Is Eywa a fungal organism?

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Advent

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.

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

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 I sur also hope we learn more about the idea behind that.

Originally Posted by Human No More

Is there any data encoded in oxygen an animal breathes and the resulting carbon dioxide?

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.

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.

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 an animal or plant can be kept in a controlled environment, it does not care where its oxygen/CO2 comes from

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.

Either way, let's get back onto on the actual topic and away from this contrived discussion on Earth, as this is about Pandora

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.

Fungi may well link areas or individual plants where they interact, but they are not the medium itself.

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