Entangled Life
Written by Merlin Sheldrake.
⏱️ The book in three sentences
Fungi are everywhere, in everything and all around us.
Fungi are a fundamental keystone to the continuous regrowth of nature as we know it.
On an industrial scale, fungi will play a role in creating a world where humans can thrive in a sustainable way.
🪞 Reflections
Humankind has long been fascinated by the curiosities and beauty of nature. We befriend, anthropomorphize and obsess over animals. We grow, harvest and study plants for all their wonderful features, fruits and medicinal effects. And we do much of the same for the weird, microscopic world of bacteria. But fungi, an entire kingdom of life, often go unnoticed. Despite being everywhere, in everything, in the soil, in the air, on our skin and beneath it, fungi are the frequently forgotten creatures that often, quite literally, connect the rest of life together.
Our ignorance, however, is not entirely our own fault. Fungi are notoriously mysterious - to date, no one has found a reliable way to farm truffles, hence their exorbitant price. Their mystique makes them difficult to study and until relatively recently, they were thought to be plants. As Sheldrake points out though, while mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of mycelium, fungi are actually closer to animals than plants. Their energy source, for example, doesn't come through photosynthesis or sunlight but through digestion, like us.
Unlike animals though, fungi's ability to eat is on a whole different level. Fungi are hunger embodied. Their biological niche, their indispensable specialty, is to decompose and break down matter, return it to the earth, and allow growth to repeat. Life could not continue without their service.
It's a good thing then that some people have not allowed fungi to be entirely overlooked. For decades now, humbly, beneath the shadow of animal and plant biology, some scientists have been testing, probing and learning about the most fascinating characteristics of fungi.
Sheldrake is one of them. A Ph.D. from Cambridge University, he has spent the majority of his life discovering the little-known miracles of fungal life. In Entangled Life he shares it all. From the grotesque, yet fascinating zombie fungus that infiltrates and puppeteers ants like zombies, to the otherworldly transcendence of magic mushrooms and their curative effects on depression, Sheldrake weaves an engrossing and magnificent journey through the soil beneath our feet.
While often overly academic in his vocabulary, the quality of his content makes up for it entirely. Whether it's a vivid explanation of how fungi take advantage of supply and demand in mineral transactions with plants or semi-philosophical discussions on what it means to be "intelligent", Entangled Life has a fungal story for everyone. Whether you're a nature lover and want to learn about a topic rarely taught in school biology classes, or if you just want to read about some downright crazy shit, I highly recommend this book. It will blow your mind.
💥 Personal impact
Honestly, this book was just a really fun read. It hasn't made an impact on me like a good self-help or philosophy book might, but it's completely changed the way I think about and appreciate fungi in my life. For one, and particularly interesting for my readers from Vancouver, many of the discoveries and stories Sheldrake tells are from our own backyard. Many of the top fungal discoveries have been observed here in the forests of British Columbia or have been published by scientists at U.B.C. It's nice to hear about how our universities are having an impact and making contributions to the global biological knowledge base.
On an individual level, Entangled Life brought me closer to the mushrooms and fungi in my day-to-day life (as weird as that is to write). I often walk past a little garden on the side of an office building on my way home from the gym. For whatever reason, this garden is always full of mushrooms. Sometimes I think there are more mushrooms in the garden than plants. I never gave it much thought before reading the book, but now I find myself thinking about them when I stroll past. I have respect for them, for the work they're doing and the role they play in supporting life. It's cool.
Even my organics bin, perhaps the least acknowledged area in my kitchen, has received some extra attention after reading Entangled Life. Last night, after what may be considered an overly prolonged exercise in seeing how much I can push down into the bag before needing to take it outside, I pulled my organics bag out of the bin. Beyond the "curious" smell, I noticed a little network of strands or strings hanging off the bag - mycelium, I recognized! Against my impulse to wrap it in another bag, I stopped and inspected it. How long it would take to see mushrooms if left alone?
Unfortunately for the fungus, unlike Sheldrake, I don't have enough of a curiosity to find out. But it's an example of a time where in the past I may have simply been disgusted. Now, I have some respect (and a little bit of disgust).
🗣 Top three quotes
The methods fungi use to hunt nematodes are grisly and diverse. It is a habit that has evolved multiple times—many fungal lineages have reached a similar conclusion but in different ways. Some fungi grow adhesive nets or branches to which nematodes stick. Some use mechanical means, producing hyphal nooses that inflate in a tenth of a second when touched, ensnaring their prey. Some—including the commonly cultivated oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus)—produce hyphal stalks capped with a single toxic droplet that paralyzes nematodes, giving the hypha enough time to grow through their mouth and digest the worm from the inside. Others produce spores that can swim through the soil, chemically drawn toward nematodes, to which they bind. Once attached, the spores sprout and the fungus harpoons the worm with specialized hyphae known as “gun cells.”
fungi can “see” colour across the spectrum using receptors sensitive to blue light and red light—unlike plants, fungi also have opsins, the light-sensitive pigments present in the rods and cones of animal eyes.
Can these fungi be thought of as borrowing a human brain to think with, a human consciousness to experience with? Does a human under the influence of mushrooms really fall under their influence, as an infected ant falls under the influence of Ophiocordyceps?