The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Screaming Frogs, "Talking" Mushrooms, Nonbinary Birds

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Sociolinguist Erica Brozovsky joins the show to discuss talkative fungi, Amanda Reed chats about nonbinary birds, and Rachel gets into animal sounds—especially the ones we can't hear. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Thanks to our Sponsors! This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at https://BetterHelp.com/WEIRDEST Right now, get 60% off at https://Babbel.com/WEIRDEST Get 20% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST! #honeylovepod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code Weirdest. It's third party lab tested and ships directly to you in a discreet box. Best of all, everything's backed by Mood's 100 day satisfaction guarantee. And like I said, you can get 20% off with code Weirdest. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com.

Get 20% off your first order now with code Weirdest. That's code Weirdest for 20% off. No one goes to Hank's for spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks co-pilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs to help him see if he can afford it. Co-pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice.

work. Now, Hank says, line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365 copilot.com slash work. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of popular science. Rachel Feltman. I'm Amanda Reed. And I'm Erica Brazovsky. Erica, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about

who you are and what you do? Absolutely. So I am a sociolinguist. I got my doctorate in English specializing in sociolinguistics. I'm the host of other words, a PBS digital series about all things, language and linguistics, which you can find on YouTube or on the PBS website, PBS.org. You could also find me over at Crash Course, where I host a crash course called How to College, which freaks down the higher education process, from thinking about applying to graduating out into the real world. I am also currently, thank you, I'm also currently writing a pop linguistics about literacy. And most relevant to this podcast, my favorite thing besides before and after photos and interspecies animal friendships is learning stuff. So I'm incredibly excited to be here to share my little weird tidbit and also to learn weird stuff from you. Amazing.

Yeah. I mean, listen, this is the place to be if you love to learn weird stuff. Yeah, I mean, your PBS show is great. And I also love the concept of the crash course you do. It's such a good idea because I feel like, you know, I came from a background where there was lots of support about the idea of going to college. And it was still such a, such a mysterious arcane and like confusing process. Heroing sometimes even. harrowing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I also wish that I had more information because like when I was applying to college, my parents were like only apply in state and I live in Pennsylvania, which is among like one of the most like a lot of colleges, even the public ones in Pennsylvania can be. State. Yeah. Very expensive. Very expensive. Very collegiate. Definitely a lot of like liberal arts. small college vibes, which I love the vibe, don't love the price tag on them. And my favorite part was me going, I want to be a theater critic and I want to go into the

very, very profitable field of theater criticism. Let me go to the University of Pittsburgh, a place without a formal journalism program. But I wouldn't have it any other way, Hale to Pit. It's how I met Jess. Well, I love that that's talking about tells. And also, one of these days I get to have to ask you more about your origin story as an aspiring theater critic because I had no idea and lots to discuss. But for now, let's get it to the show. But for now. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by offering up a little tease that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little. science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. I should probably rewrite that intro. We don't do that anymore. Even when I say it's like we do it

in a fun way and the points don't matter. We don't even really do that anymore. We just kind of go, isn't it nice that we just had this conversation? Amanda, what's your tease? Yeah. So my tease is birds are breaking the gender binary. Oh, I love that. I'm excited. You know I wrote a whole book about not literally that, but there were some queer birds in there. In my book, Been There, Done That, A Rousing History of Sex. Buy it.

My tease is that even if you can't hear it, a frog may be screaming at you. Nice. Erica, what's your tease? Mine kind of follows that thread a little bit. So mushrooms don't seem like a particularly talking. talkative bunch, but one scientist claims that they might have been chit-chatting this whole time to the tune of up to 15 different words. Wow. A gossiping mushroom. Yeah, mushrooms, they look like they'd be gossipy. That's definitely the vibe. Let's see, I would love to start with Amanda. Why don't

you tell us about these binary breaking birds? Yes, absolutely. So Hamish Spencer, Zerwe biologist and distinguished professor at the University of Otago was vacationing in Colombia when ornithologist John Murillo pointed out an interesting bird perched on a feeding station at a nature reserve. The bird in question was a green honey creeper, but it didn't look like any old, basic honey creeper. The right half of the bird was blue, resembling males of the species, and the left half was green, which is, usually seen in females. This special honey creeper is the second bird of its species in history to display bilateral gyendromorphism. Long words.

