Why The Magic? (magic mushrooms)

submitted by boston_blackie from buttondown.email

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[–]IMissPorn 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That was an awful lot of words for just a couple interesting ideas.

  1. Fungi in the Psilocybe genus evolved the ability to make psilocybin more than once. Some fungi outside this genus gained the ability too, but they probably got it via horizontal gene transfer, i.e. absorbing DNA from Psilocybe fungi, which is something fungi do apparently.
  2. Aside from the obvious use of making them less tempting snacks, maybe when animals (in particular they suggest snails, for some reason) got high and wandered off it helped spread the spores.

That's it.