Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: it's part two of Mushroom Foraging. We we started going
Speaker 1: into the woods and we got lost, and uh, so
Speaker 1: we had to we had to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is actually two episodes. Here we are again with
Speaker 1: part two. All right, let's jump right in. So we
Speaker 1: already talked about how mushroom hunting appears to be this
Speaker 1: really popular activity in Russia, and this goes way back,
Speaker 1: and it's so popular that there are these common media
Speaker 1: stories about people getting lost in the wilderness because they
Speaker 1: went into a trance while mushroom hunting and then they
Speaker 1: couldn't find their way home. But apparently things are very
Speaker 1: similar in Poland. It's also a very common activity to
Speaker 1: go mushroom hunting in Poland. And uh. The Polish romantic
Speaker 1: poet Adam Mitskevitch, who lived from seven to eighteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: wrote famously about mushroom foraging in his epic poem Panta Days.
Speaker 1: And so I was looking at this in a few
Speaker 1: different translations. I think the clearest one unfortunately doesn't go
Speaker 1: for the whole poetry and meter of it. It's a
Speaker 1: prose translation by George Rapaul Noyus, but I think this
Speaker 1: will give the best sense of the passage, maybe losing
Speaker 1: a bit of the music. Are you ready, Robert, Okay.
Speaker 1: So there are these characters who are The basic drama
Speaker 1: of Pantadash is about this conflict between these clans over
Speaker 1: some kind of real estate dispute. I've never read the
Speaker 1: whole thing, but I like the parts I have read.
Speaker 1: And and so it's got all these, uh, these fancy
Speaker 1: ladies and lads going out to hunt for mushrooms in
Speaker 1: the forest, and they've announced that, you know, whichever lad
Speaker 1: finds the fanciest mushroom will get to sit next to
Speaker 1: the prettiest girl in the castle. And it's that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Uh. And so it goes into the section
Speaker 1: on mushrooms. Quote of mushrooms, there were plenty. The lads
Speaker 1: gathered the fair cheeked fox mushrooms, so famous in the
Speaker 1: Lithuanian songs as the emblem of maidenhood. For the worms
Speaker 1: do not eat them, and marvelous to say no insect
Speaker 1: alights on them. The young ladies hunted for the slender
Speaker 1: pine lover, which the song calls the kernel of the mushrooms.
Speaker 1: And that's colonel, like the military rank, not like the popcorn.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it wouldn't be the general of mushrooms.
Speaker 1: But moving on, all were eager for the orange agaric. This,
Speaker 1: though of more modest stature and less famous in song,
Speaker 1: is still the most delicious, whether fresh or salted, whether
Speaker 1: in autumn or in winter. But the sineschal gathered the toadstool, flybane,
Speaker 1: the remainder of the mushroom family, are despised because they
Speaker 1: are injurious or of poor flavor, but they are not useless.
Speaker 1: They give food to beasts and shelter to insects, and
Speaker 1: are an ornament to the groves. On the green cloth
Speaker 1: of the meadows, they rise up like lines of table dishes.
Speaker 1: Here are the leaf mushrooms, with their rounded borders, silver,
Speaker 1: yellow and red, like little glasses filled with various sorts
Speaker 1: of wine. The cos lac like the bulging bottom of
Speaker 1: an upturned cup, the funnels like slender champagne glasses, the
Speaker 1: round white, broad, flat white ease like china coffee cups
Speaker 1: filled with milk, and the round puff ball filled with
Speaker 1: a blackish dust like a pepper shaker. The names of
Speaker 1: the others are known only in the language of hairs
Speaker 1: or wolves by men. They have not been christened, but
Speaker 1: they are innumerable. No one deigns to touch the wolf
Speaker 1: or hair varieties, but whenever a person bends down to them,
Speaker 1: he straight away perceives his mistake, grows angry, and breaks
Speaker 1: the mushroom or kicks it with his foot, in thus
Speaker 1: defiling the grass. He acts with great indiscretion. I like
Speaker 1: at the end there it gets a little bit offended
Speaker 1: on behalf of the grass. I guess I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I fully understand the meaning of that last statement, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to look at a couple of things about
Speaker 1: this passage um So. One is that, first, while while
Speaker 1: Russian and Polish cultures are considered to have a great
Speaker 1: affinity for mushrooms, making them generally micophilic in some terminology
Speaker 1: that will address a little bit later in the episode, uh,
Speaker 1: this doesn't, of course manifest as a love for all
Speaker 1: mushrooms unqualified. Instead, it seems to me that the mushroom
Speaker 1: loving culture actually has a highly discriminating eye from mushrooms
Speaker 1: noticing much more the important and perhaps life saving differences
Speaker 1: between varieties. So like a mushroom culture doesn't just love mushrooms.
Speaker 1: It's more like they really love the good ones and
Speaker 1: really hate the bad ones. But of course, plenty of
Speaker 1: mushroom hunting and accidental mushroom poisoning happens even in the
Speaker 1: modern era. In Poland, was looking at a scientific report
Speaker 1: compiling cases of mushroom poisoning in Poland from the year's
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty seven by an author
Speaker 1: named Eliza Lewandowska. And this was called Mushroom Poisoning in
Speaker 1: Poland in the years in nineteen sixty two to sixty
Speaker 1: seven species of poisonous fungi. Now, there's no surprise at
Speaker 1: all here that the species representing the most danger was
Speaker 1: our old friend amanda felloids or the death cap mushroom.
