Glow-in-the-Dark Mushrooms: Nature’s Night Lights | National Geographic

No one knows why mushrooms in northern Brazil glow at night. Researchers are using LED-lit mushrooms to mimic nature in order to find out.

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PHOTOGRAPHERS: David Liitschwager and Steve Haddock
VIDEOGRAPHER: Anand Varma
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Glow-in-the-Dark Mushrooms: Nature’s Night Lights | National Geographic

National Geographic

[NatGeo]

Watch: No one knows why mushrooms in northern Brazil glow at night—so researchers are using LED-lit mushrooms to mimic nature and to find out.

[Aeronautgal]

Someone should build a garden or theme park just filled with all kinds of bioluminescent plants and animals - I bet people from all over the world would want to see it

[mantislife]

I'm assuming they evolved to glow so that insects will be drawn to them, walk all over the spores underneath the mushrooms then go hide in environments where those spores thrive in.

[ProximaCentauri]

We used to see super lots of these bioluminescent mashrooms in my hometown in the Philippines but after the 1990s, they just stopped appearing... 😢

[IndoLiberation]

now try to modify the gene and create mutated grass with this, imagine the entire Savannah are glowing, that would be hillarious lol

[john]

All right, so people are trying to conquer the space and yet they don’t know why the mushrooms are luminous. Just amazing.

[markofthedevil]

I worked at a greenhouse and frequently saw amazing cultures with profound colors and unique unidentifiable and purple is all I could describe now. Really cool memories though.

[htvsantos]

Now I feel like playing Skyrim and going to look for ingredients lel

[aishaexo-l]

It makes me feel like I'm in Pandora 😱💕

[MotherNature]

In India there are few bioluminescent forest in Western ghat area in Goa.

[TheChoppergunner]

Plot twist: those mushrooms are RadioActive.

[pheelmacababe]

now in 2020, i understand what mushrooms can do for us and why they want to be found, even in the dark ;)

[ongargovictoriachannel]

When I was a child...me and my friends search the Phosphor Mushroom in the river side
It's very much....and when the night it's so lighting..but now...it tragedy

[keyofallworlds]

I would like these as a night light please

[vanderheijden]

fascinating! the elegance and ingenuity of nature never ceases to inspire and fascinate me

[quietperson]

Could it be to spread their spores or something like that.

[fishyfish]

New species of glowing mushrooms were discovered in the state of Meghalaya in India where I live last year

[elixontade]

Bioluminescense mushrooms here in the philippines are small. And its light at night is yellow. Here in the philippines there is only one native bioluminescene that I know of but it is interesting if you see it at night

[walkerbfa]

i think nature is magical. if human didn’t polute the environment, our earth could have been like Pandora from Avatar (2009), everything would be sparkling at night

[carolinadelaossa]

Wah I didn't know mushrooms can do that. They remind me so much of Blackreach