One Mushroom Spawns the Same Odd Vision: Tiny Humans

It sounds like a movie plot: A group of people eat a mushroom and all see the same thing—tiny people on their clothes, on their plates, and climbing up walls. As the BBC's Rachel Nuwer reports, doctors in China's Yunnan province have traced the visions to Lanmaoa asiatica, a widely eaten wild mushroom that causes the "lilliputian hallucinations" when it's undercooked. Formally described only in 2015, L. asiatica has turned up in China and the Philippines, and biology doctoral candidate Colin Domnauer of the University of Utah is leading the push to decode the fungus and the compound responsible for the visions (it's not psilocybin).

Nuwer explains that testing indicates the compound at play "is not likely related to any other known psychedelic compound." And the trips it can produce are unique not just in terms of the consistency of hallucinations, but in terms of the trips' length: days, or even as long as a week with the possibility of continued delirium and dizziness. Because of that, Domnauer hasn't sampled the mushrooms himself, and Nuwer writes the "mega-trip" nature of the mushrooms might explain why locals don't seem to intentionally ingest the raw mushrooms. Read the full story here.