The fungal network hidden under fleshy, white king oyster mushrooms doesn’t just sprout elegant appetizers. It can also serve as a keen robotic sensor, helping to pilot a wheeled bot and a squishy, star-shaped hopping one.

Oyster mushrooms’ rootlike mycelial threads generate voltage spikes when flashed with ultraviolet light. In an experiment for Science Robotics, researchers used this process to direct fungal tendrils, grown in a petri dish, to activate robots’ motors via attached electrodes.

These bots join a family of machines known as biohybrids. Successes so far range from a silicone-based jellyfish that uses cardiac cells to propel itself in water to a two-legged robot powered by laboratory-grown skeletal muscle.