Fungal Intelligence & the Wood Wide Web
Beneath our feet lies an ancient internet made of fungi. Mycelium networks connect trees across entire forests, sharing nutrients, water, and chemical signals through a vast underground web. A single slime mold can solve the Tokyo railway problem. Fairy rings encode centuries of fungal growth. Decomposers recycle entire ecosystems. Explore 10 simulations of the hidden intelligence that sustains life on Earth—from hyphal tip growth to the emergent architecture of the wood wide web.
How fungi grow, branch, reproduce, and colonize their environment through elegant biological algorithms.
Watch fungal hyphae extend their tips, branching stochastically and sensing nutrient gradients. The fractal-like network emerges from simple growth rules. Click to place nutrient sources and guide the mycelium.
Fungi grow radially outward, consuming nutrients and depositing self-inhibitory compounds. The result: expanding rings with mushrooms fruiting at the active growth front. Based on reaction-diffusion models of fungal autotoxicity.
Billions of spores launch from mushroom gills into wind currents. Track their trajectories through turbulence, gravity, and thermal updrafts. Watch the dispersal kernel emerge as spores land and germinate into new colonies.
Fungi solve optimization problems, form efficient transport networks, and exhibit collective intelligence without a brain.
Thousands of virtual slime mold agents follow simple rules—deposit trail, sense, turn—yet collectively find near-optimal paths between food sources. Inspired by the famous experiment where Physarum replicated the Tokyo railway.
Compare mycelium network structure to scale-free, random, and small-world graphs. Analyze degree distribution, clustering coefficients, and resilience. Remove hub nodes to see how network fragmentation differs between topologies.
The Tero model of Physarum: tubes carrying flow thicken via positive feedback; unused tubes decay. Watch the network self-optimize to find efficient paths between sources and sinks, routing intelligently around obstacles.
Fungi as the connective tissue of ecosystems: symbiosis with trees, decomposition of organic matter, and nutrient cycling.
Trees share carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus through mycorrhizal networks. Mother trees support shaded seedlings. Stress a tree and watch its neighbors send nutrients through fungal highways. Click any tree to explore its connections.
Saprotrophic fungi secrete enzymes to break down dead wood and leaves. Watch mycelium colonize organic matter and release carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus back into the soil. Drop logs and trigger leaf storms to feed the decomposers.
A microscopic view of the root-fungus interface. Compare ectomycorrhiza (fungal mantles around roots) with arbuscular mycorrhiza (tree-shaped structures inside root cells). Watch carbon, phosphorus, and water particles flow across the symbiotic boundary.
The complete picture: trees photosynthesize, fungi decompose, mycorrhizal networks connect everything. Seasons cycle, species compete, mushrooms fruit in autumn. Fell a tree or trigger a drought to see how the ecosystem responds.