Red Stinkhorn

This mushroom truly smells much worse than it looks. After all, it's called a "stinkhorn" for a reason. It has a spike-like orange fruiting body with small pockmarks and an olive-brown, gelatinous, stinky spore mass towards the apex, which is called the gleba. The fetid odor of the gleba attracts flies. The gleba sticks to the flies as they feed on it, and the flies then mechanically spread the fungus when they land in different places. In addition, the flies further aid in spore dispersal by frantically sucking up the gleba as they can consume as much as 80 percent of their body weight in stinkhorn gleba daily! This putrid gorging upsets the fly's digestive system, which then enables the spores to quickly make their exit from the fly's hindgut.