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Yep. Years ago I interviewed someone for a radio program here in the Netherlands. This was a forest ranger, on the topic of people foraging for mushrooms. It was the hip thing to do at the time.
He explained how wildly dangerous it is for average people to do. Especially when looking up things online.
He showed me two images that looked basically identical. He explained to me that one mushroom was edible and delicious. And that it could be found in the forests in the United States. The other, identical looking mushroom can be found in European forests. That one liquifies your internal organs and causes you to shit yourself to an agonising death.
He explained that each year a handful of people die from eating it. Because they looked up a guide online, and failed to understand that there’s regional differences between edible and deadly mushrooms. And by the time they got medical attention, there was nothing that could be done.
I’m not a fan of mushrooms anyway, but I’d certainly never be dumb enough to go pick some myself. That shit’ll get you killed.
honestly even worse is destroying angel. That thing (well same species(?) different kinds but all as deadly) can be found on all continents! and it looks similar to yum mushrooms in all places :) number 1 cause for mushroom related deaths, and it also liquidifies your organs! whoo!
i’m so glad the texture of mushrooms makes my skin crawl so i never get the idea to go out there and forage them for food. Wikipedia link 4 different edible shrooms that look similar to that one and to my eyes they all look the same, and idk about you but the level of anxiety I’d feel preparing dinner with something that is as far as i can tell edible would be unreal
He explained to me that one mushroom was edible and delicious. And that it could be found in the forests in the United States. The other, identical looking mushroom can be found in European forests. That one liquifies your internal organs and causes you to shit yourself to an agonising death.
Oh god, this wasn’t “chicken of the woods” (big orange mushroom that grows out of dead tree trunks), was it? Adam Ragusea did a video not long ago about it and acknowledged that mushrooms could be dangerous but figured this one was so easy to identify that there was no risk to telling people to forage it. Even if a mistake is a one-in-a-million chance, the dude has like 2.5 million subscribers so he might have killed 2 or 3 people with it.
Probably not Chicken. We get it here in Europe as well, though it’s not as abundant as far as I know. We picked it in a course here, but I haven’t eaten it since America where it’s more trendy.
That page makes me not even want to eat mushrooms from the grocery store.
If chicken of the woods is growing from a yew tree, it can be dangerous.
It sounds like the answer to your question is probably within that same video you watched.
Don’t be a shitty.
A shitty what!?!?
Don’t munch on a hunch
Some of the good tasting butterfiles evolved to taste foul to increase their chance of survival. Mushrooms on the other hand have mastered the art of deception. What can heal the brain can also force you to die a painful death.
Huh, that’s really interesting about the butterflies. Do you know if that’s how Pipevines & Viceroys developed their poison?
I didn’t know there were poisonous butterflies until I read about Pipevines coating their clutches with poison for protection.
I found out about mushrooms the fun way.
Viceroys usually trap their enemies in a closed room and let in poison gas.
Well, that’s awesome. I hope to photograph a Viceroy one day, but I don’t think I’m in their current habitat.
I baby sat for a kid whose mom was a herpetologist. She showed me the line on the Viceroy’s wings, differentiating it from a Monarch, and taught me it was poisonous to predators.
Then she stuck a snapping turtle in my face, scarring me for life. She was pretty damn awesome.
I’m not sure if you missed the Star Wars reference or not?
…dammit. 🫥
Yes, evolution is a reaction in response to stimuli and dangers present in their environment. Another example this time provided by Darwin is the case with peppered moths. The majority were white colored as they found protection being blended in to the light colored environment.
The industrial revolution introduced pollution that changed the color of nature, in response the black colored moths quickly gained the majority because they blended in better so they had a greater chance to survive, years later once the pollution improved the white moths once again thrived because of the incredibly complex quick acting process of natures natural selection.
Ah, very cool! Thanks! I remember the Pepper Moths lesson from bio, but guess I just never considered that butterflies may have evolved into poison production for protection.
Appreciate the info!
Fun fact about mushroom toxicity by contrast. Because the mushroom is only the reproductive organ of the organism, and you’re basically doing it a favour by picking it and spreading its spores everywhere, theres no evolutionary pressure for it to evolve toxicity to humans. So the compounds in mushrooms that are toxic to us likely exist for other purposes, and are only toxic to us by coincidence.
For this reason the proportion of species of mushrooms that are safe vs. the number that are toxic is greater than with plants. Because plants have had selective pressure to evolve poisons that discourage or prevent herbivory. So if you walk into an unfamiliar forest and pick one plant and one mushroom to eat at random, it’s more likely the plant is the bigger danger.
