Sparky's Journal

📅 October 21st, 2026

Sparky’s Journal
When Mushrooms Start Acting Electrical🍄 

By JoshTheSparky.com (@JoshTheSparky4) (@JoshTheSparky on X)

I’ve been thinking about something pretty weird lately.

We normally think about electricity as something humans built.

Wires. Circuits. Motors. Transformers. Power grids.

But electricity itself isn't something we invented. It’s a natural part of biology.

And apparently, fungi are doing some pretty interesting things with it.

Take blue oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus).

The mushroom itself is only part of the organism. Most of the action is happening through the mycelium — the network of microscopic fungal threads growing through its environment.

And those fungal networks can produce and propagate electrical signals.

That immediately caught my attention because, as an electrician, I naturally think about signals in terms of voltage, current, frequency, and transmission.

Obviously, a mushroom isn't running 120 volts through a piece of Romex.

But biological systems can still generate electrical potentials and use changes in those electrical signals as part of how they respond to their environment.

⚡ So Are Mushrooms "Talking" With Electricity?

This is where things get really interesting — and where the internet tends to get carried away.

Researchers have recorded electrical activity in fungi and found that these signals can occur as spikes and patterns that vary over time.

Some studies have even looked at whether those patterns contain repeatable structures that could represent a form of information transmission.

But I wouldn't call it a mushroom language.

At least not yet.

It's more accurate to say that fungi have electrical signaling systems that scientists are still trying to understand.

And that's already fascinating enough.

📡 What Does "Frequency" Have To Do With It?

When people hear that fungi communicate through "frequencies," it's easy to picture mushrooms broadcasting some kind of biological radio signal.

That's not really what's happening.

The electrical activity being measured is part of the organism's internal signaling. Researchers can analyze the timing and frequency characteristics of those electrical fluctuations, but that doesn't mean mushrooms are intentionally transmitting radio waves through the air.

It's closer to thinking about a biological electrical network than a wireless transmitter.

And fungi aren't limited to electricity either.

They also use chemical signaling, physical changes, and interactions between their cells and surrounding organisms.

🌱 And Plants Do It Too

This gets even more interesting when you look at plants.

Plants can generate electrical signals in response to things like injury, touch, environmental changes, and other stimuli.

Their electrical activity can interact with chemical signaling and other biological processes.

Fungi and plants can also form incredibly complex relationships through mycorrhizal networks, where fungal hyphae connect with plant roots.

So when you start looking closely, the natural world is full of systems that move information without anything resembling a human-made communication network.

No copper wire.

No circuit board.

No microcontroller.

Yet information is still being detected, transmitted, and acted upon.

⚡ The Electrician's Perspective

This is the part I find coolest.

As electricians, we're used to thinking about electricity as something that flows through conductors that we install.

But electricity is much bigger than that.

The same fundamental concept of electrical potential exists throughout biology.

Humans use electrical signals in our nervous systems.

Plants use electrical signaling.

Fungi exhibit electrical activity.

Cells maintain electrical gradients across membranes.

The technology we build is essentially taking principles that already exist in nature and learning how to control them.

So the next time you see a blue oyster mushroom growing on a log, you're not just looking at a mushroom.

You're looking at part of a living network capable of generating electrical activity and responding to information around it.

And honestly...

that's pretty damn cool.

Keep questioning how the world works.

— Josh The Sparky ⚡

JoshTheSparky.com is an independent educational resource. Scientific findings about fungal electrical signaling are an active area of research, and the interpretation of these signals is still developing.