A trait where animals present with both male and female characteristics in species that usually have distinct sexes. It's also the first time this phenomenon has happened in 100 years. So this honey creeper. is a history-making bird and also a social groundbreaking magical bird. However, other birds have displayed bilateral guidandromorphism, so this honeycreeper is not alone. In 2019, a cardinal with male and female plumage was spotted in Erie Pennsylvania. Like the honey creeper, half of the bird was bright red, like male cardinals, while the other half

was beige like female cardinals. So also a fact within my fun fact, if you ever see a holiday little painting or advertisement where it's two bright red birds carrying a wreath and they worked together to hang that wreath up on the front door. Congratulations. It's just two dudes helping each other out. I love it. And they were roommates. And they were roommates. Exactly. So this non-binary icon also has a boyfriend and could potentially reproduce since the bird's female plumage is on its left side and only the left ovary is functional in female cartels. Oh, interesting. Like they're just their cloaca. I don't know.

This is your expertise, right, Rachel? Yeah. Good question. I have no idea what's going on with the cloaca. unfortunately I'm I'm not a cloaca expert so so the thing about it is that Rachel is yeah I alas not not a full on cloaca expert but I do know from my um discussion in my book about how few birds have um have anything resembling a penis like any any sort of extruding uh member so much worse

than just a penis anyway but the outer appearance would be identical and some birds then have like you know

it's sort of just a question of whether stuff kind of oozes out of the Kuika or is meant to ooze into the cloaca because the cloaca is an all-purpose exit from the body you know so it's nice and entrance too apparently

yeah Yeah, yeah, it's a, it can be a two-way shoot, and they've only got the one. So anyway, I don't know what specifically a cardo-culika is like, but the differences between one in a male and female bird, probably less distinct than you might realize if you're sort of working from the very, like, human-centric frame of reference for how sexual dimorphism works. Nice. Thank you, Rachel. You're so welcome. Back to birds. In 2020, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh mentioned.

I wish there was like a Pittsburgh mentioned like sound like a like a hip hop air horn because I love Pittsburgh Bill Pyr. Pittsburgh mentioned. And it's just like a dude with a very yinzer accent. Because I love, even though I'm not from Pittsburgh, I'm working. so a Pittsburgh transplant, but I love finding ways to issue Pittsburgh into anything. Oh, Pittsburghies is a whole linguistic field. The people are obsessed. I was actually going to ask you about that because I too love Pittsburghies.

So anyway, back to Birds Part 2. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History found a gyendromorphic rose-breasted gross beak that displayed male plumage on the right, just like our good friend, the honeycreeper, and female plumage on the left. So this particular bird has pink wing pits and breast spot found in males. And the female, it has the yellow wing pits and browner wings on its left side. So right, pinker, darker, darker feathers, left, yellow, browner wings. I have two questions if I can interrupt. Yes. One, is a wing pit like an arm pit? Because I've just never heard that terminology before. Okay. So it's like the underside of the wing. So if you see, if you picture like a bird with its wings spread, it's like the underside of the wing. Okay. So this is question number one. Question number two. Because there's a lot of right and left going on. Were they all the same? So we're were all the left male or things out there we ran all the rights female and all the left

I don't even know what he just said. That is a very good question. So at least with the honey creeper and the gross speak, it was male, right, female, left. And on the cardinal, it appears. that the female was on the right and the male was on the left. I'm looking at a picture of this wonderful magic bird. Yeah, it's female on the right, male on the left. And that's like if you're just like looking at the bird straight on using like my right.

