Psilocybin and Cathinone found in fungi-infected cicadas

Cream Gravy?

Cream Gravy?

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It amazes me the way fungi control insect hosts. So damn trippy!



And to his shock, he found that the banger-wings were loaded with psilocybin?the potent hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms. ?At first, I thought: There?s absolutely no way,? he says. ?It seemed impossible.? After all, no one has ever detected psilocybin in anything other than mushrooms, and those fungi have been evolving separately from Massospora for around 900 million years.
Click to expand...

Rest of the article here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science...rasite-drugs-its-hosts/566324/?utm_source=twb
 
That's incredible! I wonder if those two molecules have ever been found in the same place before.

EDIT: As far as I can tell they have not.
 
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Apparently, the psilocybin encourages the bugs to lose appetite and the cathinone helps them forget their butt fell off and makes them horny so they spread the spores to other cicadas. As far as I can tell, bugs don't experience trips the way we do, as psilocybin was evolved to discourage things from eating fungi or eating the fungi's food sources.

It's information such as this that makes me happy to be alive heheh. So interesting.
 
That is...what?

Man, that is one of the most interesting things I've heard in a long while.

I'm never again looking at a cicada in the same way. I wonder what they taste like. ;)
 
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