Coprophilic fungi must eject their spores long distance in order for the species to survive. For that reason it has been suggested that the shapes of the spores have been optimized to minimize their drag. We present this argument, and present an analysis of the shapes of objects that minimize their fluid drag as a function of Reynolds number (in the relevant range form 1-100). We compare these shapes with those collected from a family tree of fungi that forcibly eject spores. The optimal shapes exhibit a surprising feature: they are very nearly fore-aft symmetric, despite the fact that the flow field around them is very asymmetric. We use this observation as a basis for constructing a surprisingly accurate linear approximation to steady flows of the Navier Stokes equations that works at least up to Reynolds number of order 100.