“Plant cognition is a new and exciting field of research directed at experimentally testing the cognitive abilities of plants, including perception, learning processes, memory and consciousness.The emerging framework holds considerable implications for the way we perceive plants as it redefines the traditionally held boundary between animals and plants.”
Sentience in Plants
Sentience in plants
A Paris zoo is showcasing a mysterious creature dubbed the “blob,” a yellowish collection of unicellular organisms called a slime mold that looks like a fungus, but acts like an animal.
This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on public display on Saturday, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet can detect food and digest it.
The blob also has almost 720 sexes, can move without legs or wings and heals itself in two minutes if cut in half.
“The blob is a living being which belongs to one of nature’s mysteries,” said Bruno David, director of the Paris Museum of Natural History, of which the Zoological Park is part.
“It surprises us, because it has no brain but is able to learn (…) and if you merge two blobs, the one that has learned will transmit its knowledge to the other,” David said.
The blob was named after a 1958 science-fiction horror B-movie, starring a young Steve McQueen, in which an alien life form consumes everything in its path in a small Pennsylvania town.
“We know for sure it is not a plant but we don’t really [know] if it’s an animal or a fungus,” said David.
“It behaves very surprisingly for something that looks like a mushroom … it has the behaviour of an animal, it is able to learn.”
Source:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/paris-zoo-blob-1.5325747
Trees secretly talk to each other underground. They’re passing information and resources to and from each other through a network of mycorrhizal fungi—mykós means fungus and riza means root in Greek—a mat of long, thin filaments that connect an estimated 90% of land plants. Scientists call the fungi the Wood Wide Web because ‘adult’ trees can share sugars to younger trees, sick trees can send their remaining resources back into the network for others, and they can communicate with each other about dangers like insect infestations.
Source:
https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/the-wood-wide-web-how-trees-secretly-talk-to-and-share-with-each-other
Plants are not usually thought to be very active behaviorally, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Moreover, in stressful situations, plants produce numerous chemicals that have painkilling and anesthetic properties. Finally, plants, when treated with anesthetics, cannot execute active behaviors such as touch-induced leaf movements or rapid trap closures after localizing animal prey
One of the most controversial aspects of Mancuso’s work is the idea of plant consciousness. As we learn more about animal and plant intelligence, not to mention human intelligence, the always-contentious term consciousness has become the subject of ever more heated scientific and philosophical debate. “Let’s use another term,” Mancuso suggests. “Consciousness is a little bit tricky in both our languages. Let’s talk about awareness. Plants are perfectly aware of themselves.” A simple example is when one plant overshadows another – the shaded plant will grow faster to reach the light. But when you look into the crown of a tree, all the shoots are heavily shaded. They do not grow fast because they know that they are shaded by part of themselves. “So they have a perfect image of themselves and of the outside,” says Mancuso.
Plants don’t suffer. Their fictitious misery should not be used to justify the real misery of our nonhuman animal victims. “But how do you know plants don’t suffer?!” says the meat-eater, affecting a touching concern for the well-being vegetables. “Science proves plants feel pain!”
But no. Suppose that consciousness is fundamental in Nature, or at least to individual cells. Plant cells are encased in thick cellulose cell walls. So they aren’t phenomenally-bound subjects of experience. Organisms such as plants without the capacity for rapid self-propelled motion haven’t evolved the energetically expensive nervous-systems needed to support phenomenal binding. No binding = no suffering.
A lot of computer scientists and natural scientists are implicitly epiphenomenalists – though they probably wouldn’t use the term. But epiphenomena don’t have the causal power to inspire discussions on their existence.
Even so, might consciousness be a spandrel? What’s consciousness evolutionarily “for” – other than inspiring useless philosophical discussions? Well, imagine if we were just 86 billion odd classical neurons, as textbook neuroscience suggests. Phenomenal binding would be impossible. So we wouldn’t be able to experience individual perceptual objects. There would be no unity of perception nor unity of the self. We couldn’t run phenomenal world-simulations. Indeed, a micro-experiential zombie would soon starve or get eaten.
Yet how is phenomenal binding possible?
— David Pearce
Are plants sentient? We know they sense their environments to a significant degree; like animals, they can “see” light, as a New Scientist feature explains. They “live in a very tactile world,” have a sense of smell, respond to sound, and use taste to “sense danger and drought and even to recognize relatives.” We’ve previously highlighted research here on how trees talk to each other with chemical signals and form social bonds and families. The idea sets the imagination running and might even cause a little paranoia. What are they saying? Are they talking about us?
Maybe we deserve to feel a little uneasy around plant life, given how ruthlessly our consumer economies exploit the natural world. Now imagine we could hear the sounds plants make when they’re stressed out. In addition to releasing volatile chemicals and showing “altered phenotypes, including changes in color, smell, and shape,” write the authors of a new study published at bioRxiv, it’s possible that plants “emit airborne sounds [their emphasis] when stressed—similarly to many animals.”
Plants do metabolize diclofenac (the specific mechanism is explained in the article below). This indicates that it’s possible to test if plants could react to painkillers while being damaged.
Metabolism of diclofenac in plants – Hydroxylation is followed by glucose conjugation
Aditionally, I think this is also relevant: there’s absolutely no evidence that plants are not sentient.
(Answered with the info and suggestion provided by the researcher Octavio Muciño)
The following is a list of types of suffering organized according to their uncertainty.
1. Suffering well reported.
In this case, the suffering being is typically an adult human who survives to the negative experience and can describe it.
- Large burned; suffering by fires, plane crashes, explosions, bombings… (suffering by hot)
- Individuals suffering cold and freezing.
- Experimentation with human beings.
- Partial drowning.
- Physical torture.
- Psychological torture.
- Rape in adults.
- Irukandji jellyfish sting.
- Cluster headache.
- Trigeminal neuralgia.
- Conscious agony without palliative care (cancer, degenerative diseases…)
- Heart attacks and cardiovascular accidents.
- Depression.
- Psychological suffering due to the loss of a loved one.
- Psychological suffering of abandonment and separation type (emotional break in couples or between parents and children)
- Psychological suffering due to feeling guilty for having caused or not having been able to avoid the damage to a loved one.
- Another psychological suffering.
- Birth pain.
2. Suffering difficult to survey.
It is the case of suffering in non-human animals, very young humans, humans in oppressive situations, humans with some cognitive impairment, and humans who do not survive the experience of suffering, or for any other reason they cannot communicate it.
In soils across the world, fungi trade resources with the plants they colonise in a mutually beneficial relationship. But it turns out the fungi are savvy traders, taking advantage of their partners by shuttling goods to nutrient-starved areas where plants are willing to pay more than usual… Read more