Today’s lesson in natural philosophy: Form Follows Function.

The natural world is still teaming with amazing life forms, though somewhat less so than it was, say, forty years ago. I’m thinking of such amazing adaptations as a simple leaf at the end of a tree branch splayed out in the sunlight, capturing the tiny blazingly fast photons hurled earthward from the violent sun, or the shark’s pectoral fins slicing the water like some menacing fighter plane’s wings. Wherever you look, if you are even slightly observant, you see forms developed by nature over eons of time that are perfectly suited for the jobs they do.
But, then there’s this:

forest blob-creature
forest blob-creature

Firstly, what in the world is it? Secondly, what could it possibly be doing?
Well, it’s a fungus, a mushroom, a vegetative thing that grows on the forest floor. However, if this was your first encounter with the thing it might pass as a blob-creature from another planet crawling its way to world domination.
What does a mushroom really do? Don’t know. Can you garner any clues about its function from the way it looks? Nope. So the supposition that form follows function isn’t always true? No. Sometimes not.

Tune in next week for excepts from my doctoral dissertation on: “Forest mushrooms, and why its a bad idea to eat them”.

Information you need.

PP

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