Theater, opposite of theater. Yeah, theater right. Um, listeners, if you are at home, the magic of Google will have pictures linked in the description, or at least I will find the pictures to add. Um, because it's very, very cool. And it's literally like a right down the middle split. Yeah. Well, and I've seen, I know that every once in a while, um, pictures go around of, uh, lobsters that are, uh, this way. And it's very striking. If they look like one. side is cooked and the other isn't. Yeah. So speaking of lobsters, moths and spiders can be gyndromorphs, but it's rarer among birds.

And outside of gynodromorphs, there are a lot of other queer animals. So, for example, clownfish, when a female clownfish dies, the male changes its sex to become female. There is a group of or a lizard that is known as the leaping lesbian lizard. Iconic name. Yeah. Yes. Miss Hannigan's best line in Annie. Yeah. Leaping lesbian. Yeah. So this lizard mates lay eggs. and reproduces, like, all other lizards, but it's the species, all of the species are female. Oh, yeah.

Is that the one that does kleptogenesis? Yeah. I've talked about them before. It's like the whole species is female, and they just kind of grab genes from, like, random males, but it's not like the male is providing 50% of the genetic information. It's more like they like get a charcutory board of potential male genes and grab a few of them. It's very wild. Yeah.

So these birds and these animals as a whole are proof that considering sex as a biological binary is reductive. And if you ever meet a person who is complaining and they're like, that stuff's not natural. You can just say, well, look at these birds. Look at this clownfish. Look at these lesbian lizards. I'd know that nature pretty queer. Yeah.

Well, even, you know, I make this point in my book that, you know, intersex conditions in humans are, it's not that they're common, but they're like not nearly rare enough to be true. treated as like so outside the way that like sex works for the species. You know, it's not like this is a one in a million thing. It's more like a one in several hundred to several thousand thing. That's frequent. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're, you know, the estimates are like they vary a lot. But I think one reasonably conservative estimate, is like one in 2000.

And that's like every possible sort of intersex condition, many of which don't really cause like necessarily noticeable physiological or morphological changes. And obviously there's a huge spectrum of, you know, how that can impact both a person's like medical needs and lived experience. But yeah, like broadly speaking. they are pretty common variations in, you know, how humans come out. And, yeah, I love that there are animals where it's like it's just so standard, like, with clanfish where they literally are like, you know.

I mean, Finding Nemo, right? Yeah. Nemo's dad or actually his mom. Yeah, yeah. I did a TikTok video one about how if, you know, finding Nemo had been scientifically accurate it would have started with a sex change. And I got people really did not like that video. I actually took it down because not that I cared what those people thought. But I was like, this is just going to, this is going to get me put on like libs of TikTok. And I'm just like not,

that's not what I'm here for today. But it's true. Look it up. Awesome. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And then we'll be back with some more facts. Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code weirdest. I'm not a smoker myself, but I do love the occasional weed gummy to, you know, help me go off to Dreamland. And I can't have one right now because I have a new kit.

And, you know, I definitely miss it a little bit. But maybe you can have a weed gummy. and you can get one at mood.com. So the reason that different cannabis strains can make you feel different ways isn't just about the THC. It seems like it's also based on other components called terpenes. Turpines influence how a product tastes and smells, and it seems like they can also impact the way you feel.

Mood partnered with dozens of small American farms to custom cultivate flour with specific terpen profiles designed for specific moods. So you can choose your cannabis gummy, edible flour, or pre-roll based on how you want to feel. Just go to mood.com and click. shop by mood. And yes, it is now 100% federally legal to have really great bud shipped right to your door. It's third-party lab tested and ships directly to you in a discreet box. Best of all, everything's backed by mood's 100-day satisfaction guarantee, and like I said, you can get 20% off with code weirdest. I'm eyeing mood.com's delta 9 THC buttercream caramels because in addition to not

being able to have THC, I also can't have dairy right now. So the idea of having a caramel that also me out and sends you to Dreamland sounds very nice. And speaking of fun edibles, mood.com has Delta 9 THHC freezer pops. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now

with code weirdest. That's code weirdest for 20% off. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost.

Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Okay, we're back and I'm going to talk about screaming frogs. We've had, we had lesbian lizards and we have screaming frogs. So, There's this new study out that says that there are frogs that scream violently to word off predators, but they do it at frequencies we can't hear. And I will pause to say, common frogs do scream. There are frogs. I learned, well, research of this, there are frogs that scream at frequencies we can hear.

If you Google this, you will find many videos of people being like, why is this frog screaming? And the answer is you're freaking it out. Stop doing whatever you're doing. But what's cool about this study is that it's looking at a frog that is using ultrasonic frequencies. And that opens a lot of questions to like why that we can't actually answer yet. But it's just a really fascinating thing to look at and think about. And then also because I have such a short fact today, I'm going to do a little quiz with some. unexpected animal noises. So we'll see how that goes. So this is the litter leaf frog,

also known as the clay rubber frog. Unsurprisingly, there are several frogs called like leaf frog or litter leaf frog because it's a really good strategy to look like a dead leaf on the ground when you're a frog. But these are the most common or one of the most common species in the Brazilian rainforest. They grow to be about two to half inches long. most. And they're just, they're real cute. And I will post pictures on on popside.com slash weird. And this study found that they can emit a distress call that is in the inaudible ultrasound band. So humans can hear at the highest frequency we can hear is 20,000 hertz or you know, 20 kilohertz. And this is a.

that goes from 20 kilohertz to 44 kilohertz. So we cannot hear it, no matter how young and fresh your ears are. And so, you know, who is this for? Not for humans, clearly. But what's interesting is that they're not sure whether this is meant directly to scare predators or if it could be for something a little more interesting. So they know that like, There are bats and rodents and small primates who make and hear sounds at this frequency. So it's possible that this is this like broad distress call that's meant to just like freak out as many of those animals as possible. And they do also, they go back and forth between this sound and one that is at a lower frequency that is audible to humans. So maybe they're just like covering all their bases.

They're like first making this lower sound than this higher sound to just like, again, whatever predators are out there, freak them out. But they also think that maybe the scream is meant to attract like birds to then attack the predator that's threatening to them. Like maybe they're trying to get like an owl to come eat a snake or something. We don't know. They're going to do some more research on it. What's also fun about this is that they, it's a very obviously distress call because they have this like stance they go into. They raise up the front of their body sort of like they're like coming up into down dog, you know, little sphinx posy, if you well. And then they open their mouths really wide and they jerk their head up backwards, like as if they're like roaring, you know.

And they just the frog looks like I am about to scream. But then they close their mouth a little bit. And that's when they make a noise that we can hear. And then it goes to a noise we can't hear. So it's just, it's really funny because you look at this frog and you're like, oh my gosh, that frog is about to scream. And then you don't hear anything because it's too high. It gives me like whistle tone or like that noise that people use to break glass. But they're like we're going even higher.

Yeah. Totally. Totally. It's like the sound that they play to annoy teenagers and get them to leave a space, but higher than that. And this isn't the first time that scientists have recorded an amphibian using ultrasound calls. There are three Asian species that do. But in that case, it's pretty clear that they're using it to communicate with each other. And so this is the first time that we've seen a frog making ultrasonic calls, you know, to communicate a message,

to a different animal. And yeah, I just love it. It also reminded me of a story I covered ages ago back in 2015 that was about mice song because mice do sing. That wasn't what was new in this 2015 study. We already knew that mice sing. It's just that we can't hear it. It's really high-pitched.

But the study in 2015 actually analyzed me. mouse song, which had kind of been categorized up until then as just like the sort of stereotypical squeaky, squeaky sounds just higher than we can hear. But they analyzed them and we're like, oh, these are actually like pretty complex songs, like similar to bird song, not quite as complex, but like clearly the male mice were like putting effort into like composing their little mouse songs for the ladies. I'll write mouse. All right, mice.

And what was fun about it is that they would put in, the songs would be louder and more complex when they didn't see a female. And then when they did, they would kind of like chill out a little bit. So they were basically sort of. Playing it cool. Yeah. Yeah. They were like putting a lot of effort into like, are there any ladies present? I am great.

