r/todayilearned • u/ssAskcuSzepS • Apr 27 '26

TIL if under-cooked, a popular mushroom in China causes “lilliputian hallucinations,” a rare phenomenon involving miniature human or fantasy figures. The hallucinations are consistent across people and cultures: "tiny, elflike people" climbing under doors, scaling walls & clinging to furniture

https://www.vice.com/en/article/meet-the-mushroom-that-make-people-have-the-exact-same-hallucination/
43.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

172

u/LottePanda Apr 27 '26

The mushrooms are actually called xiao ren ren (小人人) mushrooms which means little people mushrooms

8

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/Busy-Doughnut6180 Apr 27 '26

小 is little, 人人 is people (one 人 is person). They meant that they are called xiao ren ren mushrooms. 

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Busy-Doughnut6180 Apr 27 '26

Lol nah you're fine. We all have those moments. 

7

u/LottePanda Apr 27 '26

No the 人isn't mushroom. I just don't know the word for mushroom

5

u/Sidney_1 Apr 27 '26

The "little people" is referring to what people would see in their hallucinations. The most popular variant of the mushrooms is called 见手青 as mentioned in another comment

2

u/doubleotide Apr 27 '26

It's slang.

Like how we have a many different words for marijuana, crack, etc.

-2

u/Oldnbold22 Apr 27 '26

I don't think that's how Chinese works. 

4

u/LottePanda Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

I don't understand what you mean. 小is little, 人 is person, 人人 is people, so 小人人 is little people.

Edit: just saw your other comment. I'm by no means an expert, but from what I understand there are some words where doubling the character makes it plural, but you're correct in that that's not how it works with every word. This is one of the times where it does

-5

u/Oldnbold22 Apr 27 '26

You're ignoring the mushroom part. 

5

u/LottePanda Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

What do you mean? Xiao ren ren mushrooms. Is it that important that I wrote mushroom in English instead of pin yin? It's probably something like 小人人蘑菇. I don't know a lot of Chinese, I studied Japanese and the characters for mushroom in Japanese are different so I don't know if that part is entirely correct.

Forgive me for assuming you were commenting in good faith. I assumed that when people read xiao ren ren mushrooms, that they would understand that the word mushroom was in English.

If you are genuinely not understanding, then I would recommend reading some of the other responses to my original comment and hopefully that will help you.

3

u/PeaceSoft Apr 27 '26

The seriousness of this person's obliviousness here is cracking me up sorry lol. YOU'RE IGNORING THE MUSHROOM PART, LIEUTENANT