I wonder if there exists people who aggressively believe mushrooms are plants, similar to people who defend Pluto as a planet.

ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 273 points –

It was only in 1969 (nice) that fungi officially became its own separate kingdom.

115

Pluto is a mushroom

No, Pluto is a plant.

No. Pluto is an animal.

Source: Disney Wiki

Is he though? He’s anthropomorphic, speaks clear English, and owns a dog.

Pluto is an animal-shaped person.

Wait no that’s Goofy. Pluto is an animal owned by an animal-shaped person!

I overheard someone talking about veganism and said they only eat plants. I asked them about mushrooms, “of course it's fine, those are plants”.
No amount of convincing worked.

So I've seen it once.

Mushrooms are plants in the culinary sense. Like strawberries, blackberries and raspberries are berries in the culinary sense.

Yup. Inside culinary classifications, fungi don't exist. Outside of culinary classifications, vegetables don't exist.

Culinary definition doesn't differentiate plants, but mushrooms are vegetables.

If anything is close to having a consciousness and experiencing an array of emotion, including suffering. That's a mushroom, much more than a plant.

The mycelium, maybe. That is definitely not the part of the mushroom that you eat.

so hang on, mushrooms are like uh, well not milk, but as if say a cow regrew its meat every season? or maybe like a lizard that regrows its tail?

mushrooms are weird, man

wild idea, would it be possible to hijack mycelium with animal DNA and make it grow mushroom shaped meat??

Actual animals are far more likely to feel pain that fungi. Do fungi even have a nervous system?

We actually suspect they do. They can also display intelligent behavior, from a certain definition of the concept.

First time hearing this but mushroom is a protein source so from diet perspective, I see it as a meet type food. Deff not vegatable

So are chickpeas or edamame meat to you? Because they have like 5 times as much protein by weight than mushrooms.

I would go with, based totally on feelz, that no because it generally note used like that.

As you think is all super science here, trust me bro

Mushrooms have some protein, but not very much. They aren't a very good source of protein

I think an issue here is that taxonomic and colloquial definitions don't always agree.

Spiders are colloquially bugs, but they're not taxonomically "true bugs" (which is itself a colloquialism for Hemiptera). Tomatos are colloquially vegetables but taxonomically fruits...but afaik vegetable is a purely colloquial term anyway.

And as someone else in the thread mentioned, colloquial berries are not always taxonomic berries.

So...colloquially, "plants" sorta means, "macroscopic multicellular living non-animal thing," but taxonomically it's something else.

Similarly, “a planet” can be understood in technical or colloquial context which changes the meaning. It can have a specific meaning or a vague flexible meaning, just like with berries.

BTW raspberries are my favorite berries… sort of. Watermelons are pretty good too.

Actually planet doesn't have any hard set definition, we kind of just do it case by case because its damn near impossible to come up with a rigid definition that doesn't suddenly classify some planets as moons or some moons as planets or create weird situations in which an object can switch between the two.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined in August 2006 that, in the Solar System, a planet is a celestial body that:

  1. is in orbit around the Sun,
  2. has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and
  3. has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet

And in that same article:

It has been argued that the definition is problematic because it depends on the location of the body: if a Mars-sized body were discovered in the inner Oort cloud, it would not have enough mass to clear out a neighbourhood that size and meet criterion 3. The requirement for hydrostatic equilibrium (criterion 2) is also universally treated loosely as simply a requirement for roundedness; Mercury is not actually in hydrostatic equilibrium, but is explicitly included by the IAU definition as a planet

That's not even addressing the issue of rogue planets which were ejected from their star system. Many estimates say they outnumber the stars. Obviously when a planet is ejected it doesn't just disintegrate but by that poor definition it's no longer a ""planet"", so it's clearly a problematic definition.

If you’re talking about tomatoes, the difference is the context, and it isn’t a choice between colloquial vs scientific taxonomy, but between culinary/nutritional vs botany/taxonomy (and). You can talk about either in a colloquial context or a formal context, though generally there isn’t much reason to talk about botany in a colloquial setting.

From a nutritional perspective, mushrooms are generally considered vegetables, too.

afaik vegetable is a purely colloquial term anyway.

