A new study has found that mushrooms may be able to communicate with each other through patterns in electrical signals.
Computer scientist Andrew Adamatzky from the University of the West of England analyzed electrical activity from four species of fungi and published his findings last Wednesday in the. He found that spikes in electrical activity were used by fungi to communicate and transmit information to other fungi in their network.
Underneath each mushroom lies hyphae, which are underground root-like structures that can be likened to nerve cells in the human nervous system. When hyphae form a network, called a mycelium, this can facilitate communication between fungi. The study found that the spikes in the electrical signals generated by fungi can resemble a language. The spikes can be grouped in to "words" and "sentences," and according to the study, these fungi can have a vocabulary of up to 50 "words."
The complexity of the language varies between species of fungi. The study found that the split gill fungi could generate the most complex sentences with the largest vocabulary, while other species like the enoki fungi and caterpillar fungi had much smaller lexicons.