Entangled Life summary

The smell of truffles is intoxicating. It’s heady, pungent, and slightly sweet. Head to a fancy restaurant and you might be lucky enough to have truffles grated over your plate for you –⁠ in exchange for a pretty penny. Thanks to their rarity, two kilograms’ worth of Piedmont white truffles can fetch 12,000 Euros. 

For most of the year, truffles exist as underground mycelia. But there comes a time when they must reproduce. They can’t do that underground, where there are no air currents or animals to disperse their spores. So truffles must find a way above ground. For this, they release their signature irresistible aroma –⁠ and soon, animals and humans come to unearth them. Through smell, truffles speak in a language understood by all.

Very few organisms can withstand the extreme environment of outer space. A few can survive if shielded from the sun’s harmful radiation. One curious organism, however, lives on even when exposed directly to the most dangerous cosmic rays. That organism is lichen.

Lichen can survive in many extreme environments –⁠ not just space. They reside in both scorching deserts and frigid tundras. And they are remarkable in other ways, too –⁠ they can be resuscitated after ten years of dehydration, and some species can live for thousands of years. 

For a few days of its life, the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis possesses the body of an ant.

Yes, you heard that right. Ophiocordyceps is known as a zombie fungus, for its ability to hijack and control the body of an insect. First, Ophiocordyceps infects a carpenter ant, growing into as much as 40 percent of the ant’s biomass. The ant loses its fear of heights and begins to climb up a nearby plant. Eventually, the fungus forces the ant to clamp its jaws onto the plant’s stem. Mycelium begin to grow from the ant’s feet and head, from which bursts a stalk. The stalk releases spores that fall down to ants passing below. And so the cycle continues.

Six hundred million years ago, the world was a very different place. The land was barren and scorched –⁠ no plants or trees yet existed. Temperatures fluctuated rapidly from one extreme to another. 

Compared to the warm, shallow waters in which all kinds of organisms could flourish, land was downright hostile. But if you were a photosynthetic organism, it did offer some pretty big incentives. For one, you could take in direct sunlight, unfiltered by water. And for another, carbon dioxide –⁠ plant food –⁠ was plentiful. 

The Pacific Northwest is home to lush, green forests. But among the thickets of vibrant emerald, in the shadiest parts of the forest, small patches of stark white plants can be found pushing up from the ground.

These plants, known as “ghost pipes,” are the species Monotropa uniflora. Unlike most plants, they don’t have the ability to photosynthesize –⁠ and thus they have no leaves or green coloring. But if they can’t photosynthesize, how do they survive?

You might be familiar with Carl Linnaeus’s famous system of taxonomy, which sorts organisms into different categories. But did you know it was only designed to classify plants and animals? Fungi, it turns out, are neither. Yet fungi weren’t assigned to their own distinct kingdom until the mid-1960s. 

Given their many strange and unique genetic traits, fungi often defy classification. Despite this, humans are constantly trying to shoehorn them into categories we ourselves invented. Might there be a better way to make sense of fungi? 

It’s no secret that fungi have voracious appetites –⁠ some more so than others. 

Pleurotus mycelium, which fruits into edible oyster mushrooms, is especially omnivorous. If presented with a smorgasbord of used diapers, for instance, Pleurotus will dine happily. In one experiment, Pleurotus was able to reduce a collection of diapers to 15 percent of its original mass in two months.