Fungus Internet

What if I told you there was an ancient network of communication, similar in many ways to our modern internet, but used primarily by fungi and plants?

You might tell me you’ve already heard of mycorrhizal fungal networks, thank you very much. If so, you probably already know about the vast interconnected web of fungal filaments called mycelium, and how these fungal networks act like an internet for plants.

If you haven’t heard much about this phenomenon, let’s do a TL;DR today.

Imagine a tree is being attacked by a swarm of insects. The tree releases chemicals—kind of like saying “ouch”—from their roots. In some cases, those little filaments from the fungus reach right in and penetrate the root’s cells, creating a direct connection.

I can’t help but think of this as something like plugging two computers in together with an ethernet cable, then exchanging data. This isn’t a perfect analogy, but it’s too good for me to ignore. It’s imperfect (in part) because the sort of data that’s exch…