to name it after him. Yeah. And he paid him 40 bucks. Yeah. And then there was something in the Wired article that covered this, where they interviewed the current scientist, and he was like, it's bad practice to name a fungus after yourself.

So we had to find someone else to name it after. And plus I already have fungi named after me. So like wanted to spread the love. It was very funny. It was like there's a whole politics within mycologists. Your ideas sounded better and better. Yeah, it's good practice. It's good practice, ethical.

And so we don't know a lot about its characteristics, but it like coats walls and it it looks like soot or something to me like coating cars and coating walls of buildings is it damaging it's just dirty looking okay so it lowers property values and things like that but it doesn't actively degrade the structures it's just doing it because it's just sitting there eating the air. Yeah. And we don't know a lot about its characteristics, but scientists have done a couple studies on it. So it definitely grows better with ethanol than without.

And they think the ethanol helps the fungus produce proteins that protect it against extreme temperatures and stress, which is how it can grow in so many different environments like cold temperatures or hot temperatures or in the shade or in the sun, and then also kickstart its growth because when there's ethanol there, it grows faster and more robustly. And so it's weird because it's the species of fungus that presumably has existed for millions of years and then has become adapted to a very human thing, which is churning out ethanol fumes in these very particular places because we must have our liquor we must um and it's wild that there's so much ethanol that gets released in this process like that's the stuff

you're trying to make yeah hold on to it it's called the angels share by distillery which i think is kind of nice yeah it's like one for you angels yeah one out so that so that all of god's brethren can't get crunk yeah party with all that ethanol yeah i don't know i don't drink a lot clearly i could tell my whole life going back to the the taxa are fraught thing is did they just like start over i don't think they really are starting over from scratch like it's just like start over? I don't think they really are starting over from scratch. Like it's just like, this one doesn't make sense. All right, we'll switch it over. Yeah, it's a mess. That's true in all of taxonomy.

Like fungus, I think is worse than most because it's just like hard for us to tell the difference, especially pre-genetic testing. And I think a lot of the times it's like we came up with a class name that covered two very, very different things things and then it's like oh those things are actually less related than we thought and so let's abolish that old name altogether and give them two new ones so we got weird drunk mold and now it's time for sam plastic you ever heard of it it's an incredibly useful super material that makes our lives easier and safer and more fun like with legos in a lot of different ways but it has one huge drawback and that is it is basically immortal

and it will be here forever and recently it seems more and more like people are becoming aware that clogging our oceans up with millions upon millions of tons of plastic isn't going to have a happy ending for earth but what do we do well we could ask fungus for help so late last year the un held the world's first state of the world's fungi event i knew that the un had a perfect premium thing that was the one thing that everyone would finally agree that it was worthwhile and here it is is there cosplay there probably were at least a lot of bad puns i would guess like mushrooms they would have freaked out for your poem so a team of scientists shared their results of a study of a species of fungus aspergillus

tubingensis that was isolated in a garbage dump in islamabad pakistan that seems to be able to break down polyurethane in weeks instead of decades so the research is still super new but it produces an enzyme basically that breaks down chemical bonds in plastic and then its root system gets in there and breaks it all up so they put it in like a liquid solution and it broke apart plastic in a couple weeks, according to the study at least. But then research into plastic litter in other places around the world haven't turned this up. It's just kind of in that one place that they found so far. And they're having a hard time figuring out how to grow it reliably because it needs like a very specific pH. And it usually only grows in the dirt.

So getting it to grow on the plastic has been a problem, I think, so far. it reliably because it needs like a very specific ph and it usually only grows in the dirt so getting it to grow on the plastic has been a problem i think so far uh so it might be a while before it helps us at all but their idea is that eventually they could integrate it into plastic so then while they're manufacturing it okay and it would have like a self-destruct date basically right right right i see i was like because what are you going to do? Crop dust the ocean with this stuff? If they implant it in plastic, is it like a time-release capsule kind of a thing, or is it just like...

