Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body And Let It Run Wild

Summary (because this is a weird one!):

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Cornell University in the US and the University of Florence in Italy took steps to find out, putting a culture of the edible mushroom species *Pleurotus eryngii* (also known as the king oyster mushroom) in control of a pair of vehicles, which can twitch and roll across a flat surface.

Through a series of experiments, the researchers showed it was possible to use the mushroom’s electrophysiological activity as a means of translating environmental cues into directives, which could, in turn, be used to drive a mechanical device’s movements.

Read the peer-reviewed research here: [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019)