A mysterious mushroom has been found to induce vivid visions of tiny humans at work.
The same strange experience has been recorded by people living thousands of kilometres apart who have consumed the fungi food.
They report visions of tiny people interacting with the world around them, like the Lilliputians from the story of Gulliver’s Travels.
The Lanmaoa asiatica is a popular edible mushroom species sold in Yunnan, China. The hallucinations happen when it is consumed undercooked.
Using DNA sequencing, University of Utah researchers found that Lanmaoa asiatica was responsible for these hallucinations in Southwest China and the northern Philippines.
They also discovered that the mushroom contains none of the psychoactive compounds known to science, including psilocybin.
“Instead, the findings point to an entirely new hallucinogenic compound that could offer new insights into neurological disease and how the brain shapes perception and consciousness,” the university said in a statement.
“Our next step is to isolate and identify that new psychedelic compound.”
Doctoral student Colin Domnauer, who coauthored the study published earlier this year, said people had reported “Lilliputian hallucinations” for nearly a century, but the cause was not previously known.
“In 1934, Western scientists first heard reports from Papua New Guinea of people hallucinating tiny humans after eating wild mushrooms, a the phenomenon they dubbed ‘mushroom madness’,” the study report said.
“Decades later in the 1990s, there were reports from Yunnan in Southwest China of a very similar phenomenon after people ate bolete mushrooms. The species wasn’t clear, but mycologists suggested that it might be L. asiatica, then a newly described mushroom.”
Similar reports also emerged from the Philippines.
“People pretty much always report seeing dozens or hundreds of little people, about 3 to 30 centimeters tall, in incredible detail, like they’re actually there,” the study report said.
“About 90 percent of people describe them as little elves or clowns or other fairy-like figures dressed in colorful clothes.
“What’s fascinating is they interact with the physical world using the laws of physics that govern us. They’re not walking through walls or anything. They’re falling off the edge of tables, walking around objects.”
The full report is here