Speaker 1: We we've talked about this already, right, yes, now, this
Speaker 1: one was responsible for at least four hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: one cases of poisoning and a hundred and twenty six
Speaker 1: deaths by this survey. A commonly cited figure that I've
Speaker 1: seen elsewhere is that death caps today represent more than
Speaker 1: nine of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. So so they're the
Speaker 1: real bad boy in terms of accidental accidental mushroom poisoning. UM.
Speaker 1: But I was also reading about how the specific way
Speaker 1: that Amanda philoids kills is deceptive lee devious. So when
Speaker 1: somebody eats this mushroom, it's not necessarily what you would
Speaker 1: picture where you eat it and then you're immediately doubled
Speaker 1: over in pain and you know, and hallucinating and sweating
Speaker 1: with a fever and screaming. Instead, when somebody eats the
Speaker 1: Amanda floid e is it doesn't necessarily cause any immediate
Speaker 1: pain or discomfort. In fact, people often don't have any
Speaker 1: symptoms at all for many hours I've read, sometimes maybe
Speaker 1: six hours later, sometimes even not until like a full
Speaker 1: day later, and then the cramps and the nausea and
Speaker 1: the vomiting and the diarrhea set in. And I've read
Speaker 1: that this can make it easy to mistake the poisoning
Speaker 1: for something else. You might think you've got a stomach
Speaker 1: bug or whatever, because of the length of time between
Speaker 1: eating the mushroom and the onset of symptoms. And uh,
Speaker 1: and at this point, after the symptoms set in, they
Speaker 1: can sometimes even retreat, they can grow milder if the
Speaker 1: patient is properly cared for, properly hydrated, and all that.
Speaker 1: The entire time, I'm the amine to toxins are in
Speaker 1: the background, just massacreing cells in the liver and harming
Speaker 1: the kidneys, eventually leading to organ failure and eventually to death.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that there's there's something kind of
Speaker 1: especially terrifying about that that there's this You can have
Speaker 1: this false sense that things are getting better and that oh,
Speaker 1: I'm actually feeling a little bit better than i was earlier,
Speaker 1: or maybe I'm not even feeling bad at all, while
Speaker 1: the mushroom is actively killing your vital organs. I think
Speaker 1: it also underlines just the sort of precision that had
Speaker 1: to take place in figuring out the properties of various
Speaker 1: mushrooms and and other organisms in one's environment, you know,
Speaker 1: because this is clearly something where you you would have
Speaker 1: to do a little detective work to figure out it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly what had caused this awful illness in the individual exactly.
Speaker 1: But in in second place for poisonings was a species
Speaker 1: that is also interesting and and requires are kind of precision,
Speaker 1: but with a different difficulty I don't think we've talked
Speaker 1: about this one yet. The second place in the Polish
Speaker 1: survey for for most poisoning in death was gyrometra esculenta
Speaker 1: or the false moral mushroom. Uh, that's moral like m
Speaker 1: O R e L moral mushrooms not morals as you know,
Speaker 1: doing good. Yeah, and so in this survey, the false
Speaker 1: moral was responsible for a hundred and sixty four cases
Speaker 1: of poisoning and ten deaths in this time in the sixties. Now,
Speaker 1: the false moral is a very strange and interesting case
Speaker 1: study in fungal toxicity because, first of all, it looks crazy.
Speaker 1: It looks like a brain on a stick, or not
Speaker 1: even a normal brain. It looks like if you tried
Speaker 1: to make a raisin out of a brain. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: kind of looks like what you have mushroom but ground chuck.
Speaker 1: You know. It of appearance, Yeah, it's got the little
Speaker 1: grinder extrusion patterns. Yeah it does. It looks kind of
Speaker 1: like it's come out of a machine in a way.
Speaker 1: I agree, had an extruded kind of appearance to it.
Speaker 1: But a lot of delicious mushrooms look very strange and
Speaker 1: very unlike other foods we eat. So you know, that's fine, um.
Speaker 1: But but gyrometra is an interesting case because the toxicity
Speaker 1: seems to vary a lot. Just one example I was
Speaker 1: reading in a stat Pearls entry by Horowitz, Kong and Horowitz,
Speaker 1: and the author's report quote most poisonings occur in Eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: particularly in the conifer forests of Germany, Poland, and Finland.
Speaker 1: In North America, most exposures occur in Michigan, although a
Speaker 1: less toxic variety grows west of the Rockies and has
Speaker 1: been clustered in Idaho and Western Canada. Exposures occur mostly
Speaker 1: in the spring, unlike other serious mushroom poisonings such as
Speaker 1: Amanda filoids, which occur more commonly in the fall. So
Speaker 1: there's this geographical distribution. I've read about how there are
Speaker 1: different rates of poisoning from the false morale to ending
Speaker 1: on where the mushroom was grown, you know, in in
Speaker 1: different countries and at different altitudes and things like that.
