I’ve got some wood in my garage structure that has biodegraded (aka “rotted”) and it’s now a project I need to deal with.
Maybe you are right, but I think humans are blind to any behavior that happens at a frequency either too low or too high.
If an organism responds too far out of our frequency band (on the order of hundreds of milliseconds), especially on the extreme low end, we seem unable to consider it 'intelligent' or even purposeful.
We barely even notice it and if any behaviour that unfolds over days seasons or even years.
It also doesn't help fungi that mycelial networks are almost all underground where they are literally invisible to us.
> The Elves do not imitate nature, they let nature do its magic and try to help it as best as they can. Allowing nature to solve a problem is extremely effective and efficient. The only downside is that it usually takes a lot of time - precisely the thing that the immortals have plenty of.