This Mushroom Can Fly | Deep Look

Bird’s nest fungi look just like a tiny bird’s nest. But those little eggs have no yolks. Each one is a spore sac waiting for a single raindrop to catapult it on a journey with a layover inside the bowels of an herbivore. SUBSCRIBE to Deep Look! Please join our community on Patreon! DEEP LOOK is an ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small. --- The spore sacs, known as peridioles, sit in their splash cup, biding their time. When a raindrop hits the cup, a peridiole hurtles off in milliseconds. As it flies, the peridiole unfurls a cord and sometimes attaches to a blade of grass. When a hungry herbivore, such as a deer, eats the grass, it spreads the fungus’s spores in its droppings. --- How big are bird’s nest fungi? A couple of bird’s nest fungi would fit on your thumbnail. Their splash cups are about 10 millimeters in diameter. An individual peridiole can be just 1 millimeter wide. --- How far do bird’s nest fungi travel? Experiments carried out by Miami University mycologist Nik Money and then graduate student Maribeth Hassett in 2012 found that when a raindrop falls on a bird’s nest fungus and sends a peridiole flying, it can land somewhere between a few centimeters and a bit over a meter away. How far it travels varies, depending on the bird’s nest fungi species. Money hypothesizes that herbivores such as deer eat blades of grass onto which peridioles have attached. He believes the fungus’s spores then travel inside the deer until the animal deposits them on the ground in its droppings. --- Are bird’s nest fungi edible? They’re not known to be poisonous, but they’re so small, it’s probably not worth the attempt to eat them. --- Find a transcript on KQED Science: --- More Great Deep Look episodes: This Mushroom Starts Killing You Before You Even Realize It This Killer Fungus Turns Flies Into Zombies This Mushroom Fakes Its Own Death to Trick Flies --- Shoutout! 🏆Congratulations🏆 to these fans on our Deep Look Community Tab who correctly answered our GIF challenge! Kamea Webster The answers were “peridioles“ and “splash dispersal.“ --- Thank you to our Top Patreon Supporters ($10 per month)! Burt Humburg Karen Reynolds Daisuke Goto Companion Cube David Deshpande Chris B Emrick Tianxing Wang Wade Tregaskis Mark Jobes Blanca Vides Kevin Judge Cindy McGill Laurel Przybylski Supernovabetty monoirre Titania Juang Roberta K Wright KW Syniurge El Samuels Carrie Mukaida Jessica Hiraoka Cristen Rasmussen Jellyman Mehdi Kelly Hong Noreen Herrington Laurel Przybylski SueEllen McCann Caitlin McDonough Louis O’Neill Nicolette Ray Jeremiah Sullivan Levi Cai TierZoo Elizabeth Ann Ditz Rory B. --- Follow Deep Look and KQED Science on social: @deeplookofficial Instagram: Twitter: --- About KQED KQED, an NPR and PBS member station in San Francisco serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, radio and web media. Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the members of KQED. #birdsnestfungi #deeplook