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