Every year, doctors at a hospital in China’s Yunnan province treat hundreds of patients with the same strange symptoms. They arrive from June to August feeling dizzy and disoriented.
Blood tests to assess liver and kidney function came back mostly unremarkable, but they all said the same thing: they saw small elf-like figures prancing around.
The cause of these hallucinations is an earth-colored fungus that turns blue when sliced. Ranmaor Asiatica This mushroom grows in the mountainous regions of Yunnan Province, southwestern China, and the Philippines.
As happens every mushroom season, when people eat it raw or undercooked, they all report the same strange symptoms, leading to the fungus’ Chinese nickname, “.”Xiao Renren or “Little People” mushrooms.
More than 30 years ago, Chinese researchers analyzed 300 cases of people suffering from “dwarf hallucinations.”
This psychiatric term is used to describe visions of small humans or fantastical figures, and is named after an imaginary race of dwarfs who lived on the island of Lilliput in fictional novels. Gulliver’s Travels.
All patients claimed to see small people or animals moving around. “They saw them on their clothes when they were getting dressed and on their plates when they ate,” the researchers wrote in the paper. 1991 paper.
“When I closed my eyes, the hallucinations became even more vivid,” and the worst-affected people “felt like the mountains and buildings around them were being squeezed.”
However, it wasn’t until 2015 that the mushrooms behind the outbreak were discovered. formally named and described. The researchers purchased samples at an open-air market in Yunnan province and sequenced their DNA.
they confirmed it L. asiatica A scientific first, it is more closely related to the common boletus mushroom (Boletus edulis) better than any known “magic” mushroom species.
Subsequent research has so far failed to identify the psychoactive component that causes people to experience these strange but consistent visions, although studies have been conducted in mice.
For rodents extract is given of L. asiaticathey also become hyperactive and then become dazed. The mice did not say whether they had seen the Lilliputians.
today, L. asiatica It is on the menu of many Yunnanese restaurants, its umami is highly praised, and systems have been developed to safely prepare and serve it.
This includes thoroughly cooking the fungi, prohibiting the consumption of alcohol in the diet, and possibly keeping samples for analysis just in case.
Please note that the average trip lasts 1-3 days or even a week. Colin Domnauer of the Utah Museum of Natural History studies mushrooms and has eaten them where they are prepared.
he said. BBC Future About his encounter at the mushroom hotpot restaurant. So the clerk set the timer for 15 minutes and then said, “Don’t eat until the timer goes off, or you might meet a little person.”
Diners have been warned!
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