It starts eating day one, but it's like day 350 that it finally starts to break down significantly. But if you have a slow-moving soda... I think we just have to recalibrate the way that we as human beings do stuff. Yeah, I mean, in a lot of different ways. This is one of the ways where we will need to recalibrate.

There is this new soda that was, or maybe it's a drink, I don't know. It's like at the gas station and it was always there but no one was ever buying it because it's just like, it's a terrible shape for a bottle that upsets me. The bottle looks very, very, very much like a sex toy.

But like, I feel like it's always been there and it's never gone away. Yeah. So is it still all right to drink that? Sarah's looking at the website right now. Yes. The bottle itself, phallic. The bottle itself, like straight up.

It looks like a butt plug. You need a slightly more flared base to be safe. But like, yes. I was the campus medical, like liaison and sex educator. So you're like, do not use bottles as butt plugs. Yeah, it might just slip in there. It'd be bad. Then it's forever.

Well, then hospital. Hospital or... Or forever, yeah. Or just, you know, forever because you'll die. Well, if it had the fungus in it, it would just disintegrate eventually. No problem. Right in the butt.

Is this a tangent? This was a horrible one. I hated all of it. And it was all Hank's fault. It was all my fault. Right in the butt. Is this a tangent? This was a horrible one. I hated all of it. And it was all Hank's fault. It was all my fault. Deeply my fault. In no way was that at all related

to the topic at hand. I got pretty close to being Sarah's fault too. I'm surprised you're not taking it for both of us because I did more talking during this.

I got so excited. Sarah had a safety tip for butt plugs which is that it should have a flared base. And that seems like a useful contribution and not worth docking a point. All right.

I don't think I was going to win this one anyway. Do you even remember what my fact was? Yeah, your fact. Plastic is immortal unless you imbue it with Aspergillus tubingensis. And Sari, yours was that there is really drunk fungus around. Drunkus. Yeah, drunkus.

I'll give it to Sam. You're going to Sam? Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to say that the angel's share of ethanol getting consumed by a fungus is beautiful. It turns out, does this mean that the weird fungus are the angels and should we be thanking them and like doing nice things for them? Yes. Yeah.

I think at the state of the fungus, we should then create a world religion around the fungus. The drungus. I, for one, worship the drungus. Okay. Cool. Please bless us. Yeah, please. It's a good podcast episode when you advance a religion.

All right. Now it's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finally honed scientific minds. Stephan, what's our question? AtSeltaVolt asks, when parasitic fungi infect live animals and take over them, are they actually thinking about what their prey is doing,

like actually puppeting them with a pseudonervous system, or is that something else? So there are fungi, ophiocordyceps that infect insects uh and control their movement somehow and the one that we've studied the most is in carpenter ants and what this fungus does is it like infects the ants makes them crawl up to a certain height oftentimes like 25 meters i, grab onto moss or a leaf and then just die there.

And just never move again. And never move again so that the fungus can then grow out of their head and then spread spores. So it's like high enough up that the spores can scatter and grow and things like that. Hit other.

Right. Yeah. So it seems natural to think it would make a little fungus brain in there that would tell you what to do. But there have been scientists who have gone like slice by slice through zombified ants infected with this fungus to see where exactly it went. And it went everywhere but the brain, which is very cool. So they surround the muscles and form a network around the muscles of the ant.

That sounds like a neuro system. Yeah. So I guess it's like sort of nervous system, but it's like a replacement nervous system that doesn't involve the brain at all. It just like controls the muscles. So it actually controls. I always just assumed that it like gave the ant some like signal, like gave it good feeling compounds until it got to a certain place and was like and it stopped and then it it would give it bad feeling compounds if it moves i mean sort of like taking a drug then like oh i just want to be really high right now yeah on top of the roof i

feel like going up 25 meters to some extent it probably is a chemical signal rather than a physical one or maybe a combination of them where it's just like sprinkling stuff onto the muscles. So like muscles go, muscles go, muscles go, and then muscles stop. It interfaces with the nervous system of the ant. That's wild. Which is very cool. How does it see where it's going? So like the best quote that I found from a scientist was, we don't quite understand how parasites manipulate their hosts with such precision.

