These Bizarre Fungi Resemble Corpse Fingers, UFOs, Tongues
Many fungi, including mushrooms, are so diverse they can look like other living things—including us.
Who'd have thought the alien invasion would be so stinkin' cute?
A new species of mushroom, Geastrum britannicum, native to the United Kingdom, was announced in the journal Persoonia earlier this year. To some, the fungi's limb-like stalks and rounded "heads" resemble tiny people.
"It's more of a camera-angle thing," Debbie Viess, of the Bay Area Mycological Society in California, says via email. Viess thinks G. britannicum looks more like mini-aliens. (Check out a mushroom named for Spongebob Squarepants.)
At Saturday's Weird Animal Question of the Week, we were so beguiled by these 'shroom shapes that we took the author's prerogative to look into more mushrooms that take on other personas.
"A rather anatomical presentation" is how Timothy James, a mycologist at
