"While fungi do belong in kingdom animalia, they do not have true nervous systems; they only mimic them structurally."

Fungi do not belong to the kingdom 'animalia.' They belong to the kingdom 'Fungi.' While they are close to animals in terms of genetics and evolution the cells as well as the life of a fungus are completely different from that of an animal.

Eywa most likely exhibits some characteristics of a Fungi; however, I highly doubt she fits the classification of one. Classification can sometimes be a tricky business because many lifeforms often exhibit characteristics of many different taxonomic groups.

There are fungus-like creatures called slime molds. They were once considered part of the fungi kingdom but the definition for what constitutes a fungi has changed somewhat and they are now classified as Protista. They exhibit some very amazing communal behaviors such as locomotion in large colonies.

#71: Slime Molds Show Surprising Degree of Intelligence | Animal Intelligence | DISCOVER Magazine

Slime Molds show that other possibilities exist besides neurons for communication.

Fungi is the plural. Fungus is singular.

The taxonomic kingdom is known as "fungi".

Yes, funghi are not animals, but they belong to the same group as animalia which is seperate from plantae: Fungus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The connections that are made are indeed interesting and moreso than mass or size itself. What makes such a network a system of information storage is, if such connections are formed as a response to inputs or as a result of learning. I do not know if that can be said about mycelium.
If it would, there still is a barrier there. signal speed (transduction (?) ) is much higher in electrochemical neuronal networks than in purely chemical or physical systems like hormones, blood vessels,... - Actually plants have signal transduction, but the signals travel orders of magnitude slower than animals. Now basically if you have a organ large enough to be conscious, with enough connections its speed of thought would depend on the size and signal speed. If size is large and speed is slow, anything going on would be very slow. Pandoras Eywa is large in size but fast in signal speed, animals are small in size and fast in signal speed.

The question was not, if funghi are living things - they definitely are ;)

Same for animals of course - many plants and animals are forming symbiosis, also bacteria and animals and bacteria and plants - so many things are connected - that is what people do not get! This world here is interconnected in complex ways and civilized humans are messing with the web of life without thinking.

That is cool, is that from Stamets books?

Sure - anibiotics come from funghi. Oh and other organisms can do that purification as well, it is fascinating - so many organisms that have the ability to clean up. Examples are bacteria as well as clams.

Saying something like 'one of the Fungi' would still be preferable to me, although this usage is admittedly not universally accepted and yes, you will find papers that refer to 'a Fungi' :( (meaning one member of this Kingdom).

Paul Stamet goes that way and he is no new age guy, but a very renowned scientist. Soo - mushrooms could be Earths version of that network that harbors the Eywa-consciousness.

Yeah, I was surprised in a positive way also, that a scientist with numerous valid and accepted publications will openly say, that he thinks that it is very well possible or even likely that mycelium has some form of intelligence and that mushrooms are sort of a bio-internet for plants and possibly animals.
Granted, Stamets DID start his work with studying hallucinogenic mushrooms, so he has some roots in that corner - but hey, so have the people who "invented" the internet and personal computers. And he went a long way from that time.

In case I did not post that interview before (but I am almost sure I did): Podcast Episode: Living Green: Paul Stamets, Fungal Intelligence and the 21st Psychedelic Journey - "How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World." in our "11th Hour" edition. (EveryBody Inspired to Succeed

^^^ this. Why is it so difficult to believe that Nature is intelligent?

Look what Paul Samet says:
"I believe that nature is intelligent. I believe that we are born of nature and if we are intelligent then, by definition, nature must be because nature gave rise to us.
.....
I think nature all around us is conscious of our presence. Whether we are conscious of nature’s presence of course, is a totally different matter. "

where shall I sign?

