world's largest organism

this thing is truly massive

Biggest living thing; Huge mushroom in Oregon
Armillaria ostoyae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oh yeah I've read about that, cool.

Isn't the worlds biggest organism not the world though?

Whoa! Of all things to take over the planet...a damn mushroom sprouting fungus growing underground. Smart. It's stealthy, and slowly killing trees to deprive us of our oxygen.

So was the stringy stuff that guy was holding growing underground in a massive single root network, digging into the tree trunk, and sprouting 100 lb. mushrooms when it reached the outside? That's pretty insane.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Staurm

Oh yeah I've read about that, cool.

Isn't the worlds biggest organism not the world though?

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That's exactly what I was thinking haha. In Hawaii they got these tree's and it's just one tree, but the branches form down and take root I think. Looks like a shitload of trees, but it's just one. I think it spreads for a mile too.

sorry, I read the title wrong...and I thought there was going to be a kickass video...:(:wtf: guess I'll read the title more closely next time..

i was reading on it and one of the more fascinating attributes is that several independent colonies can merge to form one big colony.

Geesh, I wish people would learn how to spell. It's O-R-G-A-S-M.

So this fungus. . .would it happen to get you high? lol

The world as an organism... I think for this purpose we have to limit things with completely homogenous DNA to our definition of an organism... otherwise we have to start including colonial organisms such as sea corals and termites... That mushroom is NEAT.

Ever heard of symbiosis? Multiosis? My defintion of an organism has got nowt to do with genes, the earth can be viewed as a single organism, structurally closed and with a flow of energy through it from the sun that sustains it through principles of networking and self organisation, same as every other organism. Are organisms as we understand then in the classical world homogenous wrt to DNA?

Yup.. it becomes a philosophical at some point .. If you consider in the lowly Human we have more bacteria in us than Cells in our body, leads to consider if we are but vessels for their higher life forms...

if the earth can be the biggest organism then cant the universe, eh??