A mushroom is more like you than a tree

For centuries we lumped fungi in with plants: they seem to sprout from the ground and they don't move. But genetics turned the story on its head. Fungi aren't plants, and in fact they're more closely related to us than to an oak.

They share a more recent common ancestor with animals. And they don't feed like plants: they don't photosynthesise, they digest matter from their surroundings, just as we do on the inside, only they do it on the outside.

Even their material has an animal air to it: their walls contain chitin, the same substance that forms an insect's shell, not the cellulose of plants.

To put it another way: the mushroom in your omelette is a distant cousin of yours. A slightly odd one, sure, but family.