Scientists say that enoki fungi emit rich patterns of electrical activity and that is interpreted as language—with words and sentences that have characteristics similar to English and Swedish.
Likewise, slime molds, plants, and oyster mushrooms send out bursts of electrical activity similar to those in the human nervous system—the studies say.
In a venture to decode the language of fungi, researchers from the University of West England (UWE) Bristol, led by Professor Andrew Adamatzky, examined the electrical signals of mushrooms, proposing it was a language. Then this speculative language of fungi was characterized according to “word” length and “sentence” complexity.
While the researchers admit this emission of electrical spiking “could just be phenomenological,” they say the changing patterns and modulating characteristics produced by mushrooms resemble those made by the nervous system of vertebrates.
In their endeavor, which will continue along “a pathway towards ‘the de-objectification of plants and the recognition of their subjectivity and inherent worth and dignity,’” the researchers state, they stand on the shoulders of an emerging body of studies showing the “languages of creatures without a nervous system and invertebrates.”
Karl von Frisch, winner of the Nobel Prize for his investigation into the language of bees, provided evidence to form the basis for “chemical words” in the insect world, while similar studies have been conducted to analyze the languages of plants.
“Plant communication processes are seen as a primary sign-mediated interaction and not simply an exchange of information,” the authors of the 2022 study wrote.
Stepping into the lab, they inserted pairs of iridium-coated stainless-steel needles into objects such as wood and fruit colonized by fungi or directly into fungi to measure spikes of electrical potential, which were grouped into spike trains for further linguistic analysis.
In order to decode the language and determine that this was more than a simple phenomenological similarity with humans, they would need to characterize the distribution of word length and complexity in the sentences of the proposed fungi “language.”
Looking at four distinct fungal species—ghost fungi, enoki fungi, split gill fungi, and caterpillar fungi—they isolated distinctive patterns within the set of four.
While Cordyceps militaris (caterpillar fungi) showed the lowest average spike frequency among the species recorded, the enoki fungi exhibited “a rich spectrum of diverse patterns of electrical activity,” the authors wrote.
“Are the elaborate patterns of electrical activity used by fungi to communicate states of the mycelium and its environment and to transmit and process information in the mycelium networks? Is there a language of fungi?” they inquired.
To answer this, they considered a number of linguistic phenomena used to “successfully” decode Pictish symbols and reveal them as a written language.
The detected spike trains—appearing as long barcodes of information—were quantified into types of characters, and the size of a “lexicon” was determined from these laboratory recordings.
It was found that the distribution of “words” followed predictive values that were strikingly similar in length to those found in the languages of English and Swedish, the authors wrote. Nor were they that far different from Russian or Greek.
Employing various algorithms to uncover the syntax of the fungal language, a “fungal spiking machine” was used, while the Online Algorithmic Complexity Calculator helped them generate complexity estimates, which would help rule out any randomness in the data.
Based on the findings, they believe that by measuring the complexity of the fungal languages using their algorithms, it may even be possible to distinguish “dialects of different species” of fungus.
Although ceding that “there may be alternative interpretations of spiking electrical activity as a language,” the UWE Bristol team envision future study into fungal languages might continue down three different avenues:
First, to hone in on interspecies variations and grammatical differences by increasing the number of species studied.
Second, grammatical constructions, if any exist, need to be identified and syntaxial interpretations conducted.
Third, a thorough and detailed classification of fungal words should be carried out from the spike trains.
“That said, we should not expect quick results,” they wrote, “we are yet to decipher language of cats and dogs despite living with them for centuries, and research into electrical communication of fungi is in its pure infant stage.”
