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**Eclectric**

Forget about the humans being a threat to themselves, watch out for the fungi. Jhikpghf

Quote:"I've never seen anything like this in wild snakes before," Allender says. "Nor has anyone else. In almost all organisms, fungi are opportunistic pathogens that attack compromised immune systems. These were otherwise healthy snakes," however, he says. Already suffering from diminishing numbers, the snake is a candidate for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list.

Scientific American

**LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 106826 08-14-2012 03:45 PM

This thread is anti-fungitic.

**Eclectric**

The largest organism on the planet is a fungi.

Quote:Next time you purchase white button mushrooms at the grocery store, just remember, they may be cute and bite-size but they have a relative out west that occupies some 2,384 acres (965 hectares) of soil in Oregon's Blue Mountains. Put another way, this humongous fungus would encompass 1,665 football fields, or nearly four square miles (10 square kilometers) of turf.

Sciam

**SecretGeek**

Eclectric Wrote:

Forget about the humans being a threat to themselves, watch out for the fungi.

Quote:"I've never seen anything like this in wild snakes before," Allender says. "Nor has anyone else. In almost all organisms, fungi are opportunistic pathogens that attack compromised immune systems. These were otherwise healthy snakes," however, he says. Already suffering from diminishing numbers, the snake is a candidate for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list.

Scientific American

This looks like one of those things that naturally happens allowed by mother nature to keep species populations down. The ones that survive will become the fittest and will adapt. For those species, resources are expected to become abundant and they should become larger and more healthy. Therefore, there are likely two sides of the coin. Of course, we usually only see one side pushed by the media.

**LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 114617 08-14-2012 05:23 PM

Interesting!

Not just frogs then.

This study determined rapidly changing temperature to be significant risk factor

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-link-global...ungal.html

Also immune compromised humans are at risk

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-common-fungus.html

Maybe fungi is ultimately responsible for all mass extinctions.

**Cammi**

Mushroom to psychiatrist: I don't know why the ladies don't like me.. I mean, I'm a fungi!

Jptdknpa

**Cammi**

LoP Guest Wrote:

Interesting!

Not just frogs then.

This study determined rapidly changing temperature to be significant risk factor

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-link-global...ungal.html

Also immune compromised humans are at risk

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-common-fungus.html

Maybe fungi is ultimately responsible for all mass extinctions.

So what you're saying is Obama is a mushroom? He does spread like a fungus... I can see it....
chuckle

**Momar**

Fungi have been evolving since the beginning of time surviving every global extinction event.

**RedShift**

And then there is this... Zombie ants due to a fungus.
Ant zombification begins when an Ophiocordyceps fungus shoots spores onto an insect. The parasitic fungus gradually takes over the ant's brain and directs the insect to a cool, moist location. The fungus then kills the ant, and fruiting bodies erupt from the ant's head and spread more spores.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...ce-brazil/

A stalk of the newfound fungus species Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani, grows out of a "zombie" ant's head in a Brazilian rain forest.

Originally thought to be a single species, called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the fungus is actually four distinct species—all of which can "mind control" ants—scientists announced Wednesday.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...ainforest/

To hear David Hughes tell it, rain forest floors are littered with corpses of fungus-infected "zombie ants." This made the entomologist wonder: How do the lucky ants escape zombification?

The answer, his team found, is that the ants have an unwitting ally: a fungus that "castrates" the zombie-ant fungus.

doomed

**LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 113108 08-14-2012 06:22 PM

Cammi Wrote:

Mushroom to psychiatrist: I don't know why the ladies don't like me.. I mean, I'm a fungi!

**Leotard** lop guest User ID: 76478 08-14-2012 06:51 PM

Fungi got them bats

**LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 68742 08-14-2012 07:01 PM

Cammi Wrote:

Mushroom to psychiatrist: I don't know why the ladies don't like me.. I mean, I'm a fungi!

I mean they can see our dics from outer space. chuckle

**Gotcha!**

LoP Guest Wrote:

Maybe fungi is ultimately responsible for all mass extinctions.

You may be on to something

doomed

**Eclectric**

Do Fungi Feast on Radiation?

Apparently yes. If the fungi contains melanin.

Quote:Like plants that grow toward the sun, dark fungi, blackened by the skin pigment melanin, gravitate toward radiation in contaminated soil. Scientists have observed the organisms—somewhere between plants and animals—blackening the land around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine in the years since its 1986 meltdown. "Organisms that make melanin have a growth advantage in this soil," says microbiologist Arturo Casadevall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. "In many commercial nuclear reactors, the radioactive water becomes contaminated with melanotic organisms. Nobody really knows what the hell they are doing there."

**Eclectric**

Momar Wrote:

Fungi have been evolving since the beginning of time surviving every global extinction event.

Fungi is classified as a kingdom like plants, animals and bacteria. It is estimated to be 25% of all of earth's biomass.