iStockphoto / Yue Yang
Researchers from the University of Utah are beginning to unpack the secrets of a mushroom, Lanmaoa asiatica, which is believed to have been causing strange hallucinations for thousands of years. The mushroom species is native to Papua New Guinea and is entirely different from the ‘magic mushrooms‘ that have been known and studied for decades.
What makes the phenomenon more bizarre than other mushrooms, objectively speaking, is it can cause hallucinations where the person who ingested the Lanmaoa asiatica sees tiny cartoon-like people marching around.
Researchers Studying Rare Mushrooms Causing ‘Tiny People’ Hallucinations
The aforementioned hallucinations of tiny cartoon people are being called ‘lilliputian hallucinations,’ a nod to the tiny people from Gulliver’s Travels. One tribesman from Papua New Guinea described the hallucination by telling a researcher from the University of Utah that “he saw tiny people with mushrooms around their faces. They were teasing him, and he was trying to chase them away.”
The article on the University of Utah’s website was published by PhD candidate Colin Domnauer who writes that he has been seeking to discover the answer to this question: “What exactly is the identity of this mushroom, how widespread is the cultural knowledge of its effects, and why does it produce such fantastical visions?”
That question has taken him to China where 40% of the edible fungi that exists on planet earth grows. He found that “in the last decade or so” where locals have eaten a wild mushroom (‘Jian shou qing’) which has led to “unbelievably bizarre experiences” involving that are “characterized by seeing ‘xiao ren ren,’ or little people.”
‘Lanmaoa asiatica’ Have No Traces Of Any Known Psychoactive Compound
And here is where things get weird… The Lanmaoa asiatica mushrooms have now been studied exhaustively and they have been found to contain no traces of any known psychoactive compound, like psilocybin does.
University of Utah PhD candidate Colin Domnauer wrote:
“Chemical and genomic analyses performed on Lanmaoa asiatica at the Natural History Museum of Utah have revealed no traces of any known psychoactive compounds, suggesting that something entirely new is waiting to be discovered. In other words, Lanmaoa asiatica appears to harbor a chemical compound capable of reliably evoking this unusual experience of lilliputian hallucinations. The discovery of that chemical may, in fact, hold the key to understanding one of the most mysterious dimensions of the human psyche.”
I came across this video on TikTok which discusses these Liliputian hallucination mushrooms and the paper published by the University of Utah.
@mushies.co.uk Colin Domnauer, a PhD student at the Natural History Museum of Utah, recently published a fascinating piece about Lanmaoa asiatica, a mushroom that’s been causing what scientists call “lilliputian hallucinations” across multiple cultures for potentially thousands of years. And it’s be one of the most intriguing mushroom stories I’ve come across.
The major takeaway from here, in Domnauer’s own words, is “the world of mushrooms, even those found in markets and on dinner plates, conceals mysteries and wonders we’ve yet to imagine.”
People online often joke about how primitive people’s had to go through every mushroom species as a trial and error experiment but the fact of the matter is we are still very much going through that. He notes there are very likely cultural groups across the world whose folklore has been shaped by experiences with these mushrooms and we have yet to unpack what that relationship is, how it has shaped their views of the past, and more.
For the full story, you can find a link here or in the article above. I highly suggest reading it all!