Study
Language of fungi derived from their electrical spiking activity
Adamatzky, A.
Royal Society Open Science, 2022
Voltage was recorded from four fungal species using pairs of electrodes inserted into mycelium or fruiting bodies. Spikes were identified in the traces, grouped into trains by the gaps between them, and the trains were then analysed with tools borrowed from linguistics, including a comparison of train lengths with word lengths in human languages.
- Studied in
- Omphalotus nidiformis, Flammulina velutipes, Schizophyllum commune, Cordyceps militaris
- Sample size
- 4 species recorded with differential electrode pairs
Spikes clustered into trains whose length distribution the author compared with that of words in European languages, reporting a median of around fifteen groupings that could be treated as a lexicon of up to about fifty units, differing between species.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
The grouping of electrical spikes into trains is consistent with a fungal language, though the author states that alternative explanations cannot be excluded.
How NatureHQ reads it
The measurement is the reliable part and it is not what travelled. Voltage fluctuations occur and cluster; that is data. Everything after it depends on a threshold chosen by the analyst for how long a gap ends a "word", and on an analogy to language that the analysis assumes rather than tests. Nothing in the design examines whether any fungus responds to a train, which is the minimum a communication claim needs, and no receiver was tested at all. Specialists said so publicly at the time, and the paper itself is more cautious than the coverage of it. NatureHQ therefore treats the spiking as demonstrated and the vocabulary as an interpretation with no supporting test.
- Four species, small numbers of electrode pairs, no receiver and no behavioural outcome measured.
- The word-like groupings depend on an arbitrary inter-spike interval threshold; a different threshold yields a different vocabulary.
- A similarity between two length distributions is not evidence of shared function.
- Electrode contact artefacts and drift are difficult to exclude over long recordings.
Counting the gaps between fungal voltage spikes
Do the electrical spikes in fungal mycelium group into anything like words?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: The Royal SocietyPublished by the Royal Society.
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-30.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-30.