science

"Biosynthetic gene mining of the L. asiatica genome found no close hits with any genes known in the production of mushroom psychoactive compounds," write the researchers in their published paper.

"This supports our hypothesis of the presence of a novel unidentified metabolite responsible for the unique hallucinogenic properties of L. asiatica."

Yeah. No known hallucinogens.

Maybe it's not a hallucination at all. Maybe the mushroom is actually an anti-hallucinogen. It suppresses the hallucinations that normally prevent us from seeing the tiny people.

Well it does contain a psychedelic drug, just not one that we've identified yet.

Lanmaoa asiatica

My sincerest apologies. I know the way out.

they found no close matches to genes associated with psilocybin or ibotenic acid, two well-known mushroom hallucinogens

None that we already know about, not the same as none

Can't wait for it to become known so governments all across the world can throw you in a prison cell and ruin your life for it like the other known hallucinogens.

They're just enabling you to see the fae that are always there. DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR NAME, NO MATTER WHAT!

Regardless of the actual metabolite responsible, this does raise the question of whether, if any other species consume them and are susceptible, they see tiny versions of their own species?

They finally found it. The Blue Angel mushroom really does exist...

Well yeah, these guys live there

Potentially (potentially doing a LOT of heavy lifting here) unethical, make a reasonably comfortable tiny person cell, take the mushrooms, put a tiny person in the cell. A second person who is completely unaware of the previous events takes the mushroom and we see if they can see the same tiny person still in the cell.

No matter what it is, it is fascinating in its own right that it has such a specific visual effect on users.

Maybe this mushroom was very common once and is the source for folk tales of all sorts.

I mean there are truly a lot of old stories involving tiny people.

Clickbait headline, the primary object of that study was to figure out phylogeny of these mushrooms. finding no known genes associated with known hallucinogens is a bonus and pretty useless info because the compound responsible for this activity is not known, how do you know how it's made then

Awkward? Unexpected results are the building blocks of science!

We learned a new question to be answered.

I know that most people describe these hallucinations as unpleasant, but I do kinda want to know. I wanna meet those little guys.

Wasn't this part of the plot of the TV show Common Side Effects ?

Good show btw.

Misleading title aside, these mushrooms sound really cool. It's a shame they're so hard to find.