Speaker 1: It seems to vary a lot, depending on you know,
Speaker 1: what local strain you're getting, and possibly due to interactions
Speaker 1: with you know, with the body of the person who
Speaker 1: eats it. Another thing I've read is that poisoning is
Speaker 1: here are much more common when these mushrooms are eaten raw. Now,
Speaker 1: there's one thing that poison control authorities often emphasize, which
Speaker 1: is that you should not use intuitive smell and taste
Speaker 1: senses to figure out what is poisonous in the mushroom world,
Speaker 1: because even though our senses of smell and taste are
Speaker 1: certainly evolved to help us figure out what's good to eat,
Speaker 1: they are not an infallible guide. And a great example
Speaker 1: of this is once again the deathcap mushroom, one of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous mushrooms to humans and the most deadly
Speaker 1: one in Poland. During that survey we were just talking
Speaker 1: about the deathcap mushroom does not taste like poison. It
Speaker 1: reportedly does not taste bitter, does not taste sour, does
Speaker 1: not you know, set your mouth on fire with needles
Speaker 1: going into your tongue. In fact, it is widely said
Speaker 1: to be absolutely delicious. There are people who have had
Speaker 1: these hepatotoxic mushrooms absolutely destroy their liver. But they report that,
Speaker 1: you know, before the pain and the nausea set in
Speaker 1: six hours later, twenty four hours later, when whenever it is,
Speaker 1: while they're eating these mushrooms. They are some of the
Speaker 1: best tasting mushrooms that they've ever had. Uh. They're said
Speaker 1: to smell sweet like honey and taste absolutely delightful, sauteed
Speaker 1: and buttered. Don't do this, don't It's not worth it.
Speaker 1: It will kill you. Do not take the death cap
Speaker 1: challenge if you see something like that on YouTube. No,
Speaker 1: not at all. But but this does bring me back
Speaker 1: to an interesting observation from Miskovich, which is that some
Speaker 1: of the species of mushroom that are detestable to humankind,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure the death cap is one of these
Speaker 1: in in his survey, they're known in the cultures of
Speaker 1: he calls the wolves or the hairs, you know, the
Speaker 1: language of wolves or rabbits. Now, you might think that
Speaker 1: this is just another folk tale about the animals of
Speaker 1: the forest, but I think that this could actually be
Speaker 1: based on real observation, because despite being one of the
Speaker 1: most deadly fungi to humans, it is not necessarily deadly
Speaker 1: to everything in the forest all of the time. It
Speaker 1: came across one statement about this when I was reading
Speaker 1: an article about the spread of the deathcap mushroom throughout
Speaker 1: North America, and this was by Craig Childs in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting article. It's worth reading. A Child's
Speaker 1: talks about how deathcap mushrooms naturally live in a symbiotic
Speaker 1: relationship with host trees. And we've talked about how several
Speaker 1: mushroom species are like this. They attached themselves to the
Speaker 1: roots of trees and they sort of trade resources between them,
Speaker 1: uh and so that they're able to get some nutrition
Speaker 1: from from tree roots. And this is the reason that
Speaker 1: you will often find them sort of in a ring
Speaker 1: of deadly fruiting bodies around the roots of a central
Speaker 1: tree trunk. But their spores don't naturally tend to spread
Speaker 1: very far, at least under normal circumstances, and it has
Speaker 1: taken human intervention to really set them spreading far and wide. Specifically,
Speaker 1: what's named by Craig Child's in this article is that
Speaker 1: deathcap mushrooms have been spreaded, spreading rapidly throughout northwest North America,
Speaker 1: riding along on the roots of imported European trees, like
Speaker 1: imported sweet chestnut trees and beech trees. So you get
Speaker 1: this fancy tree from Europe, it's got deathcap mushrooms in
Speaker 1: a relationship with it. You bring the tree over here,
Speaker 1: planted and it brings the poisonous mushrooms with it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the reason I brought this article up was that there's
Speaker 1: this quick side note where Child's mentions that that squirrels
Speaker 1: and rabbits have sometimes been observed to eat deathcap mushrooms
Speaker 1: without being harmed at all, which sounds again like like
Speaker 1: mits Kevich, like that, you know, the hairs don't really
Speaker 1: mind in the mushrooms that the humans find absolutely detestable,
Speaker 1: and so I think that's interesting. It's another indication of
Speaker 1: what you should not do. You should not watch what
Speaker 1: animals eat in the forest to determine what would be
Speaker 1: okay for you to eat, because they may be able
Speaker 1: to digest and metabolize stuff just fine that would absolutely
Speaker 1: kill you with just a few mouthfuls. And also in
Speaker 1: this just another reason to respect the mighty squirrel. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw squirrels were thrown in there too, So I'm
Speaker 1: sure our fans are gonna gonna go hog wild about that.
Speaker 1: Meme away, Yeah, meme until you drop. But one last
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to add about this was I saw
Speaker 1: some mushroom enthusiasts online just in comments sections and stuff,
Speaker 1: saying that they kind of wish they had whatever resistance
Speaker 1: these rabbits have to to the death cap toxicity is
Speaker 1: because they would love to taste them, for one, since
Speaker 1: you know, by all accounts, when people eat them, even
Speaker 1: though it kills them, they are very tasty. Interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, in our previous episode we mentioned we mentioned
Speaker 1: a few different mushroom foraging cultures, and I believe Scottish
Speaker 1: culture came up. As luck would have it, was watching
Speaker 1: hum the the TV adaptation of Outlander last night. Start
Speaker 1: watching that, yeah, and in the second episode, what happens
Speaker 1: they're forging for mushrooms, talking about them, the medicinal use
Speaker 1: of mushrooms and which ones are good to eat and
Speaker 1: which ones are poisonous. I found it rather interesting. Also
Speaker 1: castle they used in that show, same castle they used
Speaker 1: in Highlander, uh and in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Speaker 1: So it's got that going for it. So even in
Speaker 1: your ultimate kilt lift or narrative, you cannot escape a
Speaker 1: good mushroom hunt, right, I mean that's I mean you've
Speaker 1: got time travel in there, so it's uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: a big part of the plot apparently, at least as
Speaker 1: I can gather thus far well, whether you're time traveling
Speaker 1: or not, whether you forage for mushrooms or not, stay
Speaker 1: away from the death caps, just just don't even try
Speaker 1: it now. Of course, this is this goes way back.