So scientists are even like, shrug. We spent a lot of time studying this and boy, do we not know. I could see there being something with like elevation, like with pressure or something, like the conditions there make the fungus produce a chemical that causes the ant to do this thing. And then when it gets to a certain height that... But hard to sense height specifically. If it was a light signal signal that would be much easier if like you go until you see a certain amount of light and that's indicating where you are in the canopy maybe and it could

be related to that because another group that studies biological clocks found that this fungus has a separate biological clock from the ant the in the way that scientists study it is just like, what does the chemical composition of this look like over the passage of time and like over relative day, relative night? And they found like cycles of compounds in it. So something to do with the passage of time probably has to do with how this fungus controls the ant, which makes sense with light exposure

because it's like, okay okay go up until it's dark because you're under a leaf or in moss and then maybe it just makes it walk forward until it happens to go up a tree instead of aiming it oh yeah that that is like the big question mark and where i feel like it gets very dicey because no biologist is going to want to say, the fungus wants the ant to do this. Yeah. Because I guess the fungus end goal is to reproduce and spread spores. It's what the genes want, not what the fungus wants. Yeah.

That's where the puppeteering analogy falls apart because it's not like the fungus is, I don't know, wants the ant to take five seconds. It's what the fungus does. It's not what the fungus wants. Yeah. We don't have a good ant to take what the fungus does yeah this one yeah we don't have a good way of talking about this yeah because we just came up yeah we don't we didn't well yeah sam's like i think i do it's like humans we just do what we do not what we want well the reason i know i'm not being controlled by a fungus is because i have no idea what i want and if a fungus was controlling me it would make me do the thing that was good for the fungus whereas i just am so confused the fungus

angels want you to choose your own path they've just given you this gift of life yeah now you have to do it so we don't really know we don't know but this is more information than i had that's for sure yeah pseudo nervous system maybe is the best understanding that we have of it. That's freaky. And that's wild. It's wild. Yeah, that's mostly it. It's biologists think that this kind of control, this is like beyond what neuroscientists have

figured out how to do. Like this is unseen in neuroscience before. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we tweet out upcoming topics for episodes. Thank you to at Bree Beecher, at Jay Hobiek, and everybody else who tweeted us your

questions this week. Final, Hank Buck scores. Sari and Sam have come out on top, tied with two each. Wow. Stefan is third, and I'm zero because I had a weird energy drink tangent that was really bad. Sarah, you're on a hot streak.

I am? Yeah. Do you want to know the scores right now, the total scores? Tell us the scores, Sam. I have 49. Hank has 46.

Sarah has 44. Stefan has 41. I'm slipping. I'm catching up. Yeah, we are. We're catching up to Sam, but like, you've been out in the head

a long time. Wow, we are. We're catching up to Sam. But like, you've been out in the head a long time. Wow, I can't believe it. You need a mushroom nervous system. Put a slime mold in there. If you like the show and you want to help us, it's easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show. And we'll be looking at iTunes reviews for topic ideas for future episodes.

So leave your topic ideas there. Second, tweet out your favorite moment from this episode to us. I love it when I see those. And if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. If you want to read more about any of today's topics, check out SciShowTangents.org to find links to all of our

sources and maybe some photos of weird mushrooms. Thank you for joining. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and the amazing team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also

edits a lot of these episodes, along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno, and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled,

but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. The Zygomycota taxa fungi, I'm not sure if this is the most current group name, grow in herbivore poop and they pop like squirt guns or little water balloons to spread their spores onto farther grass and continue the life cycle of being eaten, ending up in poop. And they accelerate extremely fast, which is some of the fastest acceleration in nature, from 20,000 to 180,000 G. Which is like faster acceleration than rockets need to break the atmosphere.

faster acceleration than rockets need to break the atmosphere. Oh, yeah. And the speeds range from 2 to 25 meters per second, which isn't that fast, but the acceleration is incredibly fast. Yeah, from 0 to 25 meters per second in an instant.