16 000 bovis units
Mushrooms are everywhere. They live in and around us. They nourish everything that keeps us alive. They have been guiding life for over a billion years. They eat rock, create soil, absorb poisons, nourish and kill plants, survive in space, induce hallucinations, help produce food and medicine, control animal behavior, and influence the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Mushrooms are the key to understanding the planet we live on, how we think, feel, and behave. They are the first and current rulers of our Earth, but they still don't get enough attention, and over 90% of species have not been documented yet. And the more we learn about them, the less it makes sense without them. The oldest specimen found lives in Oregon, weighs hundreds of tons, is over ten square kilometers long, and is estimated to be eight thousand years old. And there are probably many more older and larger individuals. Most of the world-changing events on Earth were and are still caused by their activity. Plants got from water to land five hundred million years ago only thanks to fungi, and for tens of millions of years they served as their roots. Even today, more than 90% of plants rely on mycorrhizal fungi. It is called the “forest internet” and this union gave rise to all life on Earth and its future depends on whether fungi and plants can continue to form healthy relationships with each other. Protoxites, 400 million years old, was a fungus 10 to 15 meters high, when plants reached a maximum height of a meter, and represented the largest living structure on land and for more than 50 million years it was its ruler, that is, twenty times more than homo. Fungi still establish new ecosystems on land today. When a volcanic island is formed, the first organisms to take hold there are fungi. Very few areas have inhospitable conditions for fungi. They live deep under the sea, in the desert, in Antarctica, thousands of them live on our bodies and in their guts, on other animals, in the leaves, roots and stems of plants. They are the essence of the origin and demise of life. The ancient Romans prayed to Rogib, the God of Mold, to protect them from fungal diseases that caused famines. The impact of fungal diseases is escalating around the world. Unsustainable economic practices are disrupting the ability of plants to form relationships with the beneficial fungi on which they depend. Human trafficking is spreading fungal diseases around the world and has already destroyed hundreds of species of plants and animals. For example, the Cavendish banana variety, which accounts for 90% of global imports, is currently facing a fungal attack that could soon kill it.
Mushrooms can use mixtures of enzymes to break down even the most resistant materials, from lignin, oil and oil spills in the oceans, polyurethane, TNT, used diapers and nuclear waste, from which they draw energy. Their spores are found in clouds and affect the weather, setting in motion the precipitation of drops and the solidification of ice crystals. The mycelium (mycelium) is conductive and its hyphae conduct electrical impulses like in animal nerve cells. At the molecular level, mushrooms and humans are so similar that they can benefit from the same biochemical innovations. Mushrooms are very fruitful pharmaceuticals. We obtain from them penicillin, cyclosporine (for organ transplants), statins to lower cholesterol, a whole range of antiviral and anticancer compounds, not to mention alcohol, citric acid, even vaccines represent 30% of their composition, psilocybin is used against depression and anxiety. And that was only 1% of their use. Radical technologies based on the activity of fungi may represent the answer to the pressing problems arising from the gradual devastation of the environment. Antiviral compounds inhibit bee collapse syndrome. Mycelium can also replace plastics or skin tissue and is a promising source of new radiation-resistant biomaterials, and now ecological houses are also built from mycelium, clothes and other products are produced. In short, humanity has been closely linked to the miraculous processes of fungal metabolism since time immemorial. We have about 3.8 million species of fungi, which is six to seven times more than plants and also much more than animals. The relationships between plants and fungi are the key to understanding the functioning of entire ecosystems and are connected into one social network. Wood wide web is a reference to the world wibe web or the global internet network. The microworld in one teaspoon of healthy soil contains about as much life as on our planet, and in the same amount, mycelium stretched from one end to the other is up to 10 km long. Mycelium defies any classification. From the point of view of the network, it is a single interconnected entity, and from the point of view of the hyphae, it is a multitude of individuals. The mycelium strategy is used by scientists to solve mathematical problems or program robotics, to design urban transport networks and many other human problems. The functioning of the mycelium system is still beyond our understanding. The fossilized intricacy of the network was found by scientists from the Swedish Museum of Natural History from the period 2.4 billion years ago. With this discovery, mycelium became one of the first living multicellular organisms. Mushrooms were the original tree of knowledge and are still colloquially called the “flowers of life” or “meat of the gods”. The oldest evidence is a little over 10 thousand years old. Mushrooms have had the most intimate relationship with humans since time immemorial. They have survived half of the four billion-year history of life unchanged, across fatal planetary transformations. The information used in the text can be found in the books by author Merlin Sheldrake.