Speaker 1: This this basic um reality that we're discussing here, and
Speaker 1: we've we've covered humanities hunter gatherer past on the show before.
Speaker 1: I mean, the basic is you know, we're we're omnivores,
Speaker 1: and mushrooms have always been on the table. Uh. Though
Speaker 1: of course our ancestors had to devise the expertise to
Speaker 1: avoid harmful species as well as figuring out which ones
Speaker 1: are beneficial, which ones can be food, etcetera. One of
Speaker 1: the resources we were looking at for this section was
Speaker 1: Eric BoA's Wild Edible Fungi a Global Overview of their
Speaker 1: Use and Importance to People. Yeah, it looks like this
Speaker 1: was a report compiled for the Food and Agriculture Organization
Speaker 1: of the u N in two thousand four. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: and Boa points out, I'm gonna mention a few different
Speaker 1: facts that points out here. First of all, wild edible
Speaker 1: fungi are collected for food in more than eighty countries,
Speaker 1: and we're dealing with more than one thousand, one hundred
Speaker 1: species and interestingly enough, some cultures may be viewed is
Speaker 1: microphobic being you know, meaning there's a fear of mushrooms
Speaker 1: or a reluctance to engage in mushroom consumption and foraging,
Speaker 1: while other cultures are are microphilic meaning you know, the
Speaker 1: loving mushrooms, you know, being open to those experiences in
Speaker 1: those quests, with English culture standing interestingly enough as an
Speaker 1: example of microphobic UH culture, while Chinese culture, he mentions,
Speaker 1: is a strongly micophilic culture. He points out that a
Speaker 1: lot of Chinese writings on mushrooms have yet to be translated,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of material there. Now. I found
Speaker 1: this very interesting because I've certainly seen some documentaries um
Speaker 1: that really focus in on on British and Scottish traditions
Speaker 1: regarding mushroom hunting. Yeah, and of course that highlights that
Speaker 1: these designations. I've seen these designations used by other people
Speaker 1: as well. Burtleston talks about this, where you know, cultures
Speaker 1: that are predominantly microphobic or microphilic, they're all gonna be relative,
Speaker 1: right Like, within each of these broad cultures, there will
Speaker 1: be subcultures and then individuals that sort of run against
Speaker 1: the grain. Um. But on the note of of of
Speaker 1: Chinese culture being microphilic, of course that comes through in
Speaker 1: in certain types of ancient medical practices, but also in cuisine.
Speaker 1: And I just think about one of my earliest memories
Speaker 1: of Chinese food. I've loved Chinese food as long as
Speaker 1: I can remember, but one of my earliest memories is
Speaker 1: of the unidentifiable fungus within the Chinese soup I was eating,
Speaker 1: and how much I loved it, and how how it
Speaker 1: was like there was nothing else like this in my diet.
Speaker 1: I guess it was probably a type of black fungus
Speaker 1: in a hot and sour soup, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: what is this? I have no idea. It's like something
Speaker 1: from another planet, and it's delicious. But as to microphobia,
Speaker 1: Birtleson mentions evidence of strains of microphobic thinking in many
Speaker 1: of the historic common names for mushrooms in some European cultures.
