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Asked by to Thon, Catherine, James, Natalie, Shaylon on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Natalie Pilakouta answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Yes, weird but true!
Mushrooms are fungi and fungi are more closely related to animals (and thus humans) than they are to plants. Fungal cells are more similar to animal cells than plant cells (for example, plant cells have chloroplasts but fungal cells and animal cells don’t). Also because of the lack of chloroplasts and chlorophyll, fungi and animals do not photosynthesize.
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Catherine Offord answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Like Natalie says, there are lots of similarities between animal cells and fungal cells. Because they don’t photosynthesize – i.e. use energy from sunlight to make their food within their cells – they have to get food from other organisms. Animals and fungi both use enzymes to chemically break down food and then absorb it into their cells.
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Anthony Caravaggi answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Yes indeed. Catherine and Natalie have covered the physical differences, so I’m just going to give you some background information.
When we say ‘a mushroom is more closely related to a human than a plant’, because of the way we think, we might not be sure what that means, really. So apart from looking at cells, how can we tell how closely related we are? We use DNA. By using sophisticated techniques, scientists have been able to tell that, as they thought, fungi and humans are more closely related than fungi and plants.
So how closely related are we in terms of time? Is a fungus my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother? No, of course not. Humans are part of a huge group which contains all plants and animals, known as metazoans. I’ll not go into too much detail, but we know that the ancestor of all metazoans (that’s all plants and animals) and the ancestor of all fungi (mushrooms, toadstools, etc.) must have gone their separate ways a very long time ago indeed; over 1,200 million years ago in fact. To put this in context:
Modern humans have been around for around 200,000 years.
Humans and chimpanzees are separated by 6.3 million years of evolution.
Humans and Tyrannosaurus rex are separated by 296 million years of evolution.
Humans and salmon are separated by 400 million years of evolution.
Humans and sponges (yep, the ones that live in the sea) are separated by 720 million years of evolution. -
James Bell answered on 19 Jun 2014:
Some great answers already. I’ll just add a bit – one of the reasons fungi and animals are more alike than fungi and plants is because of how they store energy. Animals and fungi store energy as glycogen whereas plants store energy as starch.
This question touches on a whole field of biology – phylogeny (how different organisms are linked genetically) and includes the techniques used to build trees of life and describe evolution of organisms throughout time (even back to the last universal common ancestor). It currently looks something like this….
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