All the ladies in the room. Exactly. Yeah. And then once, you know, their milkshake brought all the girls to the yard, they would be like, okay, now I'm going to save some energy for actually, like, hopefully having sex. I'm not going to keep singing my heart out. You know, she's already here. So now I just need to sort of like maintain the vibe. And yeah, they, they, I loved that the point of the study was talking about, you know,

the surprising complexity of mice, mouse songs. And I was like, mice sing. What? And it's just a reminder that, like, you know, there's this whole, like, whole sonic world that we don't experience and that many animals don't experience. And that, you know, there are things our senses don't pick up visually, auditorially, not everything in the world has been made for us to experience. And, you know, sometimes that that can be a little frustrating. Everybody wishes. they could like see as many colors as like a mantis shrimp or whatever. But also it's kind of awesome because it means like we can just kind of imagine all of this sensory input out in the world that other creatures get to experience. That's my fact. Like I said, it's a short one today. So now I have, I'm going to unplug my headphones so that I can play these sounds for you.

And it's just, I'm going to play a series of animal sounds that I thought were surprising and that maybe are in a roundup from the World Animal Protection Organization in Australia. Also saying that they're surprising. Are they Australian animals or are they just general animals? Great question. These are not all Australian animals. I was like, can I confidently say that? Yes. These are not all Australian animals.

They were just having fun over there at this Australaded organization. Having fun down under. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so we'll see if you can guess some of these animals. Can you hear it? No. Yeah. It's definitely surprising.

Any idea what that animal was? I want to, for some reason, top of my head, guinea pig. Baby rhino. So. I would not have guessed baby rhino basically the same I personally would not have guessed baby rhino

so good on me for being brave I was guessing something in the water so I don't you know I hadn't formulated an animal yet I mean listen they're surprising so I'm aiming to stump you okay here's

here's another one that's giving more pig-like, but yeah. It's not surprising yet. Yeah, I'll give you a clue that it's a mating call specifically. Okay. I'm going to say koala. You are correct.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. Amanda knows what a horny koala sounds like. No shame. No shame. Okay. Here's one that really surprised me. I was shocked. Definitely sounds

more chirpy. I'm going to say a Katie did. I'm going to go with a wallaby. It was a cheetah. I have heard that they chirped. I could see that. Adorable chirping. Okay, let's see. I have a couple more. That was a very

showfar, like, very trumpety. It sounds like a musical instrument, yeah. In the woods. There should be like some, I don't know, mountains with mist. I was trying to think of what that animal could be and I was like the first thing came up with Lorax but that's not a real thing and then I was like local

I'm like that's a fruit so I was like lemur that's what I was thinking of yeah I think I'm going to also go with lemur I think it's some sort of like monkey adjacent animal great guess it was however an elk

oh okay an elk call okay I would have never guessed you got you're one for four though so you're that's basically an A. 25% baby. Listen, we're grading on a curve.

So Amanda gets an A. Yeah, the elks are apparently like the boogie-waggy bugle boys of the woods. Yeah, anyway, I will link to some more surprising animal sounds probably on my Patreon because now every week, in addition to sort of the like links for my stories, I also do sort of like a random run of related. or not related, but sort of this made me think of X, Y, and Z facts. So folks should check that out. And I bet this one's going to be a really fun one, because what will screaming frogs make me think of? Probably a lot of weird stuff.

So yeah, that's my fact today. Short and sweet one. We'll be back after the break with one more fact. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll. with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot.

It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill four-burner gas grill on special buy for only $199. And entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $499. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at to Home Depot. While supplies last, pricing about May 14th or May 27th, U.S. only exclusions apply. See homedipo.com slash price match for details. Peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing,

I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds. That's why I chose GoogleFi wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing. Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore GoogleFi wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage.

Okay, we're back. And Erica, tell me about what mushrooms have been chatting about. Why have they been leaving me out of the hot gods? Are they talking about me? We'll find out. So I stumbled across my weird thing via an email from my dad with the all caps heading, fungal language. full body of the email was, here is a link from article about the language of mushrooms with a link.

