If you see something glowing in the forest, don’t ever think that you are hallucinating or seeing a lost ghost coming its way towards you. Mushrooms and other forms of fungi have the ability to glow in the dark. People from more than hundreds of years ago find this a huge mystery because there was really no clear explanation why these fungus glows until today.

Jay Dunlap, geneticist and molecular biologist from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, believed that it was Aristotle who first questioned the interesting ability of the glowing mushrooms. People from various places tried to explain the nighttime light, but only came up with suggestions rather than conclusions.

In the journal Current Biology, Dunlap along with his colleagues created a series of experiments that will accurately explain why a mushroom glows. Their study focused on only one type of fungus – the Neonothopanus gardneri. This certain fungus grows fondly at the base of young coconut palm trees in coconut forests in Brazil. People observe a bright glowing green light coming from the fungus at night.

Hans Waldenmaier, a researcher in the lab of Cassius Stevani, of Brazil’s Instituto de Quimica-Universidade de Sao Paulo, said that, “You just have to turn off your flashlight and the mushrooms stand out if they’re there”, if you want distinguish the mushroom among others present in the forest. He further added, “On a totally dark night, without any moon, if you have your light off… these green mushrooms are basically the only light source you see in the forest besides the fireflies.”

The glow of the mushroom functions using a biological clock that makes it glows only at nighttime, and rarely during the day. The glow is not made by accident, but rather an adaptation to the environment.

They wanted to understand the mushrooms so they created two fake fungi from acrylic resin. One mushroom was placed with a light bulb that resembles the green color of the real fungus, while the other has none. They covered the fake mushrooms with glue to clarify whether the past belief about it attracting insects was true.

The scattered the fake mushrooms around the forests. And it looks exactly like the real ones present and growing in the forest. Waldenmaier explained why they choose this method, “We figured that this was a good way of replicating the Dried Mushrooms, but without the scent of the mushrooms, which could be attracting the insects.”

The researchers discovered that a large number of insects got stuck into the glue covering in almost all scattered fake mushrooms. They decided to use infrared cameras to see what the insects are doing with the light. And they found out that, “We basically observed to see if there was any difference in the insects that were attracted to the ones that were lit up with the green light and the ones that were dark.”

Out of 100,00 known species of mushrooms in Earth, only 71 of them have the ability to glow which makes this one a unique characteristic among other organisms present in the forest