> [!summary] Progressive Summary # Structured Notes ## Definitions ## Chapter Summaries ### Living Labyrinths > Imagine that you could pass through two doors at once. It's inconceivable, yet fungi do it all the time. When faced with a forked path, fungal hyphae don't have to choose one or the other. They can branch and take both routes. > Mycelium is how fungi feed. Some organisms – such as plants that photosynthesise – make their own food. Some organisms – like most animals – find food in the world and put it inside the bodies, where it is digested and absorbed. Fungi have a different strategy. They digest the world where it is, and then absorb it into their bodies. Their hyphae are long and branched, and only single cell thick – between two and twenty micrometers in diameter, more than five times thinner than an average human hair. The more of their surroundings that hyphae can touch, the more they can consume. **The difference between animals and fungi is simple: Animals put food in their bodies, whereas fungi put their bodies in the food**. > A mycelial network is a map of a fungus's recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact *processes* not *things*. > As William Beatson, who coined the word *genetics*, observed, "We commonly think of animals and plants as matter, but they are really systems through which matter is continually passing." # Quotes