[HN Gopher] Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot bod...
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Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body (2024)
Author : Anon84
Score : 162 points
Date : 2025-07-17 10:43 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.the-independent.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.the-independent.com)
| TylerLives wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong?
| xelxebar wrote:
| Or right? Reminds me of the Skroderider species of sentient
| seaweed from Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep".
| wut-wut wrote:
| I came here to say this!
| Sharlin wrote:
| I, for one, welcome our new fungal overlords!
| amelius wrote:
| Reminds me of:
|
| https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/fish-control-vehicles-and-nav...
| neom wrote:
| Rats too!! :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHMc3-f3v8
| accoil wrote:
| See also: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/08/biohybrid-
| robots-co...
| Legend2440 wrote:
| I'm skeptical that the mushroom is in any way "learning to
| crawl". It looks more like the mushroom naturally produces
| signals in response to light, and the robot triggers a walk cycle
| when it sees that signal.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| As a fungophile who spends way too much time crawling around in
| the woods looking for mushrooms, I think fungus learned to
| crawl before we did.
| pyman wrote:
| I find that claim interesting, especially given your
| background in studying fungus. Could you expand on it a bit?
| sethammons wrote:
| Slime molds are super interesting and are able to find
| optimal paths for resource management. Slime molds have
| been used to model and improve traffic flow for humans.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2022-01-virtual-slime-mold-subway-
| netw...
|
| I would call this action "crawling" and I am sure predates
| mammals. Or dinosaurs. Or plants.
| empthought wrote:
| Slime molds aren't fungus, though...
| sethammons wrote:
| > Slime molds are classified within the Kingdom Protista,
| and are more closely related to amoebas and certain
| seaweeds than to fungi, plants, or animals.
|
| Not a true fungi; today I learned. Thanks!
| ofalkaed wrote:
| If you take a small plot of wild land, say 50'x50' and
| visit it everyday watching all the various mushrooms which
| will grow there (there will be far more then most people
| realize or expect) and try and find the sense in where and
| when they fruit it becomes difficult to write it all off as
| simple biological responses to environment/following the
| food/etc, and even if you do look at it that way and start
| adding up the possible causes and effects you can end up
| with such a long list that it becomes difficult to not see
| it as some sort of at least instinctual level intelligence
| and that the growth of mycelium often has more in common
| with crawling than mindless growth.
|
| For example, many mushrooms are very good at fruiting just
| out of sight from trails, walk 20' off the trail, turn
| around and suddenly you start seeing mushrooms. Instinct is
| to say that all the mushrooms which grow within sight of
| the trail get picked by curious people or kicked by
| children but if you start looking for remains and stumps
| and mushrumps and those hard to spot just starting to fruit
| immature buttons, you find surprisingly few. So you think
| environmental, the trail alters windflow and runoff, animal
| movement, etc, but than you notice that this is true of
| even those small trails created by a fox or children which
| only affect a bit of low growing undergrowth so only has a
| tiny effect on a very localized area. On and on it goes
| until you run out of explanations.
|
| I am mostly convinced there is some level of intelligence
| here and we just can not see it because it is so very
| different from what we understand as intelligence. But, I
| may just spend too much time with mushrooms, during the
| season I always seem to have at least a dozen various
| mushrooms which I will visit everyday to watch them grow
| and rot away.
| luqtas wrote:
| great read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article
| /pii/S187861462...
|
| fungi has memory and can decide to not grow on a previous
| hostile enviroment/direction
|
| edit: i'm skeptical about the fantastic type of
| journalism title. the paper points on using fungi
| electrical reactions to light to drive a robot, not the
| the otherwise, even less the fungi understanding a
| "robot" and using it. despite them showing spatial
| perception on studies about their capabilities
| lopatin wrote:
| Off topic but my dad took me around the woods this weekend to
| show me mushrooms and he almost couldn't contain his
| excitement. And this is a person who usually doesn't like
| stuff. And the whole time I was like "yep, that's a
| mushroom". There's clearly something fascinating about the
| hobby that I don't get (yet). Curious to hear your take.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Your dad sounds like a good sort. I have no idea how to
| explain the mushroom fascination that some of us have to
| those that lack it and have mostly learned to just not talk
| about mushrooms with people who don't have the fascination.
| mhuffman wrote:
| Another "fun" science trick here[0] demo here[1]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrobotics
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_7LUszWRqco
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > Besides the necrobotic spider gripper, there are no other
| robotic concepts under the necrobotics subfield.
|
| Does dead trout swimming upstream not count?
| doi:10.1017/S0022112005007925 (open access link:
| https://www.liaolab.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/10/2006Beal_...)
| mhuffman wrote:
| Has science gone too far, or not far enough? Surely there are
| business opportunities for reanimating the dead bodies of
| animals! Where is the mouse jiggler made from an actual dead
| mouse being controlled by a Raspberry Pi? Or the carcass of a
| dead dog controlled by an air bladder that will lurch from
| behind your shrubs and snap at a prowler using zigbee and
| connected to your security system?
