The mycologist Lynne Boddy once made a scale model of Britain out of soil, placing blocks of fungus-colonised wood at the points of the major cities; the blocks were sized proportionately to the places they represented. Mycelial networks quickly grew between the blocks: the web they created reproduced the pattern of the UK’s motorways (‘You could

magine that you could pass through two doors at once. It’s inconceivable, yet fungi do it all the time.

When faced with a forked path, fungal hyphae don’t have to choose one or the other. They can branch and take both routes. One can confront hyphae with microscopic labyrinths and watch how they nose their way around. If obstructed, they branch.

“From the mycelial ‘wood wide web’ to smart slime molds and political honeybees, science is demonstrating that humans don’t monopolize language or intelligence.”