Mycelium Studies

[Sight Unseen]

Originally Posted by Raiden

Last year my biology teacher showed us this documentary. The music makes this seriously creepy. Did anyone notice the line, "The more numerous the species, the more likely it is to be attacked by cordyceps..." What if it evolves a taste for humans...

I don't believe fungus is sentient, however there is definitely more to it than we currently know. You know, if you were to present this idea to a real scientist, they'd say you have a funny sense of humor. I think this is a great idea.

*Warning! Technical Stuff Ahead!*
I don't think your experiment is practical, but it can be done. Mycelia are in the ground, hence grounded. A single cell width mycelium would leak current badly, as it's actual function is to absorb nutrients, not contain electrical potential. Any signal you attempt to inject into the fungus would have to be so high voltage and low frequency that you'd be more likely to start a wildfire or kill yourself than collect meaningful data. You're looking for a change in signal, and there definitely will be, but it won't be due to sentience, but capacitance. Any waveform that you manage to pick up would be "smoothed out" by the bulk capacitance of the soil. If you feed a sawtooth wave in, you'll get more or less get a sine wave out. And at the energies required to do this, you're basically transmitting into the air as well using the wire connected to the spike in the ground, which essentially becomes a grounded monopole antenna. You'll need to shield ALL of your cables to prevent the signal from hopping through the air instead of your intended target. Oh, and ditch the multimeter, it wouldn't do you any good. (and your plant voltage experiment is invalid unless your common isn't floating. You need a ground in there somewhere for voltage to mean anything)