| lioeters wrote:
| Not sure about this particular experiment, but there is certainly
| interesting potential in integrating biological organisms (or
| parts thereof) with larger robotic and mechanical systems.
|
| Recently I saw a video of a turtle which was given a skateboard.
| It quickly learned how to zip around the house, chasing the cat,
| etc. It was a simple demostration of how technology, even as
| primitive as the wheel, can augment the abilities of an organism
| - especially a living being with sensors (eyes) and neural
| network (brain).
|
| It also reminds me of the goldfish in a bowl, attached to a small
| motorized vehicle, which was given the ability to navigate it by
| swimming in different directions. It soon learned to use this
| system as an extension of its body, exploring the house, bumping
| into things like a Roomba with a live brain.
|
| Suppose it's in the same field of exploration as those super-
| soldiers with Gundam-style body suits and computerized helmets
| projecting a live data feed to their retinas, maybe eventually
| embedding neural connectors directly in the head.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| Regarding the turtle and the goldfish, how can we really say
| these animals learned how to operate these things? I'm not sure
| I'd be able to tell the difference between a goldfish just
| swimming around the tank like normal versus one swimming around
| the tank with intention.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| I assume a fish that didn't understand what was going on
| would just run into walls? Or at most just move towards
| lights?
| BalinKing wrote:
| The top-level comment indeed says that the fish was bumping
| into things like a Roomba, so I'm also skeptical....
| trhway wrote:
| judge for yourself
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nhp7U0rwdM
| lioeters wrote:
| Oh that's a more proper study than the amateur experiment
| I saw.
|
| > For this purpose, we trained goldfish to use a Fish
| Operated Vehicle (FOV), a wheeled terrestrial platform
| that reacts to the fish's movement characteristics,
| location and orientation in its water tank to change the
| vehicle's; i.e., the water tank's, position in the arena.
|
| > The fish were tasked to "drive" the FOV towards a
| visual target in the terrestrial environment, which was
| observable through the walls of the tank, and indeed were
| able to operate the vehicle, explore the new environment,
| and reach the target regardless of the starting point,
| all while avoiding dead-ends and correcting location
| inaccuracies.
|
| From fish out of water to new insights on navigation
| mechanisms in animals - https://www.sciencedirect.com/sci
| ence/article/abs/pii/S01664...
| trhway wrote:
| lets start working our beliefs up from easier places :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ_0ImDYrPY
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7H2IDc-5QdQ
| DougN7 wrote:
| You'll need to watch the video of the turtle. It was actively
| chasing a cat around, so it definitely knew what it was
| doing.
| lioeters wrote:
| Tiny Turtle Follows Cat On a Skateboard -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVbtAYPSapw
| istjohn wrote:
| Also see Project Pigeon:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
| lioeters wrote:
| Good ol' B.F. Skinner. Apparently the idea was pretty solid
| but he had trouble getting people to take it seriously.
| vic_nyc wrote:
| Anybody else find this creepy?
| zoom6628 wrote:
| Very creepy however it is living proof that Trump is real and
| not CGI.
| flkenosad wrote:
| A real liar.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Just don't give them six wheels! Hexapodia is the key insight!
| cloudbonsai wrote:
| This seems to be one of the researches from Organic Robotics Lab
| at Cornell Univ.
|
| https://orl.mae.cornell.edu/
|
| https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/08/biohybrid-robots-co...
|
| I believe that "learn" is a bit too strong word here. The fungi
| is essentially a UV light sensor. The researchers made a robot
| that moves in a certain way based on the biological signal.
|
| So the mushroom is more like a passive sensor then an active
| pilot.
| larodi wrote:
| It can be firing in arbitrary banner and we'll still call it
| movement. Like the LLM does random and lossy decompression and
| we give it context and meaning...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I'm getting a bit of a skroderider[0] feeling.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep#Skroders/...
| kevinkoning wrote:
| Came here for this.
| domoregood wrote:
| And I, for one, welcome our new mushroom overlords.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| slashdot is that way, friend -> https://slashdot.org
| BSOhealth wrote:
| "Autobiography of a human, or how mushrooms learned to build
| computers after being given primate bodies"
| ProfHiggs wrote:
| Not an expert on fungi, or the kinddom in general, but slime
| molds have been found to do some amazing things.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11811
| theflyestpilot wrote:
| This combo reminds me of a character in a recent anime called
| Scavengers Reign.
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Scavengers_Reign
|
| This limited series blew my mind. Total master piece.
|
| In favor of integrating fungus with robotics(i think).
| drilbo wrote:
| erm acktually not an anime
| EUSSR wrote:
| Imagine what AOC could do once given a robot body!
| paweladamczuk wrote:
| I would guess you could achieve similar results with a rat's or
| cat's brain, but I wonder at which point ethical dilemmas start
| creeping in. When the fungi learns to ask for food, perhaps?
| chkaloon wrote:
| Here I thought ST Discovery had jumped the shark with its whole
| mycelium navigation plot device.
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(page generated 2025-07-20 23:01 UTC)