Outdoors

By Bill Barker

For the Corvallis Gazette-Times

My old - yes, that word is beginning to fit us better - fishing buddy Gary just sent me an article guaranteed to make me think more deeply when easing through the woods in search of the wily mushroom.

Seems there's at least one researcher, Paul Stamets, who believes fungus may exhibit definite signs of intelligence and awareness.

No, I'm not going to stop eating mushrooms. They are just the fruiting bodies of mycelium, which dwell beneath the surface and ingest a wide range of nutrients.

Many of these "mycelium bodies" are, basically, huge organisms covering far more area than most of us imagine. The largest organism found in the world, so far, lives in eastern Oregon. It spreads over 2,200 acres and is possibly 2,000 years old.

This researcher points to many experiments and examples showing, to him at least, that fungus exhibit not only signs of intelligence, but possibly sentience.

One of the most intriguing examples dealt with an experiment using slime mold (a "fugus-like organism"). Seems like some researchers put a slime mold in a maze having five exits. Two of those exits had oats; good for slime mold dining. The mold spread, randomly, until finding dinner. When removed, then put into the same maze later, the mold went straight for the previous locations of the oats. Intelligence, at least on a cellular level?

The article goes on to point out several reasons why Stamets feels that fungus may, besides exhibiting a similar cellular intelligence, actually show apparent decision-making abilities that would indicate the "consciousness" we associate with sentience. I'm not qualified to judge the scientific validity of his reasoning. I can fathom his concept that there may be forms of intelligence - in other species - that we can't measure because it is so different from ours.

Why not?

What really rang a bell was how the piece stressed - using fungus - the importance of maintaining as much biodiversity in nature as we can; not destroying ecosystems/organisms which may play vital roles in the survival of life on our planet.

An eye-opening example:

Soil, extremely contaminated with diesel and oil, was placed in four piles. One pile was untreated; one pile inoculated with bacteria; one with chemical enzymes; and the fourth, planted with oyster-mushroom spawn. They covered the piles with tarps and left them for a month. When uncovered, the first three were devoid of life and loaded with diesel and oil. The one with mushroom spawn was covered with mushrooms, didn't smell like diesel, and soon other plants were growing. Levels of diesel and oil had been reduced from 20,000 parts per million to 200 parts per million. Follow-up analysis revealed that the mushrooms contained no measurable quantities of petroleum residues. The byproducts were mainly carbon dioxide and water.

That's an example of an abundant organism, one we're all familiar with, that has under-explored capabilities at reversing major environmental damage. We continually hear of new medical discoveries, based on substances produced by life forms such as plants and shellfish, that can treat/alleviate cancer (remember Yew bark?) and other health problems. What other naturally occurring organisms are out there - known, or still to be discovered - that may hold amazing capabilities of healing both human and environmental health? We've barely studied the surface/potential.

Key to making such discoveries is preserving biodiversity in our natural world by making wise environmental decisions; not those based solely on economic or political expediency. Due to man, and nature, we're on the verge of losing a lot of species during the next century. I've read several estimates of potential losses, ranging from 15 to 70 percent, of catalogued species. We can't do much about natural extinctions. But we can all work toward limiting unnecessary, human-caused, environmental/species destruction.

Nature's chain of life is another way to think of biodiversity. We don't yet know which tiny link may be vital to maintaining life on Earth, or making life better. We can't survive without natural resources, but maybe we should all mandate extracting them - and using them - in ways that won't create a "missing link" in that chain.

Bill Barker can be reached at billbarker@comcast.net.