I thought you were wrong but I looked it up and I appear to have been mistaken. It makes “tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables” sound nonsensical, as it implies that “vegetable” is a different taxonomical option, when really it’s just a word for objects with a particular collection of traits that are relevant in a different context. What we should he saying is “While tomatoes are not fruit in the food pyramid, taxonomically, they are.” Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though. Maybe “Tomatoes are vegetables AND fruits!” would solve that?

but what about berry club? which things count as berries now?

Fuck you op. Mushrooms are plants, Pluto is a planet, and that's the truth from one edge of this flat Earth to the other.

~disclaimer: this is a joke~

Honestly? Flat earth? It's not even funny as a joke. That entire movement has been so incredibly detrimental, and dangerous. It has shattered families, and been an instruction manual for other conspiracy theorists. And the worst thing of all is that it makes actual, real facts about how the earth is in, in reality, a hollow shell with a breathable atmosphere in its inferior, come across as just as crazy as flat earth. How are we supposed to spread the truth of hollow earth when flat earthers are out there making us look crazy? Just because hollow earth also points out that the government is lying about the earth doesn't mean we're the same! People need to know about hollow earth! Otherwise, we'll never be able to heal the housing market by building condos inside the earth!

That’s how we get morlocks, though

flat earthers are weird. the earth is obviously bowl shaped or the oceans would fall off. and cats would knock everything else off, thats just common sense!

Honestly? Flat earth? It's not even funny as a joke. That entire movement has been so incredibly detrimental, and dangerous. It has shattered families, and been an instruction manual for other conspiracy theorists. And the worst thing of all is that it makes actual, real facts about how the earth is in, in reality, a hollow shell with a breathable atmosphere in its inferior, come across as just as crazy as flat earth. How are we supposed to spread the truth of hollow earth when flat earthers are out there making us look crazy? Just because hollow earth also points out that the government is lying about the earth doesn't mean we're the same! People need to know about hollow earth! Otherwise, we'll never be able to heal the housing market by building condos inside the earth!

It's not a plant or an animal, but a secret third thing.

Plants are closer to humans than the mushrooms.

You sure about that, boss? http://tolweb.org/Eukaryotes

That's just the explanation of eukarya which lists animalia within the same super-group as fungi and plants being in a different one altogether. Any relationship with plants to humans (which are within animalia) or mushrooms could be a bit subjective.

Yes, fungi are closer to humans than plants. If you look at the reproductive cycle of all three though, plants have a closer amount of "sexes" to humans. Plants generally having "1" or 2 sexes; humans having 2. Fungi though...

Scratch that. Reverse it. And on we go

I've met people who were certain that bugs weren't animals

Hell I've met people that don't think humans are animals

Interestingly people who don't understand they are animals are the least human

like everything else in this thread, doesn't it depend on the context? like I'm willing to bet that if you polled a ton of people to "draw an animal" the overwhelming majority would draw vertebrates

That doesn't mean that the animals they don't draw aren't animals

Thanks plants vs zombies 😡😡

If Pluto is a planet, then Ceres is a planet too. CERES RIGHTS!

Let's just acknowledge that anything big enough to be round is a planet. That's the bare minimum criteria.

Orbit shapes and clear paths don't matter, the Solar system isn't a typical stellar system, many aren't so stable and ordered, especially in binary and triplet star systems. So the pedantry around the shapes of the orbits of the outer kuiper planets is a very silly thing to argue about. After all most orbits in binary and triplet systems aren't even predictable long term, let alone not circular.

So that makes Earth and Moon a binary planet system. I'm cool with that

I believe the rule of thumb is binary planets' barycentre is external to either body. This is the case with Pluto/Charon, I think it's also the case with Earth/Moon.

It is not the case with the earth and the moon. It would be if the moon was 40% more massive

Yeah, I went and checked after posting.

My hunch is that if the moon was closer it would 'drag' the barycentre closer to the moon.

Which, given the moon is slowly receeding, means it was probably a binary early on in the formation of the solar system.

Other way around, the further apart the objects are the less likely the barycentre is to be inside one of them, you can picture it as a rubber band with a dot drawn on it, the more you stretch it the further the dot gets from both ends even if it gets further from one end faster.

Pluto is a planet, though. It’s officially considered a “dwarf” planet, and as “dwarf” is just an adjective, it’s still a planet (just like a short person is still a person). The other 8 new dwarf planets (Ceres, Eris, Makemake, Haumea, Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus, and Sedna) are also all planets - so we have 17 planets total.

