When a resident of a small village went out into her garden in the morning, she noticed something that immediately made her stop. On the ground lay a strange elongated object with an elongated ‘head’ and thin tubular appendages resembling limbs.
The shape was so unusual that the first thing that came to her mind was an alien creature or something dead and unknown. She tried to find similar photos on the internet, but without success. Then she showed her find to her friends, but they couldn’t identify it either.
First, she uploaded the photo to a mushroom lovers’ community, but even experienced mycologists said it wasn’t a mushroom. She was directed to the Alien Bodies subreddit, where strange finds are usually discussed.
But even there, there was no consensus. People put forward theories ranging from ‘mummified animal’ to ‘unknown biological organism.’
And only after several hours of discussion did one user give the correct answer — one that was confirmed by biologists. It was the dried root of a mandrake plant.
Mandrake is a plant that has long been shrouded in legends and mysticism. Its roots really resemble the human body: thin ‘arms,’ ‘legs,’ and even the shape of a ‘head.’
When the root dries out and twists, it takes on a particularly frightening, almost humanoid appearance.
Most likely, the root was pulled out by animals or washed out of the soil by rain. The mandrake could have been growing on the site for many years, so the inhabitants simply did not know about its existence.
The strange ‘alien’ object that caused a stir on the internet turned out to be a common natural phenomenon: a dried mandrake root, a plant with a unique shape and a long history of mystical associations.
Sometimes what seems to us to be something out of this world is actually just a part of nature that we rarely see up close.
