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We sure do like our Fungi (lemmynsfw.com)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was introduced yesterday to the FIMS hypothesis by PBS Eons.

The Fungal-Infection-Mammalian-Selection (hey that ryhmes!) hypothesis asks the question of why reptiles didn't bounce back as much as mammals did after the asteroid K/Pg extinction event.

After all, they need less energy than mammals as cold-blooded creatures, and they produce way way more offspring than mammals.

One theory is fungi: there was an explosion in fungal activity after the asteroid due to the now dark and dingy hellhole the Earth became, and a ton of fungal spores were floating around at the time, as seen in geological record.

Apparently fungal infections are not that deadly to mammals (it just irritates us), but were disastrous for reptiles. Plus us mammals had a new food source in the absence of plants and meat.

There's no conclusive proof, still, it's an interesting theory as to why the dinosaurs didn't bounce back and why us mammals took over.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (3 children)

You know, I was convinced that my chickens would eat any leftovers from the fridge that were about to go bad, but the one thing that they wouldn't touch was mushrooms. I didn't realize that the reason for that went all the way back to the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

I mean maybe haha - I think they've adapted to eat them just fine since then

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's a cool fact, do you have a source I could check out and read through? I tried some light web searching but couldn't find anything saying this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No, it was just an observation about the backyard chickens I used to have. I have no idea if my chickens couldn't eat mushrooms or if they just didn't care for them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

ahh, that makes sense, thanks. Yeah, in what brief research I did, it does appear like there are a lot of mushrooms that aren't safe for chickens and lizards, possibly due to their biological differences, but that there were still a good number of mushrooms they could eat.

The interesting thing you were alluding to is that they have some biological instinct to not eat shrooms because maybe it wiped a lot of them out at one point. That'd be super cool to link :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

i'd imagine it's more down to mushrooms being kinda hard to digest (even humans struggle with this, especially if we're not used to eating mushrooms) and basically just being textured water with few nutrients.