Speaker 1: For example, though today we think of French cuisine as
Speaker 1: being very very pro mushroom, historically there was some French
Speaker 1: aversion to mushrooms, like calling mushrooms things like eggs of
Speaker 1: the devil or the devil's paint brush, or toads bread.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's the English expression toad stool. In Danish
Speaker 1: and Norwegian you have variations on poda hot toad's hat,
Speaker 1: and in Germanic and Celtic cultures. Burtleson writes that you
Speaker 1: sometimes see an association between mushrooms and witchcraft, and this
Speaker 1: association may have played a role in keeping the British
Speaker 1: Aisles relatively microphobic for for many centuries. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't help me be reminded. I'm sure I've brought this
Speaker 1: up on the show before. Um, but there's that that
Speaker 1: wonderful um a little bit in uh Burt of Eccos
Speaker 1: the Name of the Rose, where there's the story of
Speaker 1: of one monk. You know, it's like a multi multi cultural,
Speaker 1: multi linguistic community of monks there, and one is talking
Speaker 1: about having this pig that will accompany them into the
Speaker 1: woods to search for truffles. And the other monk that's
Speaker 1: hearing this story is I believe German, and he thinks
Speaker 1: that he's not saying truffle but to full, which is
Speaker 1: a German for devil, So he thinks this is a
Speaker 1: horrific story of this weird pig that will accompany uh,
Speaker 1: you into the woods so that you can seek out
Speaker 1: the devil. I remember that moment, and that's oh man,
Speaker 1: that's so emblematic of everything I love about Name of
Speaker 1: the Rose. Now, in terms of the ancient uh uh
Speaker 1: foraging for mushrooms and the use of mushrooms by by
Speaker 1: human beings, you know, there's there's apparently evidence in what
Speaker 1: is now Chile of mushroom consumption by humans thirteen thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. Um Obso, the iceman who we've mentioned on
Speaker 1: the show before, who lived between thirty four UM hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty one b c uh somewhere in that area,
Speaker 1: was found with two varieties of fun guy on his person,
Speaker 1: one of which we've discussed on our other show or
Speaker 1: previous other show. Invention was likely a dried fungi used
Speaker 1: to help start fires, but the other was a bird
Speaker 1: fungus that was likely consumed for medicinal reasons. And so
Speaker 1: the consumption of mushrooms for culinary and or medicinal purposes
Speaker 1: dates back in a number of ancient cultures. They're they're
Speaker 1: more examples of this than we could easily cover on
Speaker 1: the show here. Uh. And with the agricultural revolution came
Speaker 1: the eventuality of mushroom cultivation as well. Though, as we've
Speaker 1: previously touched on, there are so many varieties that are
Speaker 1: resistant to cultivation. Yeah. I think specifically a lot of
Speaker 1: the ones that you think of that are most commonly
Speaker 1: used in food that are the hardest to cultivate, or
Speaker 1: are the ones that are, for my corpsal reasons, unable
Speaker 1: to be cultivated because they exist in these symbiotic relationships
Speaker 1: with other plants, trees, and forest atmospheres, and so the
Speaker 1: truffle is a common example, but of course shan trells
Speaker 1: are like this as well. I believe also porcini mushrooms, uh,
Speaker 1: that it's just really hard to recreate the conditions in
Speaker 1: which they arise. Yeah. So even as as humanity inevitably
Speaker 1: be you know that began this shift, uh, this revolution
Speaker 1: in neolithic times, uh, shifting away from the hunter gathering
Speaker 1: existence to one dependent on intensive agriculture, there's kind of this,
Speaker 1: you know, this tendency to sort of think of that
Speaker 1: as Okay, well, you know, you're just changing the way
Speaker 1: you live entirely. You're just stopping where you are, and
Speaker 1: now you're gonna grow plants and maybe mushroom foraging is
Speaker 1: one of those things that remains outside of that tradition
Speaker 1: for these very reasons we've been discussing UM. However, this
Speaker 1: was quite interested. I was looking around for resources on
Speaker 1: this and I ran across a paper published in the
Speaker 1: Royal Society b by Curtis w. Uh Marine titled the
Speaker 1: Transition to foraging for Dense and Predictable Resources and It's
Speaker 1: Impact on the Evolution of modern humans. And in this
Speaker 1: the uh the the author, UM, it's discussing you know
Speaker 1: this basic shift, but he points out they point out
Speaker 1: that there's another shift to consider. Quote the foraging shift
Speaker 1: to dense and predictable resources is another key milestone that
Speaker 1: had consequential impacts on the later part of human evolution. Now,
Speaker 1: the basic idea here is that there wasn't just this
Speaker 1: sudden shift from hunting and gathering to cultivation. And there
Speaker 1: are many hypothesized explanations for this, but Marine argues that
Speaker 1: hunting and gathering would have seen an increased focus on
Speaker 1: dense and predictable resources. As such, this also means that
Speaker 1: a given area becomes increasingly worth defending and staking a
Speaker 1: claim to. Oh, this is interesting, So this could be
Speaker 1: the transition point between UM between people who just roam
Speaker 1: about following resources and consuming them wherever they can be found.
Speaker 1: That and then on the other hand, having farmland in between,
Speaker 1: you could have places where there are naturally high density
Speaker 1: resources that can be exploited over and over that you
Speaker 1: might not be quite farming yet but might be worth
Speaker 1: defending as a stable territory. Yeah. Yeah, And I have
Speaker 1: to admit I hadn't really thought about this before. I
Speaker 1: without giving it a lot of thought. I always just
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, had this this inaccurate picture in
Speaker 1: my mind, and that was again like, Okay, we're not
Speaker 1: hunter gathers anymore, let's start growing this corn. Why don't
Speaker 1: we you know, like I don't, I didn't really think
Speaker 1: about some of the potential, you know, for for areas
Speaker 1: in between. This would be very interesting to explore. Paired
Speaker 1: with something that came up in our Invention episodes on
Speaker 1: bread and Toast, where we talked about the studies indicating
Speaker 1: that bread and may actually have been invented before grain
Speaker 1: was was an agricultural product like people may have been
Speaker 1: making and I think the archaeological evidence is that people
Speaker 1: were making bread from wild grains and wild grasses before
Speaker 1: they had farms and wheat. Yeah. Absolutely. It makes me
Speaker 1: wonder if they were getting these grains from some kind
Speaker 1: of like location where there were a lot of them
Speaker 1: growing together and could be exploited over and over again. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Now marine rights to just some all this up quote.
