Irishwhistler
Been spending a lot of time on here!
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2018
- Messages
- 1,898
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- Location
- New England
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Forest Floor ~ Something has been nibbling.
Cheers,
Mike
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Mike you found yourself waking up in the tree tops lately???? Fungus make some interesting subjects.
hope these are okay to eat!! great photo
I spend a good deal of time in the outdoor world, the most happy place in the world for me.
hope these are okay to eat!! great photo
thank you for all the information..very interesting... there are so many types of mushrooms..hope these are okay to eat!! great photo
Dr. John Rippon, an IMA member and world expert on fungal diseases, squirrels have an interesting adaptation that allows them to eat mushrooms containing deadly amanita-toxins without being affected. There are three important chemicals in the amanitas. Two will knock you right off, but are destroyed in cooking. The third one is the interesting one: it consists of the second amanitin, bound tightly to a glycoprotein molecule. When we digest the mushroom, the enzymes in our gut break the bond between the toxin and the glycoprotein, leaving the toxin free to enter our bloodstream, while the glycoprotein is excreted (a glycoprotein is a mucus molecule, in case you don't know). What the squirrels have done is line their gut with a toxin-compatible glycoprotein, so that as soon as it gets split from its original glycoprotein molecule, it gets rebound to the squirrel glycoprotein, and excreted along with it. Obviously, the squirrels don't cook their food to destroy the first two molecules, but presumably those get bound in exactly the same way. Thus, squirrels and a few other animals (guinea pigs also, I believe) can eat mushrooms that are highly toxic to other animals with no ill effects.
Cheers,
Mike