I didn’t dare touch it, but curiosity overpowered disgust. Holding my breath, I crouched down and snapped a picture with my phone. The smell was unbearable—I had to step back before my stomach turned.
Once inside, I searched online for “red slimy mushroom that smells like rotting meat.”
Within seconds, the answer appeared on my screen—and it made my skin crawl even more.
The creature in my yard wasn’t a dying animal or something alien. It was something called Anthurus archeri, better known as the Devil’s Fingers.
A Horrifying Beauty of Nature
According to what I found, this strange organism isn’t a creature at all—it’s a fungus. Originally native to Australia and Tasmania, the Devil’s Fingers has spread to Europe, the Americas, and beyond.
It begins life innocently enough, as a small, white, egg-like shape hidden beneath the soil. Then, one day, it bursts open—quite literally—and from it emerge bright red tentacles that unfurl like claws or fingers reaching out from the earth.
Those “fingers” are covered in a foul, slimy coating known as gleba, which emits a powerful stench of decay. It’s nature’s way of luring flies and other insects. The insects come, attracted by the smell of carrion, and carry the mushroom’s spores away—helping it reproduce.
That’s right: the smell is intentional. The fungus mimics the odor of rotting flesh to trick the very creatures that help it survive.
What a grotesque kind of genius nature can have.
