"The book has been criticized by botanists such as Arthur Galston for endorsing pseudoscientific claims. According to Galston and physiologist Clifford L. Slayman many of the claims in the book are false or unsupported by independent verification and replicable studies.
Botanist Leslie Audus noted that the book is filled with nonsensical "outrageous" claims and should be regarded as fiction." -- Wikipedia 17/6/26
He didn't mention this, but you can see in the video that as well as the photoreceptors, the plant can actually move (very very slowly) and swivels its stem to see if it can touch anything. So it's headed in the general direction of the pole but it's also swinging around to try to find it, much like how we would reach out and swing our arms in the dark to feel for a wall or something. There's a great BBC documentary The Green Planet that shows this too, along with lots of other cool plant stuff.
Wow, interesting, it's almost like plants are ALIVE or something. Like they fulfill the long-established prerequisites for what constitutes a "living organism".
Intelligence, consciousness, sentience, and sapience are all different things. We've known for a long time that plants have a degree of "intelligence" meaning they can make "decisions." They grow towards the sun, their roots move towards water, etc. The flinching he mentioned is a great example.
That is a far cry from animal sentience. Or human-level sapience.
I feel like there is a lot of conclusion that are made from like bit of information, plant not flinching anymore could be something else than learning / conscious behaviour. One guy auto claiming a title is also not a good sign usually, and same as before it seems that the conclusion looks logical but so could anything else. I'm dubious for now, but interested.
Anyone who’s ever seen elephants interact know that animals can be self-aware caring and intelligent. To me it’s not such a stretch to limit these attributes to just animals.
We really are having to redefine exactly what “intelligence” is. Plants are truly fascinating. Scientists have discovered that they can even communicate through sound, which was thought to be the only sense plants didn’t have. David Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities did a lovely and insightful bit on how plants communicate with bees to tell the bees if they currently have nectar or not. There are a couple really good books I’ve read recently. “The Light Eaters” by Zoe Schlanger 1/2
2/2 and “Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature” by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian are definitely two books worth reading. Or listening to. Libby has become my favorite and most used app. If you ,or anyone reading this, don’t already have a library card, check with your regional library about getting one online :)
There is plenty of consensus on how it works... otherwise we would not use it. Do we precisely understand the exact metabolic and molecular reactions? No not completely. That is incredibly difficult to study as you would need a live human test subject who can vocalize responses. VERY few people in all of history have agreed to anything even remotely similar to that. And while we don't understand how we gained consciousness we can recognize it in other beings. This fueled many taxonomic classes.
What you said there is we know *that* it works not how it works. A great many people know that their computer works, they don't know how it works. Arguably without a unified field theory nobody really knows how anything works, we just know well enough to be useful. We know enough about the effects of the stuff to be useful, but without knowing what consciousness is saying we have stopped it is kinda arbitrary in a way. Arbitrary is still useful.
It isnt looking. Its rotating to feel ANYTHING. Once it touches anything it will climb higher to reach a better lightsource....lots of vines and parasitic plants do this
Love how the guy in the video literally explains how studies have shown they use photoreceptors to navigate towards the darkest part of the room, and you just comment “nah bro, that’s not what happens.”
Obvs anything that is photosynthentic loves to be in the dark. Duh. The fucking vines literally are climb ing over other plants to get to the best light
Of course. Apologies for potentially misinterpreting the video. There is definitely a spectrum of plant types which require or prefer different light intensities. Maybe i should of been more attentive to the language being used. Sometimes im bad for not listening and jist jumping the gun so to speak, on what I THINk the information coming in is
I really hate people who view themselves as "science communicators" who dumb things down too far and anthropomorphize things and activities to make it "more understandable" but create much further misunderstandings.\
The really cool thing is that if you put 2 of the same plant in the same room but with only one pole, both plants will start towards the pole but as soon as one of them reaches it, the other plant _will start searching for a new pole and ignore the previous one_.
Sometimes I mention to vegans that when I eat an animal, it's dead (except for oysters, okay). But when they eat something fresh like a salad, it's fully alive and able to grow back if the core is replanted. Or beans which you can plant to produce a whole organism, etc... Yes, it's a bit disingenuous as an argument, but I can tell many never had that thought and I can see the neurons misfire for a while.