Seriously, though. By the same 3 criteria that Pluto isn’t a planet, Mercury isn’t (as it isn’t in hydrostatic equilibrium).

I mean Pluto IS a planet i guess what people mean when they say pluto is not a planet is that it is no longer part of our solar system

No, that's just you. I'm genuinely curious why you'd think anyone would ever make the argument Pluto isn't part of our solar system.

The definition of planet is completely subjective, whereas the definition of mushroom is based on science and evolution.

Some people believe the earth is flat, I don't think whether the definition is scientific or not matters much lmao

Planet used to mean wandering star, referring to 'stars' that didn't stay in one place but moved around with the days, months, years, or centuries. Obviously not a useful definition these days, I consider a planet a rocky body big enough that it's gravity makes it almost perfectly round.

From what I've seen, dudes that care that much about mushrooms are really fun guys.

...this would trigger a friend of mine so badly (fungi enthusiast and Pluto stan). I want to send it, but at the same time... I'm not sure I'd hear the end of it.

Send it and report back. I am interested in subscribing to their newsletter. You'll let them know, right?

Fun fact: mushrooms are closer to the animal kingdom than to the plant kingdom.

Yeah but we're not eating the whole thing we're just eating its sex organ

Except, in cheese and some sausages. Also, I'm not sure yeast counts, because it's usually dead by the time we eat it in our food.

not sure yeast counts because it's usually dead

As long as the organism is dead, we're not eating it? Time to have some steak then, surely that's not a cow!

lol, yeah, but when baking, the yeast gets destroyed pretty bad. i didn't dare call it yeast at that point, but maybe you're right.

I have family in Streator, IL, home of Clyde Tombaugh, so we're die hard planet pluto.

Similarly plate tectonics - not fully recognised until the 60s apparently.

I mean both classifications are arbitrary and made up, so defense of either side is equally valid (even if only because they're also equally invalid).

We don't even have a solid definition of what constitutes "life", or "consciousness", because we can't agree on what should be included, or how various aspects are defined.

In the end, words are just symbols or sounds that we try to - as consistently as possible - associate with ideas, but it's all made up.

That sounds scientifically incorrect. Mushrooms are closer to animals than they are to plants. They fundamentally do not resemble plants in any sense of the word, except maybe that they both grow in the ground.

Mushrooms are closer to animals than they are to plants

How? At first blush, this seems absurd.

Disclaimer, it's been a while since middle school biology class where we might have talked about this subject.

The things that we call mushrooms aren't the actual organism. That's just fruiting body of the organism, analogous to a flower in a plant. Picking the mushroom doesn't kill the organism, since the mushroom itself is really only a very small fraction of the entire organism. The actual organism is actually underground. The organism is large network Berg-like microorganisms that fused together into a complex system of "roots" called hyphae.

Hyphae do not photosynthesize like plants do, they eat things in the soil for their energy. They do not have a cellulose cell wall like plants do, their cell wall is made of chitin (the stuff that bugs use for their exoskeleton). Genetically, they are (very slightly) closer to animals than they are to plants. Morphologically, they resemble protists than anything else. Chronologically, they evolved significantly after plants evolved, and they evolved from a proto-animal lineage. In some species, the microorganisms that make up the hyphae can decide to unfuse and start living on their own (at that point, we call them yeasts). How and when they decide to fuse/unfuse is unknown and it's a fairly large area of research, especially since that transition is often associated with their ability to cause diseases (yeast infections).

Mushrooms are the closest things we have to aliens, and the fact that we just eat them and think nothing more of it is genuinely amusing to me

Interesting! So the part we pick is and eat is like a strawberry more than, say, lettuce.

Naively, it's easy to think: it grows in the ground, therefore, it's a plant. There's a lot more than meets the eye, though.

Mushrooms are the closest things we have to aliens

Star Trek: Let's figure out how to hook up the translator to Data so we can talk to them. Real life: Let's see whether they're tasty.

You can use mushrooms in Plants vs Zombies.

It isn’t called “Plants and Fungi vs Zombies.”

Ergo, mushrooms are plants.

Checkmate, atheists!

I've never even considered whether they're plants or not. I guess I always assumed they were, but now it makes sense that they're not. But I can't imagine anyone having a tizzy over it either way.

Yes, I've encountered a few people like this. Also, no one has ever heard of Archaea.