By Colin Domnauer
Picture this: You're enjoying a delicious bowl of mushroom soup, when suddenly you notice hundreds of tiny people dressed in cartoonish clothing marching across your tablecloth, jumping into your bowl, swimming around, and clinging to your spoon as you lift it for another taste. You're not dreaming — you've just experienced the effects of a mushroom known scientifically as Lanmaoa asiatica. It belongs to an entirely different class of Fungi than the more commonly known “magic mushrooms” and remains far more mysterious.
When outsiders first embarked into the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea in 1934, they encountered a perplexing sight: after consuming a type of wild mushroom which they called “nonda,” the local people would appear to go temporarily insane, exhibiting a sudden and striking change in mood and behavior. Subsequent accounts of the “mushroom madness” phenomenon, as it was termed, provided more details into the mushroom's strange psychological effects.
Conversing with sellers to find and purchase samples for scientific study of the psychoactive mushroom known as Jian shou qing. There are many potentially confusing look-alikes, but after asking the seller if this is the one that will make us see little people, their amused response, often accompanied with a personal anecdote, served as our confirmation of its identity. Colin Domnauer
Specifically, it was reported that those affected would experience lilliputian hallucinations — a rare, clinically defined psychiatric syndrome (named after the tiny people in Gulliver's Travels) characterized by the perception of numerous little people autonomously moving about and interacting in the real-world environment. One elder tribesman in Papua New Guinea describes this effect, explaining how “he saw tiny people with mushrooms around their faces. They were teasing him, and he was trying to chase them away.”
By the 1960s, scientists were working to identify the species of mushrooms involved and what chemicals within them might be responsible for such bizarre effects. However, both questions have remained unanswered to this day. As a Ph.D. student at the Natural History Museum of Utah, I've been working to solve this puzzle: 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?
Investigating Lilliputian Mushrooms in China
Home to 40 percent of the world's wild edible fungi, Yunnan, China has always been remarkable for mushroom lovers. But in the last decade or so, the summer rains have brought more than just mushrooms; they’ve been accompanied by an explosion of news articles that read like something out of children's fairy tales: after consuming a popular wild mushroom known locally as “Jian shou qing,” locals frequently report having unbelievably bizarre experiences, most notable characterized by seeing “xiao ren ren,” or little people.
Mushroom markets are scattered throughout the capital city of Kunming, ranging in size from a few street blocks to no less than the largest wild mushroom market in the world, where upwards of 200 species of edible fungi are sold. Colin Domnauer
A professor in Yunnan recounted how one evening during dinner (Jian shou qing is openly sold in markets and restaurants), he began seeing swirling shapes and colors after eating stir-fried mushrooms. Since the psychoactive effects are familiar to most locals, he began looking for xiao ren ren but was disappointed to find none — until he lifted the tablecloth and peeked underneath, seeing “hundreds of xiao ren ren, marching like soldiers.”
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