Yeah, I love Stamets ideas. I think however they require a redefinition of consciousness, intelligence and sensing presence. I am currently reading "the spell of the sensous" by david abrams and it is very interesting in that respect.
Basically what I think and part of that are also int hat book, though on a more philosophical line, is that consciousness and intelligence does not really need a grey mass of neurons and a frontal cortex. Sensing definitely does not - plants and funghi can sense movements (touch), chemicals (smell) and light (vision). They also could possibly react to sounds (hearing). They can react on that in a way that is meaningful to them or their kin.
And in the end, whole ecosystems are very complex networks of interactions and potentials and sort of are a "brain" in themselves. At least in an abstract way. They also reacto to various inputs and give outputs.
To know if they are conscious/intelligent in any sense that we can understand as such is stretching it, but who are we to define our own version of that as the only one and our timeframe of reference as the only one. Would a human on Pandora (without an Avatar) really be able to understand that Eywa really exists and is intelligent and conscious?
Do we really "know" something is happening until we experience it? As I recently heard in a talk "we can describe love in many ways as chemical process, as a pattern of neuronal activities, as a social phenomenon, but we never know what it really is until we experience it". Nature around us could be an intelligent, conscious being and we would not be able to be sure unless we somehow manage to communicate with it. But maybe its language and form of intelligence is too different from what we regard as normal communication.

Think of Sci Fi stories when humans encounter alien races and try to communicate with them - somethimes, they are clueless about what the others want and there are stories about creatures that do not even appear to be intelligent in any way until much later it becomes obvious that it is so - to the horror of all the people participating.

Shudder - I just realized what shock it would be for the human race to (once again?) become aware of the consciousness and intelligence of the Earth, realizing what has been done to her in all these years. It would be like "Soylent Green is made of people"...

There isn't any such effect on Earth, as nice as that would be. All these 'Gaia' beliefs are just wishful thinking unfortunately. It doesn't need to be neurologically based, certainly, but it does need something more than basic chemical processes. An ecosystem can be considered a network in the very basic sense, and even in a few more advanced senses in terms of adaptation and limited healing and balancing abilities, but there is still no higher level process arising from it - biochemical exchanges are completely interchangeable and they do not vary as would be needed for a form of communication.

A human on Pandora - it depends on what they know and what they are doing. If they are studying the connectivity between the species then yes, they will be aware of a much wider-scale network and apparent activity, although possibly not the overall sentience, but still the potential for it to be there (based on the numbers of connections and their relative sophistication).

I think that Eywa cannot be separated organism which uses trees as nerve system. I would say, that it's an intelligence of many. For example: One bee doesn't seems to be bright, but hive is very intelligent and advanced. The same happens with ants.

P.S. Grace never said that Eywa works like a human brain. She said that planet has ''more connections than the human brain. It's a network'' :)

Quoting Yukteswar by memory: "If Cosmos waited on human beings to discover every single law that it needs for its smooth functioning before putting it into operation... it would be a rather chaotic place!" :)

What was first - the electricity or the AVO-meter?
What is love - only hormones & neurons (that only seem to activate for one person, and no one else) - or "something more"?
What is Pandora homesickness - how does it happen?
What do we really know about the world that's been here for billions of years, and us, for a few hundred thousands?

It's a matter of free choice, but I like to keep my glass just a wee bit empty so that some new surprising knowledge might enter...

Just because humans haven't existed for as long as Earth does not mean they can not understand it. There is not something definitely there just because it is older. As one of my favourite quotes goes: "By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out".

Bees and ants are not intelligent in a 'sentient being' sense though, just a (pheromone-based) coordination sense. The connections on Pandora are mentioned to work on a very similar principle to synapses - in effect, the entire network is a layer above cells and their networks, since in brains, each cell is still an individual unit in a basic sense, albeit not oen that is capable of surviving independently form support systems.

I don't see that Eywa necessarily has to have a supernatural component in order to extrapolate events of the fairly near future. Her nature is certainly more "super" than anything we're familiar with; who can say exactly what that level of consciousness is capable of, especially when given enough stimuli? On the other hand, I wouldn't rule it out, either, on the basis of what information we've been given. ;)

Exactly - an intelligent person can reasonably predict the future too.

Yes of course on Earth there is no Gaia that is 1:1 the same as Eywa in terms of something that stores the memories of people, but even Eywa is not something the people can talk to. There is no voice of Eywa or direct communication in words. And certainly most people do not even get much more back from Eywa than feeings, emotions and the feeling of a presence, maybe subconscious guides - at least there is no hin in the movie that people can "talk to Eywa" and get a response we here and now would understand as such.

