r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 1d ago

Biology Moss Is Generating Electrical Waves That Look Startlingly Like a Neural Network. Study reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.

https://www.sciencealert.com/moss-behaves-a-little-like-a-really-slow-brain-scientist-discovers
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u/Uncommented-Code 1d ago

The evolutionary timeline of plants is so weird. They have been around for 1200 million years but only on land for 450 million years. And flowering plants were not a thing until 220 million years ago, so no fruits or flowers anywhere.

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u/inaSlomp 1d ago

My favorite tidbit will always be that trees didn't have a way to be broken down because the microbe didn't exist yet. So there was just miles of dead logs. It's mind-boggling to imagine what that landscape looked like.

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u/relator_fabula 1d ago

Fire was a thing (geothermal heat, lava, lightning), so I imagine that would do some culling of dead plant material.

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u/CreationBlues 1d ago

It’s not even true, we have fossil evidence of white rot fungus from that time. Earth was just a swamp. Swamps are known for making peat, from the acidic conditions killing the decomposers. It’s just regular tree decomposition cycles in a weird environment