We spend an enormous amount of time and money trying to contact intelligent life that may or may not exist outside our planet. Not many of us realise that there exists under our noses, or rather beneath our feet, a vast, bizarre, and intelligent fungal network that we hardly know about.
In Entangled Life, author and biologist Merlin Sheldrake writes about his quest to explore this vastly understudied field of mycology (the study of fungi). Sheldrake helps us understand that fungi are neither plants nor animals, forming surprising and complex relationships with other life forms. Fungi have shaped human history and continue to influence our societies — think about bread, alcohol and various drugs which we use in our everyday lives — despite us knowing so little about them. When plants colonised our planet 500 million years ago, fungi served as their root systems until they could evolve on their own. Even now, 90 per cent of plants depend on mycorrhizal fungi for nutrition!
To study this fascinating species, Sheldrake undertook some unorthodox research: truffle-hunting in Italy, signing up for a clinical trial of LSD, plunging into a fermentation bath, and brewing various alcohols, hoping to better appreciate this mysterious hidden kingdom.
One of the fungi that Sheldrake sheds light on is the Cordyceps now made famous by the show, The Last of Us. If you enjoyed the experience of watching Pedro Pascal bludgeon fungus-infused zombies in post-apocalyptic America there is a good chance that you are now obsessed and in awe of fungi, and Sheldrake’s book offers the perfect company.
As shown in the show, Cordyceps are a genus of fungi that can take over the body of an organism, overriding its primal instincts as prey, and controlling its body and movements. The fungus plays puppeteer when they infect carpenter ants. They starve the ant of nutrition, hijack its mind, and over the course of a week, make it leave the safety of its nest and climb the stem of a nearby plant. It stops the ant at about 25 cm, a zone most conducive for humidity and temperature and forces the ant to clip its mandibles around a leaf. Soon, a bulbous capsule of spores breaks out of the ant’s body, raining down fungal spores below, infecting and thereby ‘zombifying’ more ants.
A treat for fungi fans
Luckily for us humans, Cordyceps haven’t figured out a way to take over our brains yet. They cannot thrive in temperatures above 98 degrees Fahrenheit, which is our basal body temperature. Humans have instead found medicinal uses for the Cordyceps, the most common being Cyclosporine, which produces the compound needed to selectively block the immune system of transplant recipients. Indigenous communities in Northeast India have been using it for its anti-inflammatory properties. In early April this year, news outlets reported the case of a 61-year-old mycologist in Kolkata, the first human to get infected by a plant fungus, Chondrostereum purpureum. So are we winning against them or are they usurping us? We are not sure, yet — and it does not matter.
Entangled Life asks us how we can understand an organism that is so alien to us. Sheldrake, with a lively exuberance, encourages us to rethink how life works. The book offers extensive notes and references that are a treat for all fungi fans. Sheldrake sweeps us away with his meticulous research and narrative writing style. In no time the reader is infected by his enthusiasm. Maybe you will want to grow your own mushrooms or brew a little hooch and join a thriving citizen science community. This is an entertaining, fantastical and mind-altering journey, but also one grounded in empirical evidence. It compels us to rethink our biological boundaries and explore how truly entangled our lives are.
The writer spends much of her time figuring out how to run an independent bookstore, while also reading and spending time with her dog, cat and plants.
Piqued is a new monthly column in which the staff of Champaca Bookstore bring us unheard voices and stories from their shelves.