Photo: Wikipedia
Yes, really!
By Rebecca Jane Stokes — Written on Sep 01, 2016
So, find yourself needing a good excuse to spontaneously travel to Hawaii? You're in luck.
It turns out that there's a rare fungus mushroom only found in Hawaiian lava flows that can cause women to spontaneously orgasm.
That's right, I just crafted a sentence that contained the words "fungus" and "orgasm" and I was not filling out a some sort of Mad Lib sheet whilst on a road trip with the girls.
In 2001 scientists John Halliday and Noah Soule shared the news of this orgasm-inspiring mushroom with the world. If by "the world" you mean the doubtlessly very limited audience of the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms.
See? That's the kind of top flight sex and orgasm-related news you miss if you don't subscribe TO EVERY SINGLE SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL THAT EXISTS, GUYS.
The pair of scientists discovered the unnamed mushrooms on lava flows and determined that they were close to being a thousand years old. The mushrooms gave off an incredibly foul smell, making the scientists immediately suspicious of their rumored aphrodisiac properties.
Luckily for them, women tend to be less suspicious of anything that promises a fast and strong orgasm.
Volunteers tested sniffing the flower and the results were striking. Half of all the women who sniffed the fungus had immediate spontaneous orgasms, while 100% of the women who sniffed the fungus reported feeling an intense increase in their sexual arousal.
This is a woman-only fungus, though. All of the male participants reported no change in sexual desire and in fact reported being made to feel nauseated by the fungus.
So what's the science behind this freaky orgasm-giving fungus? Halliday and Soule have an idea that the fungus contains "hormone-like compounds [that] may have some similarity to human neurotransmitters released during sexual encounters."
Whatever the reason, there's no denying that the existence of this fungus is awesome. I don't think any of us need an excuse to go to Hawaii ... That said, I don't know how desperate for an orgasm you would to be to hop on a lava flow. Ouch!
