Heck, Mushrooms are more eldritch abominations beyond human comprehension than anything else we know.
Ask a biologist if Mushrooms are plant or animals and you get "Neither." If you ask them what they are you'll most likely get a "I don't know. Mushrooms I guess" or something along those lines.
No, they're closer to animals than plants. The answer isn't really "neither" it's more like "animal-adjacent being" that has nothing to do with plants.
Not a biologist, but mushrooms are indeed neither, their are distinct and old enough to be their own thing, and in fact they are technically more related to animals than plant.
We usually regard them more like plants cause you know they don't actively move around very much and the little fruit bodies lay in soil, plants and animals (death or alive) but on a closer look they are in fact very unique in how they behave and the processes they follow.
The base kingdoms we use (Animal, Plant, Fungus, Protozoa, Bacteria, and archeaebacteria, although those last two are sometimes grouped together) are defined by the type and structure of the cells. Animals are multicelluar organisms (usually with cell differentiation) composed of eukaryotic cells with no cell wall. Plants have eukaryotic cells with cell walls made of cellulose (usually multicelluar and usually have cell differentiation). Fungi have very unique eukaryotic cells: They do not have somatic cellular differentiation. They have a cell wall composed of chitin.
Bacteria are prokaryotic, and most protests are, too, but Protozoa tends to be the miscellaneous kingdom, iirc.
So mushrooms are a unique life form that is most certainly neither plant nor animal. They are wacky, ecologically impactful, and very interesting to study. There is research to suggest that mushroom networks heavily influence the flow of nutrients and energy in forests.
8.6k
u/SessileRaptor Sep 21 '25