So I'm like, all right, as a linguist and a lover of mushrooms, immediately I am intrigued, but also absolutely skeptical. Because I'm like, okay. After all, language is kind of one of the main things that separates us from, or if you're particularly humanist, elevates us above the other creatures on Earth. And there's no way that mushrooms have developed a system of communication using work. with structured rules and grammar to express themselves, right? Right? Well, let me tell you. So first I want to clarify the difference between mushrooms and fungi,

which I was kind of just using synonymously prior to right now. So all mushrooms are fungi, but not all fungi are mushrooms, much like how all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. So mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of certain kinds of fungi, I think like cute little coat stools or the button, cramini and portobello mushrooms to fight at the store, which, fun fact, shockingly enough, are actually all the same kind of mushroom. It's true. Yeah, at different stages of maturity. I was flabbergasted when I found that out.

The greatest trick the devil ever told. And also, you know, so I love mushrooms. I did some of my college back in college and my husband hates mushrooms. And recently he became open to the idea that maybe he just dislikes that one species of a mushroom. So he's been a real champ about trying various. A real chanpignon. Exactly. And sure enough, while he has not liked every mushroom he's tried, there have been, you know, non, you know, little white cat mushrooms that he has enjoyed.

So, listeners, if you're like, oh, mushrooms are gross, maybe just try some weirder mushrooms. Absolutely. Puffball mushrooms. Those like oyster mushrooms are delightful. I love a good anoki mushroom, which we'll talk more about later. Love it all. But those toastables, just as a caveat for any listeners, don't eat any mushrooms in the forest unless you're absolutely sure they're not poisonous. In the words of, what is it, the black forager, Alexis Nicole Nelson, happy snacking and don't die.

It's not my fault. If you don't know what a mushroom is, don't look to me. Don't try to eat one, especially if it looks like the ones that you buy at the store. Because those are the hardest mushrooms to forage safely. There's so many poisonous mushrooms that look just like the ones you eat at the store.

Exactly. So might I suggest, it's a PSI. Yeah. Might I suggest foraging for black trumpets because nothing poisoness looks like them. That's the only one that I've ever forged successful. There's some chanterelles too, but a little suss. Yeah.

Oysters are pretty, like, there are things that might, like, not taste good that could look like an oyster mushroom, but like you're very unlikely, at least in the northeastern U.S., which is where my knowledge is to die trying to eat an oyster mushroom. The toad, anything shaped like a toad stool is harder. You need to get some learning before you try to pick those and eat them. And if it looks like a stereotypical, like the pretty mushroom with the red, the God's, no. That's a hard, no. No. Oh, yeah. You'll have a really bad trip. You vomit a lot. Don't do that.

Yeah, black trumpets grow in Maine and in parts of New England, so recommend. They're delicious. Okay, so anyway, back to my fun fact, weird story. So all mushrooms are fungi, but not all fungi are mushrooms. Fungi also includes mold and yeast and mildew, but we're going to focus on like the more mushroomy type right now, the fruiting bodies that we can see. The question is, can they talk? So this professor of unconventional computing, Andrew Inamatsky, of the University of the West of England, happens to think so. And that is a field of study I literally never heard of until yesterday. But I got to say, mushrooms absolutely seem like an unconventional thing to analyze if you're not a psychologist. So it seems on brand just based on, yeah, I didn't research him personally, but like based on his field of study.

So prior research has found that fungi transmit electrical impulse. So this are these long underground structures of thread-like filaments called hyphi, which together from a web called mycelium, which links fungal colonies within the soil, much like how nervous systems work and humans, animals, vertebrates in general, right? So mushrooms don't have nervous systems, but they have this network. And taken together, the mycelium composes what is called the micraisal network, which connects plants together to share resources and communicate. It's sometimes called the wood wide web, which I just love. Oh, that's so cute. That's a good pun. Genius.

So anyway, for this particular study, Atamatsky looked at four species of fungi. Delicious, delicious, Inoki mushrooms, big fan. Splitgill, ghost, and caterpillar fungi. I cannot speak to the edibility. Another right word of all of these. Only Anoki. The rest of them, it could be poisonous for all I know.

