Mushrule

Andromeda@beehaw.org to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 222 points –
14

Sometimes I wonder how awful it would be to be a hungry prehistoric man looking for a bite to eat. It's either starvation, a delicious treat that will sustain the life of you and yours, or nerve-searing hyper-poison that gives you acute scrote-rot. Roll the fucking dice, Thogg.

The mushroom hunting guide I use is not too far off from this

Let's just say I don't actually eat what I find

Obviously there are mushrooms like this, but i feel like a lot of forageables are pretty easy to id

( and generally would just give you an upset stomach vs killing you)

If it's got blue it's for you

If not let it rot

That's my motto

Chinese rules of thumb have killed many Chinese Australians and Americans via death cap (truth in naming) mushrooms that look like paddy straw mushrooms

The amatoxins in deathcap and its relatives is so incredibly scary... Like, picograms of the stuff in an adult human will just basically turn them off...

I mean, it’s a decent survival strategy for the mushroom, especially depending on where the animal dies.

Imagine that boost of nutrients

A decent survival strategy would be to be poisonous and recognizably colored. If you look like any other mushroom, it's just revenge-poisoning. Possibly with the side effect of animals not eating any mushrooms, but that doesn't sound like something that's in a given mushroom species' interest.