The pictured mushroom (i.e. fungal “fruiting body”) has a cap so shiny that parts of it act like a “funhouse mirror”, yielding what look like distorted reflections of its forest home’s canopy.
To see them, you probably need a good quality screen – bigger than a phone’s…and/or you may need to zoom in on/enlarge the mushroom’s shiniest surfaces.
In any event, you should have no difficulty “discovering” an ant who made a fatal mistake.
Startling as it is, this mushroom is far from the weirdest of many fungi in Deep Creek Conservation Park’s old-growth stringybark forest.
I have no expertise in identifying fungi species, let alone in answering questions about edibility, toxicity, or “mind-altering” potential.
My beloved and I find fungi fascinating, but we leave all “unknown” ones well alone.
In June 2023 the floor of this patch of stringybark forest sported the most astonishing fungal array we have ever seen, anywhere…as will be illustrated in a future post’s many images.
Photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken in Deep Creek Conservation Park at 11.46 am on 20 June 2023.