But Anoki's good. Okay. So he inserted tiny microelectrodes into substrates colonized by these species or into the fungi themselves and recorded the electrical impulses transmitted. He detected spikes of electrical activity, which, to be fair, if I, I mean, I probably would have an electrical spike too if somebody dared to stab me with some electrodes. Yeah. So, well, that's a fair warning here for how the rest of this story goes. So Adam Aski found that these electrical impulses varied by amplitude, frequency, and duration, and some mathematical analyses.

of the electrical signals identified patterns that he claims bear as striking a structural similarity to human speech. He was able to group electrical activity into spike trains, which is neuroscience speak for a combinatorial sequence of spikes and silences. It's like a digital sequence of information, which you think of like one for spike or zero for no spike, giving you a binary code of ones and zeros, quantifying someone's response to a stimulus or something in the case of mushrooms. I don't want to anthropomorphize them, even though I do love them. Yeah. So there were distinctive rhythmic patterns of electrical signals within the four species clustered into trains that represented vocabularies, he's alleging, of up to 50 different words that could be organized into so-called sentences.

And if you're curious about how, forbose, the different species were, the caterpillar fungus showed the lowest average spike frequency. And the anoki apparently had a lot of diverse. patterning of electrical activity. I don't know what that means exactly, but the split yields apparently generated the most complex alleged lexicon. Oh. What they were saying, none of our business. I don't speak mushroom.

I don't speak a fungut, you know? So Anamatsky does admit that the mushrooms might not be saying anything at all since they're electrically charged and getting stabbed with electrically charged things. They could just be saying, ow, over and over again. That's my impression. And I'm like, oh, like, how rude, you know. Yikes. Exactly.

So, however, because these, quote, spiking events don't appear to be random, he's suggesting that these waves of electrical impulses might be to maintain the fungi's integrity or to indicate presence like a wolf's howl, which is a wild peril of them make between wolves and these fungi. But, or he's saying that they might be out to report on things going on other parts of their mycelia. So the real question, to me at least, is what do other scientists think about this? So much like me, they are skeptical and definitely need more evidence. Turns out other types of pulsing behavior have previously been recorded as a fungi transports nutrients,

which might show more about patterns of growth as a fungi fords for food than anything else, really. But I mean, I guess I'm a scientist, but I'm a linguist first and foremost. So I was like, what about the linguists? What do the linguists think about this? because I'm like language, language has a lot of different parts that I don't imagine that fungi could do, you know? So an early 2024 paper by Michael Blatt at all. There were many people. In response, I'm asking, he's to study basically ripped him a new one.

Dang. Even just the abstract is, you're like, wow. Okay. So here's the last line of the abstract. I'm ready for you. Here we argue on methodological grounds that the presumption of a fungal language is premature and unsupported by the evidence presented and the voltage fluctuations he detects are likely to originate as non-biological noise and experimental artifacts and that the measured electrical patterns show no similarity to any properties of human language. Dang. Dang, indeed. Wow. Rough. Later they say, quote, And a Matzky provides no support of any kind for the notion that fungi might be using a language.

I was like, oh, rough, truly. I'd have to lie down if I read something like that. With like a clock over your eyes. Yeah. Get into one of those chambers or there's no sensor deprivation chambers because you're like that was too much sensing. Like that and a weighted blanket and then just like leave me be for 20 minutes. There are so many good quotes in the article. It's kind of an epic takedown made even better because it's so formal and academic and like, you know, professional, right?

There's other line that I loved. And this is all the things I found on the free version. I was like, I'm not paying for this article. There's a paywall. This is what I saw and what they showed me. So one line with was great was, we find the evidence that fungi communicate via human-like language technically and logically and therefore unconvincing. Oh, I'm convincing. Juicy.

