why do mushrooms grow their gills and spores on the underside of the fruit body? Isn’t it better to grow it on top so that air and passing animals can carry it?

Question

Edit: Why do **some** mushrooms…

In: Biology

Answer 1

There is nothing to carry the spores out, and they would get drenched/flooded by the rain as they developed. This would end up breaking the mushroom itself due to the weight of the water pooling in the gills.

Instead mushrooms rely on gravity. Most spores are not sticky, and the simply fall out of the gills.

As someone else pointed out, evolution does not have a goal. It’s random, and this is the solution that ended up being most successful (so far).