I do not understand what you mean. What does not vary? Ecosystems vary all the time. They are on many cases very unpredictable, even individual animals and plants do not behave the same way as others of the same species. The amount of information in a mathematical sense is staggering.
The network on Earth is very complex indeed - animals, plants, funghi all working together on several levels from nutrient transportation to chemical responses, including electrochemical gradients. Of course it is not an electrical, fast reacting neural network, but if one looks at the complexity as a measurement - Earths ecosphere is extremely complex.
The distinction of a "higher level process" - where do you make it? What is a higher level process and what forms of communication do you count?
For example if your dog scratches at the door, you understand she wants to go outside to take a leak, if the potted plant tilts its leafs you know she needs water, if the little crustacaeans in the creek go away, you know there is something wrong with the creek, if fish die in a lake, the message is that upstream there was too much agriculture maybe - these are more abstract (or less abstract) forms of communication.

Indeed. And I found that actually a rather weak statement to compare it to a human brain, because certainly the network would be more complex than a human brain. I think it was more a pun on Selfridge to say that the trees have more brains than he does :P

Well if you compare it directly, then surely there is no such thing as that on Earth, but reducing it to a more basic, systems theory model, I would say the differences are not that strong. Turning this around, one could say that the brain is just a bunch of identical cells that only use simple electric connections to allow the animals to coordinate their bodies. That would be ignoring what else there is.

So what is the defining characteristics of the network of neurons in the brain compared to the network connecting individuals in a vibrant ecosystem. Just because we are made of neurons and electric impulses does not mean that this is the only way something can develop that is in some way conscious. But I also have trouble seperating human consciousness from that of other beings because I do not see that the difference is clearly defined so easily without using very subjective terms like "we are able to build spaceships". Pholosophers have been struggling with that question for ages and with more evidence coming in, one after another element that supposedly seperates humans from nonhumans goes away. It used to be that humans are "better" because they are making tools and build cities and farms, but birds make tools and ants build cities and mushroom farms.

I mean that there is no way to encode any data in a chemical interaction between organisms.
A higher level process would be one approaching, at or greater than a human-like level of complexity, or possibly the ability to understand concepts beyond instinct (e.g. primates). In the case of plants as an example, the 'movement' is actually just a change in the shape of the cells due to the vacuole, while an animal has a functional nervous system. Earth's interactions are certainly extremely complex, and I agree that it could be considered a 'super-organism' in a basic sense in terms of homeostasis and interactions between both organisms and ecosystems, but not in a thinking sense (although there are a few individual plant organisms which are spread over extremely large areas such as some fungi and tree species, they are still isolated from everything else in all but the biochemical sense).
Being more complicated than a human brain does not preclude it working in a similar way - indeed, the structure would be very similar, Grace even makes a direct comparison to the effect of synapses.
The difference in a human or animal brain is that the interaction between neurons is not interchangeable, while a chemical reaction is. An organism doesn't care about the origin of its oxygen, different areas don't produce different types, what matters is just that it is present.

But that is not really true. Take a mycelium because this is the original topic. It transports nutrients and chemicals from one part to the other. That flow of elements can be fast, slow, be diverted to other parts of the mycelium, cease or change in chemical composition. That is data. A plant that releases pheromones to warn other plants about a bug infestation gives information. Distance, intensity of infestation, potentially also direction.

Also interaction is not only chemical but can also be electrical (in microorganisms) or physical (by touching, physically moving).

But how do we know that. The earths ecosystems are certainly more complex than humans, and we do not really know if there is an "understanding" happening beyond instinct. Animals also learn - they observe and act upon what they have learned. Is that instinct? It is learned behaviour after all. There are even cultures - birds from different places use different tools or techniques. How do we know that some being has "understanding beyond instinct" and how can we say that what we define as valid concepts are universal? Looking at different human cultures, there are already gaping differences in some concepts. Some indigenous in the Amazon have no concept of numbers. Not because they are stupid, but because for them you cannot say "3 people", because these 3 people are in fact John, Jill and Joe and to reduce John Jill and Joe to being identical and calling them "people" would be a reduction in information and a simplification. But these people are not lacing consiousness, they just have different concepts. A being that is more different from us than these people would have very differenct concepts maybe. But in any case, if there is no means of communication that we take valid, there is no way to know what they are.

Movement in animals is just cells using their "hairs" to pull strings we call muscles. In animals these reactions are caused by nerves, in plants there are potential gradients and slower moving impulses that activate them. Of course a single plant will not look at you and react to you individually, but that was not the point here anyways because we are not talking about intelligent or thinking individual plants.

