Why Is Honey Fungus Considered the Largest Living Creature on Earth? Scientists Search for Reasons

While the blue whale is known for being the largest animal known to exist on this planet, a mushroom species called honey fungus is said to be the largest creature on Earth.

As indicated in a Sunday Vision report, even though the said aquatic animal is 30 meters long and weighs 180 tons, it "pales next to" this so-called "largest recorded organism."

Such a huge organism is a specimen of the fungus Armillaria ostoyae, inhabiting the Malheur Forest in the Blue Mountains in Oregon in the United States, is occupying a 965-hectare area, which is equivalent to 1,350 football fields, or one-twentieth of the Buenos Aires roof.

Commonly called the honey fungus, this gigantic mushroom is described as a poisonous pathogen of pine roots and other woody species feeding on both living and decomposing substances.

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Science Times - Why is Honey Fungus Considered the Largest Living Creature on Earth? Scientists Search for Reasons

(Photo: AJC1 from the UK on Wikimedia Commons)
Honey Fungus

Equivalent to Up to 200 Blue Whales

The Guinness World Records describe the honey fungus weighing from 6,800 to 3,170 tons. Meaning, it's as heavy as up to 200 blue whales.

The species was discovered around 20 years ago by the United States Forest Service scientists. Its discovery was published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research in 2003.

To validate it was the same as an armillaria creature or a clonal colony, the researchers took over 100 specimens and conducted a DNA analysis.

And, even though a fake picture of a large hat, approximately seven to eight meters high, has spread in different social networks surrounded by tourists or insolently raised in the middle of the logs, this mushroom species is, in fact, more secretive.

Almost the entire organism even expands underground, displaying a complex network of what's described as "filamentous, rope-like structures" identified fungal chordates or rhizomes. More so, the honey fungus looks like a root.

Armillaria Ostoyae

Also, in the research, the scientists discovered and distinguished other organisms of the same species with meeker extensions of 20, 95, 195, and 260 hectares.

Even though researchers are even assuming that many of these organisms barely protrude within the radius of a number of trees. More often than not, they live only a few years.

Armillaria ostoyae, as described in First Nature, is just one of approximately 40 species of honeysuckle fungi or armillaria that have been identified all over the world that play a vital role in the so-called "ecosystems.

Specialists say the genus's success in species diversity and geographical distribution can be attributed to several factors, including high adaptability to flexibility to changing environments and their various approaches for obtaining and scattering food.

Nonetheless, from a human perspective, Armillaria's environmental success has positive and negative sides.

Mushroom Species Difficult to Control

In a 2019 review article published in the Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology, Swiss, French, and Canadian authors specified that by wood's decomposition, Armillaria helps with carbon recycling and minerals in forest ecosystems which include farms for the production of timber, vineyards, parks, orchards, and gardens.

Specifically, selective killing of trees helps replace individuals or even species, favoring both biodiversity and regeneration. These are the same reasons these species are quite successful; explain how challenging it is to control them.

According to NS Myron Smith, a professor at the Department of Biology in the Ottawa, Canada-based Carleton University, armillaria species generally represent a favorable natural force "in the forest ecosystem."

The professor explained that they function by weakening dry and diseased trees and decomposing and recycling nutrients in the forest.

Smith, an expert on giant mushrooms, was part of a team three decades ago that found the gigantic mycelium of Armillaria Gallica, described in the Texas Mushrooms site and which, at that time, was calculated to be "37 hectares in size, weighing about 100 tons, and was about 1,500 years old.

The team failed as a new analysis in 2018 revealed that the species covers a 75-hectare area, with a 400-ton weight, and aged 2,500 years old.

Related information about the biggest creature on Earth is shown on Atlas Pro's YouTube video below: