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Swiss scientists have found what they say may be Europe's biggest mushroom - covering an area about the size of 35 football pitches. The fungus was discovered in a national park near the eastern town of Ofenpass, said the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Countryside Research (WSL). Spanning 35 hectares (86 acres), the mostly underground fungus is believed to be 1,000 years old, the WSL added. The Honey Mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) is edible, but it can kill trees. "The majority of the fungus is an underground network that looks a bit like shoelaces," WSL's spokeswoman Muriel Bendel said. "The...

Psychedelic mushrooms sprung up some 67 million years ago, more than 65 million years before humans ever existed, according to the most extensive genomic study examining these types of fungi. Scientists, who published their work this week in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, found that of the more than 50 species in the Psilocybe genus, 35 had a novel gene arrangement that coded for psilocybin, the hallucinogen that gives Psilocybe mushrooms their psychedelic quality. Previous studies had identified a single, different genetic pathway to the production of psilocybin, but the new work opens up the possibility of...

A troubled woman obsessed with badger culls jumped off a cliff with her beloved dogs after suffering with poor mental health, an inquest has heard. The bodies of 45-year-old Carla Kidd and her two dogs were found along the Cornwall coastline after she was reported missing. They were discovered on the morning of November 28 following a search along the coast between Hell’s Mouth and Portreath. Carla, who had been living in a tent in near Penzance, had suffered from 'paranoid and manic' behaviour for years. The inquest in Truro was told animal-loving Carla used to believe she was being...

The new viral craze is apparently scaring cats with cucumbers, because the Internet is a weird place and humans enjoy low-grade animal cruelty as long as it's adorable. But National Geographic reports that we should all maybe not be scaring our cats with cucumbers. According to Upvoted, the first cat-scared-by-cucumber video appears to have been uploaded in May and went viral by July or so. Countless others followed, to the point where Reddit has an entire Cucumbers Scaring Cats community. The idea behind these videos is that if you put a cucumber behind a cat, it'll freak out when it...

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18 (UPI) — A viral trend involving placing cucumbers behind cats has been deemed cruel and harmful behavior by some experts.

Two days after Minnesota Department of Natural Resources officials brought in a mystery carcass, found in rural Douglas County, no positive identification has been made. D.N.R. Area Wildlife Supervisor Kevin Kotts said Friday that after examining the remains, there are no clear signs of it not being a badger, however its longer tail is inconsistent with badgers he has seen. Kotts said there are clear signs that the animal was hit on the road, suffering skull fractures, but an intact jaw could help determine a positive identification. He said he expects fur trappers who have more experience with local mammals...

From his hospital ward, Terry Flynn, 71, told how on Monday evening, while driving to see his stepson, his automatic Corsa left the Military Road, ploughed across a field and over the cliff near Compton Farm, Brook. The former antiques dealer and window cleaner, of The Brambles, Freshwater, amazed rescuers when he walked away from his wrecked car with just cuts and bruises after losing control when swerving to avoid an animal. "It might have been a badger. I swerved and got stuck in the mud," said Mr Flynn. "I was shunting backwards and forwards, then I put the...

With VERY few exceptions (thanks to the people that were human and to people that wrote me privately) you people are a bunch of fundamentalist zealots. You aren't conservatives...you're fascists. You make me embarrassed to be a Republican.