Mushrooms can talk to each other and recognise up to 50 words: Research

Research has found that mushrooms can recognise up to 50 words and talk to each other, according to Professor Andrew Adamatzky from the University of the West of England in the Royal Society Open Science.

A study of electrical activity, using different species of fungi, enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar, found that electrical impulses were structurally similar to human speech and resembled the vocabulary of dozens of words.

Professor Adamatzky said: 'We do not know if there is a direct relationship between spiking patterns in fungi and human speech. Possibly not. '

'On the other hand, there are many similarities in information processing in living substrates of different classes, families and species. I was just curious to compare.'

The average length of each 'word' was 5.97 letter; the English language averages 4.8 letters per word. And that it showed fungi had 'minds and a consciousness'.

'Assuming that spikes of electrical activity are used by fungi to communicate, we demonstrate that distributions of fungal word lengths match that of human languages.

'We found that the size of fungal vocabulary can be up to 50 words. However, the core vocabulary of most frequently used words does not exceed 15 to 20 words.'

Although, Professor Adamatzky did add, 'There is also another option – they are saying nothing.

'Propagating mycelium tips are electrically charged, and, therefore, when the charged tips pass in a pair of differential electrodes, a spike in the potential difference is recorded.'