You’ve probably seen the headlines. They’re everywhere. "Mushrooms talk to each other!" or "Fungi have a 50-word vocabulary." It sounds like something straight out of a trippy sci-fi novel where the forest is one giant, sentient brain. But when people say scientists hear mushroom thoughts, what’s actually happening in the lab? Are we talking about literal telepathy, or just some very excited researchers looking at a computer screen?
Honestly, it’s a bit of both and neither.
Mushrooms don't have vocal cords. They don't have brains. But they do have electricity. If you’ve ever had an EKG to check your heart, you know that biological life pulses with tiny electrical signals. Fungi are no different. They send these zaps through their mycelium—the massive, underground web of root-like threads that makes up the actual "body" of the fungus. What we see above ground, the cap and stem, is just the fruit. The real action is happening beneath your boots.
The Man Behind the Mushroom "Words"
Most of this recent buzz traces back to a specific study by Professor Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England. He’s a computer scientist, not a mycologist, which is a key detail. He wasn't out in the woods with a stethoscope. Instead, he stuck tiny electrodes into four different species of fungi: caterpillar fungi, ghost fungi, split gill fungi, and enoki.
What he found was wild.
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The electrical spikes weren't just random noise. They came in clusters. To a computer algorithm designed to look for patterns, these clusters looked suspiciously like human language. We’re talking about strings of activity that varied in length and frequency. Adamatzky noted that the average "word" length in these fungal pulses was surprisingly close to the average word length in English or Russian.
It’s easy to get carried away here. You might imagine a mushroom saying, "Hey, it’s raining, pass the nitrogen." But science is rarely that cinematic.
Is It Language or Just Biology?
Let’s be real for a second. Just because something has a pattern doesn't mean it’s a thought. Your heart has a rhythm. Your gut has waves of contraction. Neither of them is trying to tell you a story about their day.
Critics in the scientific community, like mycologist Dan Bebber from the University of Exeter, have pointed out that these electrical pulses could just be the sound of the fungus "eating" or growing. When a fungus finds a new source of nutrients, it moves. That movement creates internal pressure and chemical shifts. Those shifts create electricity.
Think of it like the sound of a steam radiator. It clicks, it hisses, and it has a rhythm. But the radiator isn't "talking" to the boiler. It’s just reacting to the physics of heat.
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However, Adamatzky’s work suggests something slightly more complex. He found that the split gill fungus, which lives on decaying wood, had the most diverse "vocabulary." This makes sense if you think about it. If you’re a fungus trying to navigate a complex, changing environment like a rotting log, you need to process a lot of data. You need to know where the wood is soft, where it’s dry, and where a rival fungus might be encroaching on your turf.
The Mycelial Internet: Why It Matters
Whether or not scientists hear mushroom thoughts in the way we think of human speech, the underlying mechanism—the Wood Wide Web—is undeniably real. This isn't just one mushroom talking to itself. It’s a massive, cross-species communication network.
Mycorrhizal networks allow trees to swap nutrients. A dying tree might dump its remaining carbon into the network to help younger saplings. Or a plant under attack by aphids might send an electrical "red alert" through the fungi, prompting neighboring plants to beef up their chemical defenses before the bugs even arrive.
It’s a biological internet.
The fungi act as the cables. They charge a "tax" in the form of sugars from the trees in exchange for moving phosphorus and nitrogen around. If the electrical spikes Adamatzky recorded are the data packets moving through those cables, then "hearing" them is the first step to hacking the system.
Breaking Down the "50-Word" Myth
You’ll see the number "50" quoted in almost every article about this. Let's clarify that. Adamatzky didn't find a dictionary. He found that the electrical pulses clustered into about 50 different types of patterns.
- Caterpillar Fungi: Showed very distinct, sharp spikes.
- Split Gill: Produced much more complex, "talkative" wave patterns.
- Enoki: Somewhere in the middle, a bit more repetitive.
It’s not like they have a word for "blue" or "scary." It’s more likely that these patterns represent physiological states. One pattern might mean "I am currently absorbing water." Another might mean "I have encountered a barrier."
If you recorded the sounds of a busy office building—the hum of the AC, the click of keyboards, the beep of the microwave—you could probably identify 50 distinct "words" or sounds that tell you what’s happening in that building. But the building isn't thinking. The system is just functioning.
The Problem with Anthropomorphizing Fungi
We love to project human traits onto nature. It makes the world feel less lonely. But by insisting that we’re hearing "thoughts," we might be missing the point of how incredible fungi actually are.
Fungi are masters of decentralized intelligence. They don't need a brain because the whole network is a brain. They solve mazes. They optimize transport routes—researchers famously showed that slime mold could recreate the layout of the Tokyo subway system more efficiently than engineers could.
They do this without a single neuron.
When scientists hear mushroom thoughts, they are eavesdropping on a form of intelligence that is completely alien to ours. It’s chemical, it’s electrical, and it’s collective. It’s not about "I think, therefore I am." It’s about "We connect, therefore we grow."
Why Should You Care?
This isn't just cool trivia for your next dinner party. Understanding fungal communication has massive real-world implications.
- Agriculture: If we can "talk" to the fungi in our soil, we could potentially tell them to boost crop yields or protect plants from disease without using heavy pesticides.
- Computing: There is a growing field called "fungal computing." Because mycelium is so good at processing signals, researchers are looking into using living fungi to create organic circuit boards.
- Environment: If we understand how the "Wood Wide Web" reacts to climate change, we can better predict which forests are at risk of collapsing.
What’s Next for Fungal Research?
We are in the "dial-up" phase of understanding fungi. We’ve heard the screeching noises of the modem, but we haven't loaded the webpage yet.
Future studies are looking at larger samples and trying to correlate specific electrical spikes with specific behaviors. For example, if you introduce a toxin to one end of a mycelium colony, do you "hear" a specific signal travel to the other end? If you do, and you can repeat it, then you’ve found a "word" for danger.
The big hurdle is the lack of a standardized "fungal grammar." Right now, every lab has its own way of measuring these signals. Until there's a consensus on what constitutes a "spike" versus "background noise," we have to take the "50-word vocabulary" with a grain of salt.
Summary of the Current State of Fungal Audio
To keep it simple, here is what we actually know versus what is just hype:
- Fact: Fungi send electrical pulses through their mycelium.
- Fact: These pulses appear in patterns that resemble the structure of human languages.
- Hype: Mushrooms have a vocabulary of 50 words that they use to chat.
- Fact: Fungi use these signals to coordinate growth and share resources across entire forests.
- Hype: Scientists can "translate" what a mushroom is thinking right now.
Actionable Insights for the Curious
If you’re fascinated by the idea of fungal communication, don't just wait for the next viral headline. You can actually engage with this world yourself.
- Read "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake. If you want the deepest, most scientifically accurate dive into how fungi shape our world, this is the gold standard. He explains the "communication" aspect without the clickbait fluff.
- Observe your local ecosystem. Next time you’re on a hike, look for mushrooms growing near trees. Realize that those caps are just the tips of an iceberg. The ground beneath you is literally pulsing with the electrical signals we've been talking about.
- Support Mycology Research. Funding for fungal studies is notoriously lower than for plant or animal biology. Organizations like the Fungi Foundation are working to change that.
- Experiment with citizen science. There are kits available that allow you to grow your own mushrooms and even basic sensors you can use to monitor soil health, which is the first step toward "listening" to your own backyard.
The world of fungi is loud, busy, and incredibly complex. We might not be hearing "thoughts" in the way we understand them, but we are definitely hearing the heartbeat of the planet’s most important underground network. It’s time we started paying better attention to the static.