Plants might be smarter then you think!

[P_chan]

I saw this article today and I thought it was interesting.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071009/sc_livescience/plantscommunicatetowarnagainstdanger


I remember hearing about something like this before, but I can't remember the details.

The other experiment I heard about in college was similar to this one in a way. They hooked some plants up to a few lie detector machines and took the readings. Then, they had someone come into the room and tear one plant to shreds. This cause the lie detector readings to go off the charts. But once the person who tore up the other plant left the room, all the readings went back to normal. However, when the person who torn up the first plant would enter the room, all the readings would go crazy again like they did before. I don't have any sources for this, and I'm not sure if it's true, I heard it in college a long time ago. I think I'll look it up and see what I can find.

[P_chan]

LOL I found it! But it seems that the guy was a little on the crazy side. Here it is:

http://skepdic.com/plants.html

[DocTurtle]

Trippy and interesting at the same time. I couldn't stop reading it, lol. Pretty sweet bro.

[pardus]

I didn't know that about plants with network runners (whatever they're called), but I have learned about plant defenses. Some plants simply manufacture toxins to deter herbivores, and I think they can increase the amount of toxin they produce once there is a signal that tissue is being damaged. The "signal" may be a certain acid in the saliva of a caterpillar, which triggers certain chemicals to be used.

They may also release volatile chemicals that attract natural enemies of the herbivore. Sometimes these volatile chemicals are picked up by neighboring plants, which then start up their own defenses. This has been documented in corn and in some species of tree, I think maybe oaks.

Pretty wild, huh?

Before anyone asks, though, these are all electrochemical signals being exchanged. There's no nervous system involved.

[dk]

Here's a piece of pure comedy gold. None of it true, I'm sure, but funny as hell.

http://www.department13designs.com/vegan.html

[Fonze]

Is this true cause if it is it's funny as hell.

[P_chan]

Here's a piece of pure comedy gold. None of it true, I'm sure, but funny as hell.

http://www.department13designs.com/vegan.html

Nice one, very funny:thumbup:

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Before anyone asks, though, these are all electrochemical signals being exchanged. There's no nervous system involved.
I'm not sure I understand the difference clearly:
Nerves are specially built to transmit electrochemical signals...
http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/thebrain/section2.rhtml

Could you elaborate a bit more, please?

[pardus]

Nerves transmit electrochemical signals to the brain. That's what's missing from plants, the central processing system. I'm not a plant physiologist so I may get some details wrong, but an electrochemical signal a plant responds to might be jasmonic acid, from a caterpillar's saliva. That stimulates the plant to release volatile chemicals into the air, which may attract predators of the caterpillar or have some negative effect on the caterpillar itself.

I'm afraid I don't know what mediates this process, but no one claims that there's central processing unit on a plant. Also, maybe I shouldn't have used the term electrochemical, since I can't think of any electric potentials that would come into play.

From what I can tell, plants respond very locally, that is, each cell responds to the water content in the next cell, or the photons that are hitting it. I don't think the plant as a whole has the wherewithal to coordinate its responses, because that implies some centralized communication. But at the cellular level, chemical signals are being exchanged.

So my take on this is that at the level of the receptor nerve, it may be a similar process, but unless it's processed by a brain, I'll say, "Not sentient!" Hope that makes sense!

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

[pardus]

my pleasure!

[TheNoNamedOne]

Yes, Pardus, that was quite interesting and informing how you explained that. Short and digestible. Thanks.

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Plant Brain: Each root apex harbours a unit of nervous system of plants. The number of root apices in the plant body is high and all brain-units are interconnected via vascular strands (plant nerves) with their polarly-transported auxin (plant neurotransmitter), to form a serial (parallel) nervous system of plants. The computational and informational capacity of this nervous system based on interconnected parallel units is predicted to be higher than that of the diffuse nervous system of lower animals, or the central nervous system of higher animals/humans.
http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/pdf/NeuroPlantTZ-Biologia.pdf

Some research suggests plants do have some sort of organized signaling and processing capability. Food for thought.

[TheNoNamedOne]

That read looks quite interesting, Eele, but damn, PDF documents' fonts are so freakin small that I can't force myself to read more than one or two paras.

I kinda geuss that that is why your quote is from the first para as well, right? lol.

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Doesn't your PDF reader have a button to expand or contract the text? If you're using the standard PDF plugin browser 2 on a Mac, there's a button with a +.- on the upper left of the menu bar that appears right under your Internet browser navigation bar. You should be able to enlarge the text to a comfortable reading size with little difficulty.

[TheNoNamedOne]

No, Eele. Looking, but don't see it. Are you using Safari?

[DougP]

That read looks quite interesting, Eele, but damn, PDF documents' fonts are so freakin small that I can't force myself to read more than one or two paras.

I kinda geuss that that is why your quote is from the first para as well, right? lol.

you're so right its not even funny. About 90% of my study materials that I'm going over now are in PDF:argh3: That's why I'm in here taking a break from the soreness.... Oh and I'm sure that there are a few plants that are smarter than me at the moment. I feel as though my brain has been sucked dry:(

[pardus]

http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/pdf/NeuroPlantTZ-Biologia.pdf

Some research suggests plants do have some sort of organized signaling and processing capability. Food for thought.

Oh dear. Please someone discredit this research NOW. :crying:

pdf files always pissed me off too. They used to take forever to load and sometimes you couldn't tell if the link was going to spring it on you. I guess it's faster now that computers all have Adobe Reader on them?

And it's just another program that interrupts me all the time about upgrades, and then tells me something went wrong, and gives me a rough time about copying text.

They're like Microsoft!

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

TP,
No, I use FireFox. I have a plug-in that let's me read PDF files, and the same plug-in seems to work for all the web browsers compatible with Mac. You can find it here (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16527).

Pardus,
I don't think the research I linked to suggests plants are necessarily intelligent nor capable of suffering. Just that they are able to communicate in some fashion and process that communication. Clearly people have to eat. I doubt even the most serious vegan would argue that plants are off limits.

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Plants may just have more of a brain than previously thought...

Although plants are generally immobile and lack the most obvious brain activities of animals and humans, they are not only able to show all the attributes of intelligent behaviour but they are also equipped with neuronal molecules, especially synaptotagmins and glutamate/glycine-gated glutamate receptors. Recent advances in plant cell biology allowed identification of plant synapses transporting the plant-specific neurotransmitter-like molecule, auxin. This suggests that synaptic communication is not limited to animals and humans but seems to be widespread throughout plant tissues. Root apices seated at the anterior pole of the plant body show many features which allow us to propose that they, especially their transition zones, act in some way as brain-like command centres. The opposite posterior pole harbours sexual organs and is specialized for plant reproduction. Last but not least, we propose that vascular tissues represent highways for plant nervous activity allowing rapid exchange of information between the growing points of above-ground organs and the brain-like zones in the root apices.

http://www.drskunk.com/CANNABRAINds.htm