Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
Written by a leading expert on fungi, this book stretches our usual understanding of life. There are slime moulds that can design efficient transport systems, fungi that render ants into zombies, others that enhance human understanding by expanding neural networks, and multitudes of earthbound varieties that live in symbiotic relationships with plants’ root systems, allowing the nutrients from the soil to enter the plant. Virtually all life depends on these fungal mycorrhizal networks in the soil. Even more mind-blowing is the revelation that virtually all the plants and animals we know, including ourselves, are not discrete organisms, but vast ecosystems of fungi, bacteria and other microbes, all working together, co-operating and trading molecules with one another. This book shows how life really is entangled – not just in that we depend on our environment to survive, but that the ecosystem within us is virtually indistinguishable from who we are.