I love imagining different mechanisms for how "thought" can occur that are wildly different than our understanding of it. What if entire star systems "think" through gravity and electromagnetism? I dunno I'm no scientist, but its fun to ponder.
check out the concept of the Boltzmann brain my dude. I don't think just raw energy or what not could do the job as there's no "switching" element but hey, it'd be cool to be wrong.
I'm thinking it comes from something that might block the sun, for a vine creeping plant, a branch/another plant/something above it would block the sky/sun and be darker. So darkest part of the room might be inaccurate, but just something darker than the ambient light.
And beyond that, being able to react to stimuli is hardly the same as being conscious. It can detect light and grow in a direction. It can respond when bitten by an insect. These are the most basic of basic indications of life, not anything resembling thought.
If it's looking for something to climb and the only thing it can "see" is light and not light, then the least bright thing is most likely to be a surface.
It doesn’t even have to be that complicated. “Plants grow towards their preferred conditions” is pretty standard - plants that want more light will grow towards the light, plants that want less light will grow away from it. So, if this is a plant that wants less light, it’ll grow towards the dark area, and if it ALSO happens to be a climber, then it’ll start climbing along anything it finds along the way.
Oh, and ‘photoreceptors’ aren’t needed for that at all. Plant has leaves; leaves work best in certain light conditions; leaves on side of plant with better lighting grow more; plant leans towards better lighting due to heavier leaves; plant growing the direction it’s leaning. There’s no reason to jump all the way to “Plants are conscious!!!”
More light does not necessarily mean the most light; some plants prefer the shade. Also, if growing straight towards the most light led to not finding anything to climb on, then the plant wouldn’t have evolved to be a creeper. That’s kinda the point - plants aren’t thinking “that darkness is an object I can climb to get to more light”; they’re responding to much more basic and immediate stimuli than that, not reasoning out a strategy based on a sequence of steps.
johnxbear
Now put it in a room with identical poles made of different materials.
do7rkb5n
Calling themselves plant neurobilogists is a great troll
Cosmicfisherman
Sounds like my social skills.
TheJuiceLoosener
Of course they can. Humans have this overpowering delusion that if you can't do it *like we do it*, then you can't do it. It's fucking stupid.
Polymathena
The Secret Life of Plants 1973
Mahabazu
"The book has been criticized by botanists such as Arthur Galston for endorsing pseudoscientific claims. According to Galston and physiologist Clifford L. Slayman many of the claims in the book are false or unsupported by independent verification and replicable studies.
Botanist Leslie Audus noted that the book is filled with nonsensical "outrageous" claims and should be regarded as fiction." -- Wikipedia 17/6/26
QueefMalone
The morning glory in my garden is sentient, there's no other explanation.
jClickTaker
Aha, let me pass this on to my very aware Vegan son with a question, ‘what are you going to eat now, silage?
Salticido
He didn't mention this, but you can see in the video that as well as the photoreceptors, the plant can actually move (very very slowly) and swivels its stem to see if it can touch anything. So it's headed in the general direction of the pole but it's also swinging around to try to find it, much like how we would reach out and swing our arms in the dark to feel for a wall or something. There's a great BBC documentary The Green Planet that shows this too, along with lots of other cool plant stuff.
michaelfire
Pheew...mind blown.
wazeewa
Wow, interesting, it's almost like plants are ALIVE or something. Like they fulfill the long-established prerequisites for what constitutes a "living organism".
epithymetic
relsky
Intelligence, consciousness, sentience, and sapience are all different things. We've known for a long time that plants have a degree of "intelligence" meaning they can make "decisions." They grow towards the sun, their roots move towards water, etc. The flinching he mentioned is a great example.
That is a far cry from animal sentience. Or human-level sapience.
youreathing
We barely understand human intelligence. We don't know what we don't know. Fungi could have a level of intelligence unthinkable to us.
