Edinburgh Student Wins 60,000 Followers With Fungi Timelapses on Animal Faeces
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Aug 2
Edinburgh Student Wins 60,000 Followers With Fungi Timelapses on Animal Faeces
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 2
Summary
27-year-old Alfred Drummond-Herdman has turned dung-filled containers in his Edinburgh bedroom into timelapse studios, drawing millions of views for videos of fungi erupting from cowpats, deer droppings and rabbit pellets.
Every 30 seconds, his cameras capture coprophilous fungi developing from herbivore faeces, revealing lifecycles rarely seen in the wild and helping explain the appeal of the brightly colored, fast-changing clips.
Drummond-Herdman, a trainee lawyer and self-taught taxonomist, says a pandemic walk in the Ochil Hills sparked the obsession; he has already formally identified two new species and is working on more.
More than 60,000 Instagram followers now watch posts ranging from inkcaps and fieldcaps to a dog’s vomit slime mould, while he uses the attention to argue taxonomy is central to biodiversity research and conservation.
Kew estimates at least 2 million fungi species remain undiscovered worldwide, giving his niche project a wider scientific context beyond social-media novelty.