Dr Ann Jones

It's not harsh conditions.

It's conditions that would kill almost anything.

They freeze absolutely solid.

Scientists revived some that had been frozen in Siberian permafrost for 24,000 years.

And instead of them sort of breaking apart and dying in the ice, the deloid rotifers use the breaking apart when they're freezing to their genetic advantage.

Over time, in their shattered state perhaps, they've sucked in a little bit of fungi DNA and a bit of this and a bit of that, and then they've reassembled themselves as they warm up in the microwave of life.

They get frozen, the dinner plate of their DNA gets shattered, and then they put it all back together as a platter.

It's the same, same, but different.

It dispenses with the need for trouser trouts and toothless tigers, dong perignons and gnome canoes, for jeez and joy buttons, for song and dance.

It dispenses with the need for sexes.

The main ones that we know of are the sperm carriers, males, and the egg carriers, females.

But when you look at something like fungi, there are so many mating types.

Mating types, by the way, are a sort of precursor to sexes, I suppose.

Anyway, there's so many of them that no human can keep a track.

And there are many other patterns of mating typos.

Professor Joseph Heitman is with Duke Uni in the USA.

And as far as I can tell, that is about the level of academic achievement that you need to arrive at to understand fungus sex.

Most moulds have two mating types, most fungi have four, and then there are crazy species that are outliers, like the split gill, Schizophyllum commune.

That has more than 10,000 mating types.

Turfs are going to have a heart attack when they find out about this.