Well funghi for example interact with trees and other plants beyond their own mycelium. Also what is wrong with biochemical connections - why cannot biochemical reactions form a network? It is not that the release of some substance by one part of a mycelium instantly is spread over the whole world and diluted - it is a local effect, much like in the synapses of animal brains. The bridge between individual and seperated cells is a gap. In that gap, there is a local release of chemicals that trigger a response in the neighboring neuron. How exactly is that different from an ecosystem or an organism interacting with another part of the ecological network? With a mycelium releasing nutrients it gathered from the soil to one individual tree?

I also just did :P

As I said, it is not that these chemicals are upon release instantly mixed. Even a neuron does not care if the impulse comes from a specific neuron, it only cares that there is an impulse coming in from another neuron. In theory, even putting a wire in it would trigger it. The information is not in the chemicals themselves (though even they carry information in form of isotopes) but in the network that shuttles them around and releases them locally, which prompts a local reaction.

Some people (mostly here :P) already respect the Earth as such. However, the majority of the population is stuck in what we've come to call 'blissful ignorance'.

Your statement here is quite food for thought though. What would happen if the Earth (or we) woke up? Would we kill ourselves? Would we be killed by nature? Would we attempt to repair Earth?
Quite interesting.

In response to the thread though, I would also have to agree with Aihwa's earlier statement. The tree of souls and the trees of voices are connections to Eywa - like nerve endings, you might say. The only problem is that, the actual network that makes Eywa is in fog, to say the least. We were told in the movie that there are more connections to Pandora then the Human brain. Okay, there's a lot of connections, to what? Eywa. But how much do we know about Eywa, how does she survive, how does she get her information? We don't have all the answers. And thus, JC should hopefully have better answers in the sequel.

My 2 cents there, chaps. Ask JC.

Within an organism, then yes. Is there any data encoded in oxygen an animal breathes and the resulting carbon dioxide? No. It has already been established there is no electrical (which would be a direct neurological analogue) network. I honestly think it would be great if Earth did have some kind of network like that, but the truth is there isn't one.

Yes - but i most cases, are still nonsentient. there is no data transfer between the organisms other than simple communication (sound, touch, pheromones).
Your example about not having numbers is completely beside the point -they are still sentient beings, as I said multiple times.

Movement in animals is just cells using their "hairs" to pull strings we call muscles. In animals these reactions are caused by nerves, in plants there are potential gradients and slower moving impulses that activate them. Of course a single plant will not look at you and react to you individually, but that was not the point here anyways because we are not talking about intelligent or thinking individual plants.


Yes - biochemically.
The poit about a biochemical reaction is that there is no capcity to encode information within a molecule of a gas, or an amino acid. There is no carrier for your supposed data. Pheromones are an example of a biological system which is an actual form of communication, bu they are very complicatedand specific particles. Species do not transfer data to all others.
I know how a synapse works - it produces an action potential in the cell which causes an electrical impulse, this is a direct change as a result of these, which will reach another synapse or a motor neuron. synapses are specific. Chemical transfer between species is neither, and does not cause specific actions depending on the origin. It is completely non-discriminating - if an animal or plant can be kept in a controlled environment, it does not care where its oxygen/CO2 comes from, the origin of its food (other than basic composition and biological suitability) - it is interchangeable, and there is no data transfer.


Either way, let's get back onto on the actual topic and away from this contrived discussion on Earth, as this is about Pandora - fungi undoubtedly form a part of the network with their connection to plants - but that does not mean the network is based on them, especially not in terms of mycelium when it is directly shown to have a similar effect as electrical impulses in the nervous system. Fungi may well link areas or individual plants where they interact, but they are not the medium itself.

Indeed. So in a way Earth is a planet that has no tree of souls or trees of voices. :P

What forms these connections on Pandora I think is not really disclosed. Is it actually roots touching other roots? Or is there a network that is more direct. After all to transport information with electric impulses, the gaps cannot be too large - roots touching each other physically would not be enough, they would have to have some sort of connection. A network of nerves that are literally grown together to a large network. What does it encompass? Certainly not the animals because they can move around, but all plants? or just trees? What about sessile animals? It is fascinating :D I sur also hope we learn more about the idea behind that.

Not a lot, no. Is there information encoded in water in brain cells or in glucose feeding them? The information is not in the nutrients, though of course even there is some information - lower/higher concentrations - lower oxygen in the brain makes you sleepy, lower oxygen in an ecosystem favours smaller animals over larger ones etc.