Thojira
I feel like there is a lot of conclusion that are made from like bit of information, plant not flinching anymore could be something else than learning / conscious behaviour. One guy auto claiming a title is also not a good sign usually, and same as before it seems that the conclusion looks logical but so could anything else. I'm dubious for now, but interested.
bigdix69420
"Undeniable evidence " lol
UsertubeBandwagon
Anyone who’s ever seen elephants interact know that animals can be self-aware caring and intelligent. To me it’s not such a stretch to limit these attributes to just animals.
seenunseen
Hahs vegans! What are you going to eat now!
SpanWolf
Now put it in A ROOM WITH A MOOSE!
SarcasticComment
checkmate vegans.
Gojiraarijog
We really are having to redefine exactly what “intelligence” is. Plants are truly fascinating. Scientists have discovered that they can even communicate through sound, which was thought to be the only sense plants didn’t have. David Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities did a lovely and insightful bit on how plants communicate with bees to tell the bees if they currently have nectar or not. There are a couple really good books I’ve read recently. “The Light Eaters” by Zoe Schlanger 1/2
Gojiraarijog
2/2 and “Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature” by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian are definitely two books worth reading. Or listening to. Libby has become my favorite and most used app. If you ,or anyone reading this, don’t already have a library card, check with your regional library about getting one online :)
kaijuuGold
damn yo so now vegans have to eat pizza rolls now
IlluminaBlade
I wouldn't be surprised to learn they have a magnetic map of their environment too.
itsthevoiceman
Hell, we have a hard time understanding our own consciousnesses.
The fact that there's no real consensus on how or why anesthesia works is just ... mind-boggling.
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
There is plenty of consensus on how it works... otherwise we would not use it. Do we precisely understand the exact metabolic and molecular reactions? No not completely. That is incredibly difficult to study as you would need a live human test subject who can vocalize responses. VERY few people in all of history have agreed to anything even remotely similar to that. And while we don't understand how we gained consciousness we can recognize it in other beings. This fueled many taxonomic classes.
Camelspotting
Do we use it?
valen00
What you said there is we know *that* it works not how it works. A great many people know that their computer works, they don't know how it works. Arguably without a unified field theory nobody really knows how anything works, we just know well enough to be useful. We know enough about the effects of the stuff to be useful, but without knowing what consciousness is saying we have stopped it is kinda arbitrary in a way. Arbitrary is still useful.
bigdix69420
It isnt looking. Its rotating to feel ANYTHING. Once it touches anything it will climb higher to reach a better lightsource....lots of vines and parasitic plants do this
alloutofmondays
Love how the guy in the video literally explains how studies have shown they use photoreceptors to navigate towards the darkest part of the room, and you just comment “nah bro, that’s not what happens.”
Absolutely wild.
bigdix69420
Less darkness. The nutrients plants crave
bigdix69420
Obvs anything that is photosynthentic loves to be in the dark. Duh. The fucking vines literally are climb ing over other plants to get to the best light
alloutofmondays
Wow, you’re actually dumber than originally thought.
If they were navigating towards a light source, it wouldn’t be going towards the darkest part of the room. It would be doing the opposite.
Also, some plants thrive in shade and die from more exposure to light. Check out the term “leaf scorching.”
The dunning Krueger is strong in you.
bigdix69420
Of course. Apologies for potentially misinterpreting the video. There is definitely a spectrum of plant types which require or prefer different light intensities. Maybe i should of been more attentive to the language being used. Sometimes im bad for not listening and jist jumping the gun so to speak, on what I THINk the information coming in is
bigdix69420
My bad
EverNotRelevant
If the title of your article is a question that can be simply answered "No," don't write it.
Camelspotting
Define "think."
Grambot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
I really hate people who view themselves as "science communicators" who dumb things down too far and anthropomorphize things and activities to make it "more understandable" but create much further misunderstandings.\
Dybidude5
Absolutely, it's the same as eating ice cream in winter despite being on a spaceship.
Just joking. ;P
foreverinchains
Take that, vegans.
That's pretty neat, though.
Canigetbannedagain2
So you really love your veggies... No, I hate them, that's why I eat them.
