Here's a weird thought for you. The reason human's are fascinated with mushrooms might have roots that go back millions of years, to a time before humans even existed.
A team of researchers just spent years watching primates in Tanzania, and what they discovered is fascinating. It turns out our evolutionary cousins (chimpanzees, baboons, and red-tailed monkeys) are all eating mushrooms in the wild. But they're not all eating them the same way...
The Baboon Exception
Most of the primates treated mushrooms like a backup snack, useful when your favourite food runs out. Chimpanzees and red-tailed monkeys would munch on fungi during the wet season when they were abundant and their favoured ripe fruits got scarce.
But for baboons they are a preferred food. They love mushrooms.
During peak season, mushrooms made up over a third of their diet. Even when mushrooms became harder to find, baboons kept seeking them out, making fungi about 11% of their annual diet. This suggests these primates genuinely prefer mushrooms, possibly even over fruit.
Why This Matters for Us
The landscape where this study took place - a mosaic of woodland and grassland in western Tanzania - looks a lot like the environment where early humans evolved. Same heat, same predators, same vegetation patterns.
So if modern primates are strategically using mushrooms in this environment, there's a good chance our ancestors Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and others did too. The problem is, mushrooms don't fossilise well. They leave almost no trace in the archaeological record, so we've probably been underestimating their role in human evolution this whole time.
(Fun fact: scientists did find traces of mushrooms in 40,000-year-old Neanderthal dental plaque. So our ancient relatives were definitely munching on shrooms.)
The Smart Strategy
There's another layer here that's worth chewing on. When multiple species compete for the same food, they need strategies to avoid conflict. Birds do this by feeding at different heights in trees. Predators hunt different prey.
At Issa, mushrooms might be serving as a kind of peace treaty. When ripe fruit gets tight and everyone's hungry, having fungi as an alternative means these three primate species can coexist without constantly fighting over the same resources.
It's ecological problem-solving at its finest.
What We're Missing
This research suggests we've been overlooking something fundamental about our own food history. Mushrooms aren't just nutritious (protein, micronutrients, potentially medicinal compounds), they may have been crucial to how our ancestors survived, competed, and evolved.
And in places like Tanzania today, where people harvest wild mushrooms for local markets, understanding these patterns matters more than ever. As climate change and growing populations put pressure on wild resources, humans and wildlife are increasingly competing for the same foods.
The researchers spent four years collecting over 50,000 observations to piece this story together. What they found is a reminder that some of the most important parts of our evolutionary story are hiding in plain sight, in the foods our closest relatives still eat, in the ecosystems we share, and in the fungi growing beneath our feet.
Next time you're sautéing mushrooms or adding them to your ramen, consider the fact that you are continuing a tradition that's been millions of years in the making. Your baboon cousins would approve.
Source: Mycophagy in Primates of the Issa Valley, Tanzania: Theresa A. Schulze et al.