Bio-Electrical impulses have no capacity to encode information. You cannot encode information within a single impulse...

What I am trying to say is that when electrical impulses are the transporter of data in the brain, the network of synapses are the carrier of the information. The same can be said for ecosystems and interspecies relationships as the carrier of the information and biochemical substances as the transporter of the information.

Ok, I will try to describe it more mechanistical. The neurons and synapses in the brain are not merely "hardware" on which a operating system made of electrical impulses runs. The structure of the connections between the neurons actually make up memories. If we memorize something, new synapses are formed. Electrical impulses then use this network to process information and to access the information stored in the very structure of the network itself. With "Gaia", this would then be a bit upscaled, the neurons and synapses are species and individuals that have specific reactions to specific impulses and thus very individual connections to the world around them. For example some insects only pollinate one specific flower, others a small range of them, others whatever they can get. A individual wild cat drops her poop at a specific spot and goes to a specific place to sleep. A different cat would do something else. They are not interchangeable. Pheromones trigger specific responses in only a few other species. Plants can produce pheromones to warn others and to call beneficial insects if attacked. Each of these things is of course just one single connection. The density of these connections is not as high as in a brain, but we are talking about a much larger thing here. Now the network (comparable to the synapses and neurons) is then the interaction of plant and animal species, or even of individual animals and plants. Then the biochemical and physical interactions constitute the impulses of information as electrical impulses in the brain do.
When the human brain is a digital computer (which is it not, it is not a 0 or 1 system), the ecosystems of the Earth are a mechanical, analog computer. Much slower and larger.

I dont know if I can make it much more clear than that in expressing what I want to say.

Basically the memory, - the information is not stored in the impulses alone but mostly in the connections between the "nodes" of the network.

If a brain cell is kept in a controlled nutrient broth and fed with electrical impulses it does not care where they come from. Actually they already did that to whole brains of animals - put them in nutrient solution and fire electrical impulses at them.

I apologize for diverting the topic from Pandora to Earth, but I find this topic really fascinating. I wish we would have split this into a new topic a while ago.
If you wish, we can stop talking about this here.

Maybe funghi are sort of the synapses and individual plants are the cells/nodes/neurons?

There's no reason it can't be through the roots - there is very little latency in an electrical signal. The gaps aren't particularly large anyway - the largest would be the roots seen among the mountains. Most likely, there are specialised nervelike structures that actually connect from one root to another.
No, but it can trigger a response. A synapse can act as what I guess would be most analogous to a logic gate, and can require certain activity levels to activate. A nerve can have multiple inputs to a single output. That is how differing responses occur.

This is possible - they could form part of the connection inbetween them, depending on how the signal is actually transferred through them. I wouldn't call that a fungal organism though, just that it is a component (individual fungi are also likely components much like any other plant is).

Ok. So the conclusion is as always "we don't know" :D

Well but that is the same with other systems on Earth? The abundance of a species, the reaction of individual plants or animals to external factors may sum up or work in a different way, creating different responses. A plant that had its leafs eaten by insects may react differently to pheromones than other plants. It may as a result stop taking up nutrients or water. There is one mechanism for example - plants that are attacked by certain insects will send out biochemical signals to their kin. Some of these plants then deliberately attract these insects to avoid the others to become prey to them, sacrificing themselves. Nature is full of these kind of unexpected interactions that definitely react on information that goes in and produce information that goes out.
Of course that all is not as simple as a neural network that has only one type of "hardware" and one kind of impulse to travel along them. So it is unlikely that there are some single biochemical molecules that act as impulses and only one type of connection that acts as network.
I would imagine the natural world as a complex network made of different entities. Like a brain that not only has almost identical neurons, synapses and uses electrical impulses, but rather various different kinds of neurons with different shapes and different modes of operation and different kinds of synapses that fulfil the same basic function - connecting the "nodes", but do this in a different way. And the same goes for the impulses.
So one node may be a single tree, another an individual animal and another a whole species in an ecosystem. The connections and impulses may be physical touch, biochemical interaction, lights, colors, scents. Or they may be one being eating another or drinking anothers nectar. The information may travel along unlikely paths like pollen transported over long distances or be as direct as nutrients flowing into a root from nudules of bacteria or funghi.

But as I said, this is turning into a philosophical exploration of animism and that may not be what is of interest. I hope some found it interesting though :P