Speaker 1: I hypothesized that the origin population for modern humans made
Speaker 1: this shift to dense and predictable resources, and thus was
Speaker 1: subject to high levels of territoriality and intergroup con fleet,
Speaker 1: which provided the selection regime for high levels of cooperation
Speaker 1: with unrelated individuals within one's group. The downstream effect was
Speaker 1: that all modern humans inherited these hyper pro social productivities
Speaker 1: that are unique to our species. Now, to bring this
Speaker 1: back to mushroom foraging, it is interesting to process one's
Speaker 1: thoughts about the predictable times and places one will find,
Speaker 1: say Chantrelle's or into the woods, and the competitive feelings
Speaker 1: that they may force we may be forced to confront
Speaker 1: during this. In fact, I understand that more serious mushroom
Speaker 1: foragers are, you know, their loath to reveal the secrets uh,
Speaker 1: their secret places, their quote unquote honey spots, uh, the
Speaker 1: places where they can dependently find the best patches of mushroom.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the story in Michael Pollen's book where
Speaker 1: he's going hunting for psilocybin mushrooms with Paul Statements, and
Speaker 1: he's going to great pains to try to tell you
Speaker 1: what he's doing without revealing the site of Paul statements
Speaker 1: mushroom hash. Oh yeah, yeah, because Paul really doesn't want
Speaker 1: people to know where he gets them. That's his honey spot. Now.
Speaker 1: I think though, that you can certainly see that with plants, especially,
Speaker 1: how this could be this intermediary zone between hunting and
Speaker 1: gathering and cultivation where you realize, oh, well, the the
Speaker 1: wheat that we can make into bread, it grows really
Speaker 1: well here. Uh this is a place that we need
Speaker 1: to keep secret or even protect from other other individuals.
Speaker 1: This is our spot, This is our sacred spot that
Speaker 1: we return to. It's a very interesting possibility. I wonder
Speaker 1: what what would be the evidence that you could find
Speaker 1: to back that up. I don't know. I have to
Speaker 1: keep thinking about that. All right, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but we'll be right back. And we're
Speaker 1: back now. Another interesting topic to to consider in all
Speaker 1: of this is that that there is essentially a foraging gene.
Speaker 1: Uh So the key gene of note in most studies,
Speaker 1: especially with fruit flies and fruit flies, it's p r
Speaker 1: KG one. Uh and uh. This is um. This is
Speaker 1: something that we see presented in a wide variety of animals,
Speaker 1: from fruit flies to even humans. But p r KG
Speaker 1: one is president fruit flies and has previously been shown
Speaker 1: to influence foraging behaviors. Researchers and studies that I think
Speaker 1: date back to at least have looked at this and
Speaker 1: multiple researchers found that one variant of the gene and
Speaker 1: fruit flies induces what is called sitter behavior and in
Speaker 1: the other's rover behavior. Now, the difference here is that
Speaker 1: when a sitter enters an area containing fruit, the they
Speaker 1: scalut the perimeter of the area and then they move inward.
Speaker 1: They sort of you know, they scouted out, They make
Speaker 1: a perimeter, and then they move in. Rovers instead move
Speaker 1: right in and go for the first fruit they encounter. Interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: the human form of the gene is apparently a nucleotide
Speaker 1: polymorphism genotype called r S one three four, and in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nineteen, researchers from Canada, the US, and
Speaker 1: the UK this would be struck at all um. They
Speaker 1: experimented with it in a paper published in the Proceedings
Speaker 1: of the National Academy of Science. UH. The title is
Speaker 1: self regulation and the foraging gene p r KG one
Speaker 1: in Humans. UH. Here's how the study went down. So,
Speaker 1: the authors analyzed the genotypes of RS and four thirty
Speaker 1: seven undergraduate students who performed two virtual foraging tasks. So
Speaker 1: this was a touch screen situation in which subjects search
Speaker 1: for and collected as many red berries as possible within
Speaker 1: five minutes. And then so they compared the subjects with
Speaker 1: C A or CC genotypes of rs UH. Individuals with
Speaker 1: the A A genotype were more likely to hug the
Speaker 1: boundary of the search environment, pick smaller berries, and stop
Speaker 1: to pick berries and patches with fewer visible berries a
Speaker 1: k A sitter behavior. The findings suggests that the A
Speaker 1: A genotype is associated with a search strategy that restricts
Speaker 1: exploration and exploits the local environment extensively. In other words,
Speaker 1: distinct patterns of goal pursuit for foraging are associated with
Speaker 1: particular genotypes of pr KG one. That's very interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about on the show before, you always
Speaker 1: have to remember when you're drawing correlations between particular gene
Speaker 1: variants and a behavior. It's it's almost never going to
Speaker 1: be like an on off switch that like, if you
Speaker 1: have a certain gene variant, you show X behavior and
Speaker 1: if you don't have it, you don't. But instead you
Speaker 1: you'd be charting sort of like you know, percentages of influence.
Speaker 1: Can can you see correlations between gene variants and a
Speaker 1: and a tendency or a certain proclivity to a certain
Speaker 1: type of behavior and uh and so yeah, this would
Speaker 1: say that somehow foraging behaviors are downstream from things that
Speaker 1: this gene does to the brain that makes you more
Speaker 1: likely to kind of like go out on a long
Speaker 1: search of versus try to exploit all of the resources
Speaker 1: you can in your nearest immediate environment. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Now,
Speaker 1: and of course we also have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that the scope in the size of the study here.
