We know with extremely high certainty that classical psychedelics effect other animals similarly given the neuroscience [1]. But this is not a classical psychedelic. We don't know how it works yet, what receptors it operates on, or what the pharmacology is doing.

So would dogs see little humans or little dogs? We can't say for sure. But the best guess might actually be most likely little dogs, or maybe little smells of little dogs. Dogs show conspecific preference (species-focus) while we show facial preference [2] and they have a strong focus on olfactory sense while we're more visual. The vividness might show up in ways we can't really perceive through smell like they can.

And the answer to "does that mean the fungus has targeted humans genetically" is almost definitely no. The study the article is based on [3] mentions that lilliputian hallucinations predate this mushroom, appear across cultures' folklore, and are reported in alcohol withdrawal, dementia, and macular degeneration. The effect seems fundamental to how the human mind and brain work. So it's more likely that the mushroom is disrupting something and the brain is resolving that disruption into little people, because that's what it does with pattern matching.

This mushroom is an ectomycorrhizal symbiote of the Yunnan pine tree, is ancient with the genus being at least 5 million years old compared to modern humans 300k, and requires undercooking which isn't compatible with human targeting so it doesn't make sense to have any genetic human target.

The fungus supplies a non-targeted disruption and the resulting little people content we describe is the human brain's response. A dog getting the same disruption would resolve it into whatever a dog's machinery produces, or maybe they metabolize it into nothing recognizable.

Pretty damn cool.

[1] https://consciousnesslibrary.org/research/29070-correlation-... [2] https://www.jneurosci.org/content/40/43/8396 [3] https://consciousnesslibrary.org/research/27751-phylogenomic...

> does that mean the fungus had targeted humans genetically?

very utilitarian and anthropocentric world view.

Why would a random thing in the world specifically targeting humans with some niche effect? Did cocoa plant target humans specifically with its pleasing flavor (after having been heavily processed), while being toxic for many other animals?