TheFuckfaceWhisperer
The really cool thing is that if you put 2 of the same plant in the same room but with only one pole, both plants will start towards the pole but as soon as one of them reaches it, the other plant _will start searching for a new pole and ignore the previous one_.
knudude
foreverinchains
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1NnljbHgxcGdpMjd4ZzY2anB0aWdjem1yZ2VlbGcyMW1jOHVrbnR5NiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/n3p6JiIG0TzCU/200w.webp
knudude
ethaniel
I always said that we should give the planet a break and just do cannibalism at this point.
jesuisgur
Sometimes I mention to vegans that when I eat an animal, it's dead (except for oysters, okay). But when they eat something fresh like a salad, it's fully alive and able to grow back if the core is replanted. Or beans which you can plant to produce a whole organism, etc... Yes, it's a bit disingenuous as an argument, but I can tell many never had that thought and I can see the neurons misfire for a while.
thenetbear
I’m a level 5 vegan. I don’t eat anything that casts a shadow
ADeani
Mushrooms only grown in the dark?
hotaru251
no shadow if eat it in the dark
kahooki
*BOOM*
Vegan Vampires!
NinjaCongo
And if it does - boom five more weeks of winter!
Jelhammer
How do you feel about chicken parm?
joiningtheworldofmissingpersonz
Brooklyn Hytes!
CJAW
Home compost? You mean you don't pocket mulch?
SpanWolf
Oh, it's so decomposed!
Atomic2
I love imagining different mechanisms for how "thought" can occur that are wildly different than our understanding of it. What if entire star systems "think" through gravity and electromagnetism? I dunno I'm no scientist, but its fun to ponder.
bezobzira
Right? If the neurotransmitters in plans just flood all over, is that .. more advanced? I have no reason to believe that a tree is not wiser than me
johnxbear
The mitochondria may be the powerhouse of the cell but WHY does it do what it does?
Subtilico
It used to be an independent organism, but now it is sort of a pet.
valen00
check out the concept of the Boltzmann brain my dude. I don't think just raw energy or what not could do the job as there's no "switching" element but hey, it'd be cool to be wrong.
HighSlayerRalton
You might be interested in the First Sirian Bank from the Dark Side of the Sun.
Atomic2
I use chase and an old sock under my...... woah hey now almost told you where I keep my $17
WarlockWithNoPatron
Why would a plant move toward the darkest part of the room? That doesn't make any sense.
ihugpeople
I'm thinking it comes from something that might block the sun, for a vine creeping plant, a branch/another plant/something above it would block the sky/sun and be darker. So darkest part of the room might be inaccurate, but just something darker than the ambient light.
UWAGAGABLAGABLAGABA
So, put it along the floor
WarlockWithNoPatron
And beyond that, being able to react to stimuli is hardly the same as being conscious. It can detect light and grow in a direction. It can respond when bitten by an insect. These are the most basic of basic indications of life, not anything resembling thought.
SoGrosslyIncandescent
If it's looking for something to climb and the only thing it can "see" is light and not light, then the least bright thing is most likely to be a surface.
Septcanmat
It doesn’t even have to be that complicated. “Plants grow towards their preferred conditions” is pretty standard - plants that want more light will grow towards the light, plants that want less light will grow away from it. So, if this is a plant that wants less light, it’ll grow towards the dark area, and if it ALSO happens to be a climber, then it’ll start climbing along anything it finds along the way.
Septcanmat
Oh, and ‘photoreceptors’ aren’t needed for that at all. Plant has leaves; leaves work best in certain light conditions; leaves on side of plant with better lighting grow more; plant leans towards better lighting due to heavier leaves; plant growing the direction it’s leaning. There’s no reason to jump all the way to “Plants are conscious!!!”
NinjaCongo
The purpose of climbing is reaching for more light while not expending energy on growing a stable trunk. That is the strategy of climbing plants.
Septcanmat
More light does not necessarily mean the most light; some plants prefer the shade. Also, if growing straight towards the most light led to not finding anything to climb on, then the plant wouldn’t have evolved to be a creeper. That’s kinda the point - plants aren’t thinking “that darkness is an object I can climb to get to more light”; they’re responding to much more basic and immediate stimuli than that, not reasoning out a strategy based on a sequence of steps.