Speaker 1: But um, and also I should point that the authors
Speaker 1: mentioned that the human foraging behavior is ultimately far more
Speaker 1: complex than the the the foraging behavior fruit flies. And
Speaker 1: instead of they're just being two distinct foraging strategies, it
Speaker 1: seems like they are three. So you have sidderin rover,
Speaker 1: but then you have a mixed uh disposition as well
Speaker 1: the combines elements of both. But on top of that
Speaker 1: that they point out that this would go beyond mere
Speaker 1: foraging and humans, that that it that it would instead
Speaker 1: impact human behavior regulation across multiple domains. And I think
Speaker 1: we can imagine how, yeah, that would involve various things
Speaker 1: that are like foraging, but also potentially impact just sort
Speaker 1: of risk assessment, etcetera. Oh yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's easy to see how complex modern behaviors are in
Speaker 1: a way kind of probably minor reconfigurations of traditional instinctual
Speaker 1: behaviors like foraging, like hunting and that kind of thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: So you can see how whatever we're most instinctually inclined
Speaker 1: to do in terms of foraging could manifest in the
Speaker 1: way you accomplish work around the house, in the way
Speaker 1: that you, you know, go shopping or whatever. I mean again,
Speaker 1: you you have to be careful about drawing too direct
Speaker 1: an inference about anything like that, but the fact that
Speaker 1: there's some kind of influences seems pretty clear. Alright, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank And we're back now. Another aspect of early human
Speaker 1: foraging tactics, and indeed, the way these these early humans
Speaker 1: use spatial abilities to gather resources. Is that there was
Speaker 1: seemingly a division of labor between males and females. This
Speaker 1: is the sexual division of labor, sometimes abbreviated as sdl
Speaker 1: UM and and this is a subject that has received
Speaker 1: a lot of study over the years, especially of studies
Speaker 1: that look at extent hunter gatherer populations in the world.
Speaker 1: And there are varying hypotheses for the evolutionary origins of
Speaker 1: this divide. Now for our purposes here, I was looking
Speaker 1: at a study by Lewis Pacheco, Cobas, Marcos Rosetti, Cecilia Quanti, Equoyees,
Speaker 1: and Robin Hudson titled sex differences in mushroom gathering Men
Speaker 1: expend more energy to obtain equivalent benefits and this was
Speaker 1: published in Evolution and Human Behavior back in So the
Speaker 1: authors here pointed out that the evidence was accumulating quote
Speaker 1: that women excel on tasks appropriate to gathering immobile plant
Speaker 1: resources while men excel on tasks appropriate to hunting mobile,
Speaker 1: unpredictable prey. And this would be due so the thinking
Speaker 1: goes to this ancient labor divide in human societies. But
Speaker 1: it also means that intrinsic foraging abilities and tactics would
Speaker 1: differ from males to females. So the researchers here decided
Speaker 1: to put this to the test with a mushroom foraging experiment,
Speaker 1: which is the other key reason to discuss it here,
Speaker 1: because people are are This is an experiment that includes
Speaker 1: not touch screen um practices, not some sort of touch
Speaker 1: screen experiment, but an actual foraging for mushrooms. Let's forage.
Speaker 1: So in their study they use GPS and heart rate
Speaker 1: monitors that had been affixed to the researchers themselves, and
Speaker 1: then these researchers would follow twenty one pairs of men
Speaker 1: and women from an indigenous Mexican community in uh tux
Speaker 1: Cola while foraging for mushrooms in the wild. So the
Speaker 1: researchers are the ones where in the gear they're following
Speaker 1: the actual foragers, but in doing so, they're going to
Speaker 1: be able to chart where the foragers went and how
Speaker 1: much energy seems to be expended in the silent hunt.
Speaker 1: So they ultimately measured the costs, the benefits, and the
Speaker 1: general search efficiency of everyone's movements, and then they analyze them.
Speaker 1: The resulting foraging patterns showed that while males and females
Speaker 1: collected similar quantities of mushroom rooms. Males achieved this at
Speaker 1: a significantly higher cost, so the males they traveled farther.
Speaker 1: The males climbed to greater altitudes. They had higher mean
Speaker 1: heart rates and energy expenditures while partaking in the foraging,
Speaker 1: and in addition, they also collected fewer mushroom species and
Speaker 1: visited fewer collection sites. And this is interesting. They seemed
Speaker 1: to focus on large patches of mushrooms, even if these
Speaker 1: were harder to come by, so they were like bypassing
Speaker 1: or not even looking for those smaller patches they wanted
Speaker 1: wanted to get the big game mushroom patches. The females, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: it seemed to know where to go and they foraged
Speaker 1: from many small patches as opposed to seeking out those
Speaker 1: greater patches of fun guy. This was also compared by
Speaker 1: the way to previous research on the way males and
Speaker 1: females navigate, which indicated that males tend to create mental
Speaker 1: maps and then superimpose their position while womington to remember
Speaker 1: landmarks and memorize the routes quote. These findings are consistent
Speaker 1: with arguments in the literature that differences in spatial ability
Speaker 1: between the sexes are domain dependent, with women performing better
Speaker 1: and more readily adopting search strategies appropriate to a gathering
Speaker 1: lifestyle than men. So basically the idea is that if
Speaker 1: you were primarily charged with hunting prey two point five
Speaker 1: million years ago, it made sense to travel far, to
Speaker 1: take widening paths in pursuit of that big payoff prey,
Speaker 1: and then take the shortest, most direct path back home
Speaker 1: so as to make up for all that time you
Speaker 1: spent wandering and pursuing the prey. Meanwhile, if you were
Speaker 1: tasked with gathering fungi or plants, it would serve to
Speaker 1: remember where the most productive plant food sources were found,
Speaker 1: you know, those honey spots, and then retrace your steps
Speaker 1: exactly so as to take advantage of them in the future.
