Tuesday, September 16, 2008

World's First Fungus Opera

The world's first fungus opera: coprophilous (they live on cow poop) fungi discharging their spores, accompanied by the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore.

Don't try this at home -- unless you have a 250,000 frame/second video camera. The spores are blasted away from the parental unit at 180,000 g's of acceleration, reaching speeds of up to 55 mph. Fortunately, my human patients are much slower off the mark, making their imaging a lot easier.

For more details on these fascinating organisms, see Money et al. in the journal PLOS One.



(via The Loom)

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