On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 22:41:53 -0600, skip wrote: > > Steven> The world seems to be flat, the sun appears to rotate around the > Steven> Earth, and mushrooms look like they are more closely related to > Steven> plants than to animals, but none of these things are actually > Steven> the case. > > Where can I read about mushrooms as animals?
Mushrooms, like all fungi, aren't animals. The old divide of the living world into animals and plants has been obsolete in biology for decades. Biologists today generally follow Woese's "Six Kingdoms": Eubacteria ("ordinary bacteria") Archaebacteria ("extrophile bacteria") Fungi Plantae (plants) Animalia (animals) Protista (eukaryotes that are neither fungi, plants or animals -- a grab-bag of "things left over" such as protozoa and algae) Notice that, although to the naked microscope eubacteria and archaebacteria seem very similar, their biochemistry is radically different -- more so than (say) an oak tree and you or I. Based on molecular and DNA evidence, fungi and animals are more similar than fungi and plants. (Remember that animals include many thousands of species that don't walk or crawl or fly, beasties like corals, sponges and other creatures that look superficially plant-like.) Both animals and fungi rely on plants to convert solar energy into chemical forms that they can digest. The best evidence is that the animal kingdom (including, naturally, human beings) and fungi split during the Mesoproterozoic Era, approximately 1500-2000 million years ago. The common ancestor ("concestor") of animals and fungi split from plants not long before that, where by "not long" I of course mean "many hundreds of millions of years". Richard Dawkins' excellent book "The Ancestor's Tale" is worth reading for more about this. But keep in mind that biology is in a constant state of flux these days, with new molecular discoveries virtually every day, so dates are naturally uncertain and subject to revision. (Aside: this willingness, even desire, to revise old beliefs in the light of new evidence disproves the Creationist canard that evolution is a matter of faith rather than science -- but I digress.) See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungi for more about fungi including mushrooms, although regrettably little on their evolutionary relationship with other species. Follow the references there to discover more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_%28biology%29 discusses the biological kingdoms -- again, treat Wikipedia as the start, not the end, of your reading :) -- Steven. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list