{"id":914007,"date":"2026-11-11T21:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T21:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/914007\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T21:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T21:18:09","slug":"scientists-discovered-a-mushroom-thats-both-toxic-and-trippy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/914007\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discovered a Mushroom That’s Both Toxic and Trippy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the swamps of Florida, there exists a tiny brown mushroom quite unlike anything humans have seen before: one that\u2019s toxic and trippy at the same time.<\/p>\n

In a study out today, researchers at the University of Florida and other institutions describe a mushroom that can pump out both deadly amatoxins and psilocybin, the active ingredient responsible for the psychedelic effects of recreationally used magic mushrooms. The genetics of this species\u2014nicknamed the \u201cdark magic mushroom\u201d\u2014may tell us something important about fungi and their evolution, the researchers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumanity\u2019s cultural infatuation with mushrooms has long been bookended by two categories: mushrooms that induce psychedelic experiences and mushrooms that are deadly toxic. Our discovery of the \u2018dark magic mushroom\u2019 represents an unusual convergence of worlds, where we now know of this rare and unusual species that produces the chemistry responsible for both properties,\u201d lead author Andrew Kunik, a fungal biologist at the University of Florida, told Gizmodo.<\/p>\n

The dark magic mushroom <\/p>\n

As is often the case in science, Kunik and his team\u2019s discovery was more fortuitous than intentional.<\/p>\n

The team originally set out to learn more about a broad and hard-to-distinguish group of fungi known as little brown mushrooms<\/a>; they were specifically hoping to find species belonging to the genus Galerina that could produce amatoxins, one of the main compounds that make some mushrooms especially deadly to consume, including the aptly-named death cap mushroom (Amanita phalloides).<\/p>\n

Between January 2024 and September 2025, they collected various specimens of\u00a0Galerina in the southeastern U.S. One of these specimens was an example of Galerina indica, a known but understudied species, and that\u2019s when things got weird.<\/p>\n

\"GalerinaScientists had previously characterized G. indica, but little was known about it until now. \u00a9 Andrew R. Kunik <\/p>\n

\u201cWe noticed that this mushroom\u2019s flesh turned blue when handled, which is sometimes associated with psilocybin production. When Michael Christopher and I performed the chemical analysis, it confirmed the presence of psilocybin, which helped explain the unusual blue bruising we had observed in the field,\u201d Kunik said.<\/p>\n

The team also found another previously unknown species of Galerina that only produced psilocybin. There is at least one other Galerina species thought to produce psilocybin, but Galerina indica is the first mushroom known to make both amatoxins and psilocybin. The team\u2019s findings were published<\/a> Wednesday in the journal Current Biology.<\/p>\n

An acquired magic trick and more to learn <\/p>\n

The team also conducted a genetic analysis of the mushrooms they found, which yielded further discoveries.<\/p>\n

For one, it\u2019s likely the ancestors of these mushrooms didn\u2019t inherently learn how to make psilocybin; rather, they picked up the genes for doing so the same way you might copy a recipe from a friend\u2019s cookbook. \u201cInterestingly, it appears to have acquired this ability through horizontal gene transfer from an unrelated fungus rather than having evolved the ability itself,\u201d Kunik explained.<\/p>\n

Horizontal gene transfer is commonly seen in bacteria and other microbes and is one reason why bacteria can easily learn how to dodge our antibiotics. But scientists have learned that more complex organisms like fungi can pull off this trick as well, and the genes for making psilocybin seem to be one of these traded commodities. It\u2019s likely the ancestor of G. indica picked up this ability sometime in the Miocene, Kunik said, which occurred between 23 and 5 million years ago.<\/p>\n

There are still plenty of mysteries left to resolve about the dark magic mushroom and its cousins. It\u2019s possible that the other psilocybin-making\u00a0Galerina species acquired these genes at a later point than G. indica, for instance, but it\u2019s also possible that the same ancient ancestor learned this trick, had many different lineages descend from it, and that all but two of these lineages eventually lost the genes for some reason.<\/p>\n

Scientists also don\u2019t fully understand why mushrooms evolved to produce either amatoxins or psilocybin. They do suspect these compounds help ward off fungi-eating predators, but there are still a lot of gaps to be resolved there. If that\u2019s true, though, then G. indica\u2018s mix of chemical cocktails might represent a unique defense strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be interesting to experimentally investigate how fungivorous animals, such as snails and nematodes, respond to these compounds and whether they provide the mushroom with some advantage in its natural environment,\u201d Kunik said.<\/p>\n

Kunik and his team aren\u2019t planning to directly follow up on their research, but they do hope others can explore some of these questions and possibly find other species that might have the same dual ability.<\/p>\n

Just in case you\u2019re wondering, though: By no means should anyone try to personally dabble in this particular dark magic.\u00a0\u201cDo not eat this mushroom!\u201d Kunik said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the swamps of Florida, there exists a tiny brown mushroom quite unlike anything humans have seen before:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[8037,81444,344837,79],"class_list":["post-914007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-biology","tag-fungi","tag-psychedelic-mushrooms","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}