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I read a terrifying sci-fi many years ago of a genetically engineered fungus designed to digest our trash. It obviously mutates and starts digesting us. Scary s
by tambourine_man 4y ago
I read a terrifying sci-fi many years ago of a genetically engineered fungus designed to digest our trash. It obviously mutates and starts digesting us. Scary stuff, never ate mushrooms without some suspicion after that.
- metacritic12 4y agoIf it gives you any comfort, humans are already incredibly digestible by many organisms.
- tambourine_man 4y agoDigested alive is what I meant.
- jrumbut 4y agoSo did they...
- Oxidation 4y agoSpores would get you anyway even if you don't eat them: https://earthexplodes.com/comics/070/ https://earthexplodes.com/comics/070/
- tambourine_man 4y agoIt was spores in the novel. Characters would notice it growing in their hands and feet, then it was a matter of days and noting that could be done. Shivery. [error 500 in the link]
- StreamBright 4y agoThe last of us series is for you. :)
- tambourine_man 4y agoThanks, I'll pass :)
- canadiantim 4y agoFYI: Mushrooms are effectively animals who decided to digest things on the outside of their organism instead of the inside. That was the main evolutionary divergence between animals and fungi (who are more related to eachother than fungi are to plants). So we animals evolved a gastrointestinal tract running through the inside of our body; whereas, fungi/mushrooms evolved to exude digestive enzymes into the external environment and then reabsorb the digested products.
- gumby 4y ago> So we animals evolved a gastrointestinal tract running through the inside of our body; whereas, fungi/mushrooms evolved to exude digestive enzymes into the external environment and then reabsorb the digested products. And then some animals, including humans, extended their "internal" digestion process to include, in some cases, external processing from removing husks to, yes, enzymatic pre-processing before consumption. I love how messy "life" is. I wonder how far "back" the use of symbiotic creatures in digestion goes. We certainly can't survive without them. I believe some coral and even simpler organisms have a similar dependency.
- jrumbut 4y agoIsn't symbiotic metabolism a hypothesis for how cells ended up with mitochondria?
- gumby 4y agoNot just mitochondria, but cilia, flagella and other organelles
- tambourine_man 4y agoChloroplasts as well
- asveikau 4y agoI don't consider myself knowledgeable about biology, but it strikes me that even this omits the nominally distinct fauna in our guts. I say nominally distinct because from a philosophical standpoint it makes a point about where "we" end and "other" begins. Our microbiome consists of distinct organisms but it is also kind of "us".
- QuercusMax 4y agoEating raw mushrooms (even the "boring" white button mushrooms) is often inadvisable, as they often contain toxins that irritate digestive systems in many people. Raw mushrooms don't taste like much anyway, they're much better when cooked!