Move over the Renata Adler of scrolling on your phone. We have, and of course I'm quoting that one book forum, Lauren Euler review. Move over in that particular review. The scientists have been bashing on each other for years. Oh, it's wonderful. I want to find the article as I'm put maybe in a few years. when it's free. Okay, so fungi do communicate.

There's a whole host of chemicals, nutrients, and as we know, electrical impulse is flowing through the mycelium. But is it a language? No. So University of Exeter, mycologist Dan Beber, who previously investigated fungal nutrient pulsing, said, perhaps a little savagely, that, though interesting, the interpretation as language seems somewhat over-enthusiastic and would require far more. more research and testing of critical hypotheses before we see fungus on Google Translate.

Wow. That's fair. Tough but fair. Regardless of their linguistic prowess or lack thereof, mushroom and fungi are awesome. They're these fantastic organisms that deserve much more appreciation both on our plates and in our hearts. So true. Just interesting little guys. Yes, exactly. There's little guys.

And they also like, you know, obviously all of these reviewers, are correct in that like, you know, it's a big, a big leap to say mushrooms are chit-chat in this fashion. But like it's kind of, you know, I think it's one of those things where probably the reason they got so mad about it is that it sort of detracts from the genuinely very awesome stuff about fungi in that like they are very connected on this microcontract. orizal network and like this is a way that um you know organisms that are not animals seem to communicate with each other um and also like fungi are um like they're people lump them in with plants but they're like so different from plants they're more closely related to animals and

they're a completely different kingdom like a kingdom of whiteboard yeah yeah yeah and um they like they're made of kite in the same stuff as beetles like they're just wild and I think it's um you know I feel like whenever there's a study that you know makes too big of a leap um for an organism that is genuinely like already weird and wild jumping the shark yeah exactly there's there's like kind of it's it's like worse than if it was for like a you know a boring well understood Because we're like, no, now people are going to be like, oh, I heard mushrooms don't actually talk to each other. That was debunked. Who cares about mushrooms?

No. Care about mushrooms. I love that. Yeah, I'm really curious, you know, how do you feel about the research into, you know, not just non-human, but like non-animal communication? Like, I guess I'm just curious, like, how often does it feel relevant to your work? Sure. Well, with my show, in other words, we kind of talk about all things, language and linguistics. So it's like, if it's tendentially related, we can talk about it.

And then I end up going down like multiple rabbit holes and you're like, Wikipedia, link, link, link, link. And you're like, how did I get to this thing that is seemingly unrelated? It's like, wait, six degrees of Kevin Bacon still applies here? Absolutely. So I do end up seeing, if there's anything related to communication or language, I'm like, yes, they're here for it. But personally, I study what humans are doing because, like, you can talk to them and you can understand what they're saying. And they can tell you what they mean, whereas mushrooms are like, ow, you're poking, you know what I mean?

Not like actually. And it's just a very different scientific process. Exactly. Like, pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse. or like pull the pulse pulse pulse which means something different I guess yeah so it's like that one part in arrival where they have all the little circles that the aliens are doing and Jeremy Renner is like doing something with Amy Adams and they're out of computer you know it's a great movie but when it first came out people were like is that what you do and I'm like do I talk to aliens is that what you think that I do over my job um no but I try to

I could. I could do that. They're like alien little creatures, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. They're not alien. There we go. Yeah. It's true. Well, I love that. Thank you so much. We had some really great stuff today. A lot of, a lot of just weird little guys, you know, in the animal kingdom, in the fungal kingdom.

Erica, thank you so much for joining us. It was great to have you on. Absolutely. It's been so much fun. Would you remind listeners where they can find you to learn more about both how humans talk and also, you know, just stuff related to communicate? How I talk. Ooh. So I, you can find me anywhere that other words is showing. So that'll be, it's a PBS Digital Studios show. It's on YouTube on the story channel. And it's also on PBS.org. And then the crash course we talked about earlier is on YouTube on crash course. And on social media, I am just my name. at Erica Bersowski. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bodie,

who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos.

You can't reason with the sun. Trust us. We've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angle ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer at Columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on

allotion. You're welcome. Columbia engineered for whatever. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss.

Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.