Speaker 1: And like, no, making a bee line back for camp.
Speaker 1: That's very interesting. Uh Now. One thing that we always
Speaker 1: got to say whenever you talk about studies that explore
Speaker 1: sex differences is that people a lot of people like
Speaker 1: to take these and really run with them and say like, oh,
Speaker 1: this means that men are like this and women are
Speaker 1: like that. I think we always try to caution people
Speaker 1: not to not to over interpret findings of sex differences
Speaker 1: in in particular studies. It's very easy, I think, just
Speaker 1: because people want to have strong intuitions about gender and
Speaker 1: sex and like what men are like and what women
Speaker 1: are like and stuff that they want to say like, oh,
Speaker 1: this explains why my husband does this or why my
Speaker 1: girlfriend says that kind of thing. You can you can
Speaker 1: easily go way overboard with with looking for explanations in
Speaker 1: that way. Yeah, I mean it also it comes down
Speaker 1: to what is the Barnum effect that we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: where we say, oh, well, that's me, this this study
Speaker 1: is correct because that's me. I totally am like that
Speaker 1: when I go to the to the grocery store and
Speaker 1: my my partner is like this, etcetera. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, like, we're talking about general perceived trends
Speaker 1: in the sexual division of labor and as reflected here
Speaker 1: in particular studies. Uh so, yeah. I don't don't have
Speaker 1: it printed on a T shirt or anything, but but
Speaker 1: it is interesting research and and certainly it was neat
Speaker 1: to find a study that was that was actually involving
Speaker 1: mushroom foraging, like the scientific study of mushroom foraging behavior totally,
Speaker 1: and it highlights how there can be different types of
Speaker 1: foraging strategies that are effective in different ways. I was
Speaker 1: looking at some other studies that were about different types
Speaker 1: of foraging strategies and birds, you know, and how this
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting, like some birds tend to forage
Speaker 1: by moving in little random types of motions around a
Speaker 1: central locust, uh in a way that's very comparable actually
Speaker 1: to the movement of tiny particles on the atomic scale
Speaker 1: that's known as Brownie in motion and physics. Whereas other
Speaker 1: birds tended to forage by sort of taking large leaps
Speaker 1: at a time, and that these uh, these different strategies
Speaker 1: could be differentially effective depending on what types of things
Speaker 1: you're looking for while foraging, what the surrounding landscape is,
Speaker 1: and things like that. Yeah, it's such a foraging itself
Speaker 1: is just such a fascinating thing to think about, because
Speaker 1: it's easy to just sort of dismiss it as this
Speaker 1: kind of primal thing that we sometimes engage in when
Speaker 1: we decided to go into the woods and look for mushrooms, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But it is again something basic like neural activity that
Speaker 1: we're continually engaging in and and something that also comes
Speaker 1: down to this kind of like like this the basic
Speaker 1: mathematics of it, like how do you go about looking
Speaker 1: for resources in a given area? And then how are
Speaker 1: you how do you deal with spatial awareness in that
Speaker 1: given area? Like there it seems like a rich domain
Speaker 1: for you know, AI research and the like totally because
Speaker 1: strangely enough, I feel like search activities are one of
Speaker 1: the ways in which human behavior can be most closely
Speaker 1: compared to what computer programs do. Does that make sense? Yeah? No, no,
Speaker 1: absolutely that there are some pretty direct analogies actually having
Speaker 1: to do with energy is expended an efficiency in different
Speaker 1: ways of searching through randomly organized material. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean in the same way that you could imagine
Speaker 1: someone in desiring an AI program that will find you
Speaker 1: a good deal on something. There are also plenty of
Speaker 1: humans out there like that's their thing, like let me,
Speaker 1: let me help you find a good deal on that,
Speaker 1: because I love looking for them. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of it does come back to foraging. I
Speaker 1: mean I would be interested in studies looking at foraging
Speaker 1: behaviors in humans and animals compared to what search engines
Speaker 1: do to get you your results. That would be interesting.
Speaker 1: So who knows, perhaps we'll have some additional foraging episodes
Speaker 1: in the future as as you and I go out
Speaker 1: into the wilds seeking out fruitful papers on these topics.
Speaker 1: Bring it on home, all right, We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: call it there. Likewise, we weren't able to touch on
Speaker 1: everything regarding mushroom foraging and foraging related topics here, but
Speaker 1: we certainly would love to hear for rememberyone out there, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, are you involved in in mushroom foraging? Are
Speaker 1: you an active forager or let us know your experiences.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your insight on all of this. Likewise,
Speaker 1: if you were if your culture of origin, or you're
Speaker 1: you know, if you're immersed in a particular cultural uh
Speaker 1: take on mushroom foraging, be it you know, the activities
Speaker 1: or or beliefs and strategies tied up with the foraging
Speaker 1: uh activity, let us know. We'd love to be enlightened
Speaker 1: on those topics. Huge things. As always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, if you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello. You can email us at
Speaker 1: Contact Stuff to Blow your Mind, Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: It's production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my heart Radio with the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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