On the fevered trail of the caterpillar fungus

October 21, 2023 5:52 PM

Not all hope is lost for caterpillar fungus cultivation. The interdependent life of the fungus points to a new means to farm it. Breeding centers can’t be industrial sow-and-reap operations. They must consider ecological and evolutionary factors. Breeding must be situated where the fungus naturally grows—on undisturbed, high-elevation, microbe-laden soil. Yield will boil down to the land’s carrying capacity, to how many caterpillars nature can support, without breaking the equilibrium among plants, insects, and fungi. Breeding centers would look more like conservation land than industrial farms or scientific laboratories. The future of the caterpillar-fungus harvest—a feature of Tibetan culture for five centuries—should look much more like the past. from The Last of the Fungus
posted by chavenet (9 comments total)

A surprisingly interesting story that shines a light into this culture and how such an odd industry can evolve.

I hate that rare and unusual species so often become targeted for penis- potency scam products. One unique species or environment is worth so much more than a million erections, but patriarchy is so fragile that it demands everything else must be secondary to that.
posted by emjaybee at 7:01 PM on October 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

A fascinating article - thank you.
posted by jb at 8:00 AM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

From the article: Most modern scientific experimentation has failed to demonstrate any lasting medicinal potency in the fungus.

I'd take issue with that. Corcdyceps extracts straight up make mice live longer. It also makes artificially aged mice rejuvenate.

In humans, it's a little tougher to pin down. But human studies show various effects including anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, increased VO2max, and several other things. See eg here for a high quality review. It's incredibly hard to study this stuff due to different compositions and preparations, let alone the fact that the funding is paltry compared to eg drug studies.

But research into therapeutic effects Cordyceps species and their compounds is continually promising, and increasing over the past decade. While there certainly is woo surrounding this fungus, it is also wrong imo to casually dismiss its use as a scam when there is a lot of modern scientific evidence supporting various benefits.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:01 AM on October 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

casual use of the debunked “tragedy of the commons” trope had me worried for a moment, and there wasn’t the depth of Lowenhaupt-Tsing’s analysis into the socio-economic context, but still a very interesting reminder that science itself needs to find its way back to more holistic/systemic framings of our relation to our habitat, if we are to keep from enshittifying all of it…
posted by progosk at 8:15 AM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Perhaps the fungus could be genetically engineered to infect humans. Then there would be more of it to harvest. Think of the profits!
posted by GiantSlug at 10:15 AM on October 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Hmm. If it's supposed to cure everything, make you live longer, halt hair loss, and give you a boner, I suspect it does nothing, as per the usual snake oil routine.

But it certainly takes the money out of rich people's pockets and puts it into the pockets of hundreds of thousands of poor people (and a lot of middlemen along the way).
posted by pracowity at 11:34 AM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Would it be possible to cultivate the fungus on some artificial media instead of caterpillars?
posted by mike3k at 12:47 PM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

The tragedy of the commons wasn't debunked, it was simply demonstrated that the traditional commons were actually allocated in usually well-observed and (when not observed) well-enforced shares to specific private beneficiaries. Turns out private wealth is an emergent property of any orderly society.
posted by MattD at 3:37 PM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

There are several different species of Cordyceps, but at least some of those known as entomopathogenic fungi have since been cultured on plant media. Eg Cordyceps militaris. My understanding is that prior to circa 2000, all Cordyceps on the market were wild harvested and very expensive, but since then various plant-based cultivation methods have proven productive.

I buy mine from my local Asian grocer for about $9 for a large bag of dried mushrooms, comparable price to dried wood ear or shiitake etc. These are all grown in facilities similar to any other fresh commercial mushroom you buy at a western grocer.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:10 PM on October 22, 2023 [2 favorites]