Of course I absolutely do not condone eating plants or fungi at random unless you intend to have a painful death.
FYI you can actually safely lick all mushrooms that we know off. The bad ones will taste bitter if there’s every a confusion between the species. Though if you’re really unsure don’t risk it.
My friend forages for porcini mushrooms out near Tahoe. I thankfully don’t like mushrooms, so he’s not offended when I decline, but idgaf how good he is at finding them, it only takes 1 fuckup and you’re dead. He says there’s no mushrooms that look like it and as long as you only look for that one, you’ll be fine. Frankly imo mushrooms are nasty as hell even when you get the kind you know won’t kill you at the store. I have no desire to risk my life to eat wild fungus.
Idk if op meant to fearmonger, but mushrooms are hardly ever toxic and hardly ever fatal.
It is now thought that of the approximately 100,000 known fungi species found worldwide, about 100 of them are poisonous to humans.[14] However, by far the majority of mushroom poisonings are not fatal,[15] and the majority of fatal poisonings are attributable to the Amanita phalloides mushroom
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_poisoning
That said, definitely be safe and if you arent sure, dont eat it.
I’m less interested in the total number of species, and more interested in my likelihood of holding one
100/100000 = 1 in 1000 or 0.1% chance its gonna poison you
Possibly, but which species are more common? Maybe poisonous mushrooms are 0.1% of the number of species, but 10% of the number of mushrooms growing.
“Maybe”
Why not look it up like I did instead of postulating and nothing more?
My point is that you did not account for how common each species is
Neither did you
That didn’t sound right, my experience that depending on luck and season, somewhere between 50 and 90 % of big mushrooms I come across in a forest are poisonous or at least disgusting. I admit it’s a very wild estimate and I’m very far from knowing all the mushroom I come across, but still, that seems like a big contradiction. So I followed your link to the primary article.
I suspected that they might only count potentially lethal mushrooms, but no, it indeed seems they count even those that only make you nauseous. The problem is in the other number. The 100 000 means all funghi, it includes for example all yeasts. Most funghi don’t create mushrooms that anyone would consider picking. So the ratio you calculated below is WAY off.
I would also like to note that the number 100 seems to come from a very simple PubMed search. Basically, if nobody wrote a paper about someone being sick after eating a mushroom, they wouldn’t find it. I don’t think that would mean that many foraged mushrooms would be missed, but it is a limitation worth knowing about.
Tasting bad doesnt mean poisonous though, and yes most mushrooms taste like spoiled dirt
Never had a problem in middle temperate Europe or heard about anyone who had.
I even pick up these fuckers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrolepiota_procera though many avoid them because of relative similarities to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides.
It is delicious and like the best nature has to offer here. You coat it in breadcrumbs and cook in oil on a pan. It tastes better than any steak. However it is a pain in the ass to find and a real treasure.
Can be confused with these deadly mushrooms too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinoderma_asperum (they are much closer looking than wiki suggests).
Still, one of my two most favorite mushrooms.
Honestly even if I happened to eat a mildly poisonous shroom (which never happened) it would be fine for me personally. There is huge amount of edible mushrooms but we stick to few select safe ones that are hard to mistake.
I have done much worse things to my body with drugs and alcohol poisoning every other day. One instance of light poisoning per year or something like that would be like nothing. Not that it ever happened because I stick to the rules my parents teached me and their parents teached them and so on.
I had food poisoning more times (above zero) than mushroom poisoning.
I wouldn’t dare to pick mushrooms abroad. I wonder if climate change will fuck us one day though.
Not so much Amanita phalloides as Amanita pantherina, that one looks much more similar. But I agree, if you know what you’re doing and don’t pick mushrooms with which you don’t have experience with and aren’t sure about, you’re good.
I used to pick up even Amanita rubescens, an acual (although edible and tasty) Amanita, so even more similar to poisonous ones. But I didn’t have an opportunity for quite a few years and now I wouldn’t dare, until I got an opportunity to verify with someone experienced and trustworthy.
If your family has been hunting mushrooms in the area for a few generations and you’ve been going with them as a kid (and you’re not dumber than the mushrooms) you’re almost certainly fine.
If not, don’t bother, you’ll end up poisoning yourself (and possibly others) and probably ruining the forest for those who know what they’re doing.
Pick shaggy ink caps
