A mushroom that eats animals sounds like a horror story. But the oyster mushroom is a full-bloodied carnivore that feeds on roundworms, killing its prey using a nerve gas.
Even though oyster mushrooms are a prized food delicacy, don’t be fooled; they kill nematodes, tiny roundworms. The oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus usually grows on dead or dying trees, but the wood has so little protein that the fungus turns to consuming nematodes for nourishment. It uses a lethal array of tiny balls attached to the hypae, the long hair-like filaments of the fungus. When a nematode brushes past a ball it instantly bursts, paralysing and killing the tiny worm in minutes. The fungal filament then penetrates the carcass, dissolving its tissues and sucking out the nutrients.
A recent study discovered that the ball of the fungus kills its victims by releasing a deadly nerve agent called 3-octanone. This triggers a huge and lethal flood of calcium ions in the nematode’s nerves and muscles, causing instant paralysis followed by death from rigor mortis.
So deadly are oyster mushrooms that the researchers speculated they might even be used to kill nematodes that attack crop plants.
