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Plant Emotions / Consciousness / Communication

The documentary could be faked too, I suppose. Difficult to tell without seeing it, although Stevie's songs sound sincere enough. I wonder if anyone has restaged these experiments in recent times?
 
Seems like this is an interesting moral question, particularly considering the moral high ground many vegetarians take in regards to the cruelty of meat eating.

Here is an interesting essay that, while published on the following forum, may not have originated there:

http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/topic/t-14918_Plant_sentience.html
This link still works, but it takes forever (and some prompting) to load. As a precaution, here's the archived version from the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/2019030...sicsforums.com/threads/plant-sentience.14918/

No one hears this.

They go on and on about evolution, oblivious to the fact that evolutionary theory does not deal with consciousness one way or another. If the conclusion is that plants can be fully explained in evolutionary terms and therfore are mere "automations," then why does that not apply to human beings who can also be fully explained in similar terms? Of course evolutionary theory itself is flawed. I have not been able to get a anyone to explain how plants have unconsiously developed poisions, thorns and other mechanisms to avoid being eaten. Or how fruit bearing plants have designed an ingenious way to spread their seeds and survive. The evolutionary answer is "accidentally" over millions of years of random mutations. If true, why do we not observe failures in this pattern? For example, according to evolutionists, the venus fly trap "accidentally" mutated into an insect devouring plant, apparently it is a stroke of luck for it that "flys" even exist! All evolutionists avoid tacking these questions and refer me to someone else or merely say "read Darwin." Apparently they have not read Darwin; in "Origin of species," he has an entire chapter devoted to problems in his theory. We must accept t that the Orchid flowers know what their polinating insects look like, and they know what scents and colors appeal to the insects, simply because they have a wide range of senses by which to know and insight into insects, which obviously requires sentience.

Evolutionary theory is like Newtonian physics. It apparently explains life, but it has no idea why or how life exists. What physical property distinguishes a dead cell from a living cell? Science does not know, yet it maintains that it is reduceable to physical properties. If the "life force" is reduceable to chemical properties, then it should be a very simple matter to take dead cells and make then alive again. This is common sense. Science must answer these basic questions before tackling sentience.

Furthermore, We know plants have senses. It is a biological fact. There is no physical law that dictates that the plant's root will grown down and its leaves will follow sunlight. It is not magnetism at work! Moreover, the "common sense" argument that plants have no mind because they have no brain is fundamentally flawed. For one reason, our precious "Science" has no explanation why HUMANS are conscious. Science pinpoints it to the brain, but has no speculation for why or how a brain generates consciousness at all. Science does not deal in consciousness because it is a mystery to it. It has left it to philosophy.

In truth, Consciousness does not originate in the brain, the brain is not the CAUSE for consciousness, it is merely an interface for it. If life cannot be explained physically, then why should consciousness? Animals need hearts to live. Plants have no heart, yet they are alive through different principles. Similarly, why should an absence of a brain imply that a plant has no mind? What reason is there against the explanation that plants have a mind through different principles? I have never recieved an answer to this, and I never will from someone who doubts plant sentience. We know that plants have senses. In animals, senses do not work without being connected to a neurological system. The fact that plants have senses is evidence of a "mind" that operates though differernt principles.

I postulated that a seedling knows which direction to grow its root, by sensing gravity. I planted some Mung beans and placed a fine nylon net over the soil (the kind that Oranges come in), then I inverted the pot and hung it. The roots should grown down right? (even though to survive they should grown up). I telepathically communicated to the seeds, telling them how to grown. Each seed reacted differently, as an individual. One started to grow down, then immediately turned and grew upwards. The second seed grew horrizontally. The third root was the slowest to grow and it just grew down. I then planted a seed normally, not inverting the pot. (this seed was among one that I telepathically told to grow up). This seed grew its root up from the start, completely oblivious to gravity; It grew for about three forths of an inch, then it immediately turned, made a hook and started growing downward! But it didn't get very far. It soon died.
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At another site, there is a good bit of discussion about the same essay:

http://www.vegsource.com/talk/spiritual/messages/18150.html

And this is a different look called the Sentient Garden:

http://www.interspecies.com/pages/sentient.html

And as to be expected, here is the anti-view that views plant sentience as hogwash:

http://tabish.freeshell.org/animals/plantpain.html

Anybody here feel strongly one way or another?
 
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I was reminded of the notion of plant 'consciousness' when I saw this article:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/uoa-sop072815.php

Stressed out plants send animal-like signals
University of Adelaide research has shown for the first time that, despite not having a nervous system, plants use signals normally associated with animals when they encounter stress.

Published today in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology reported how plants respond to their environment with a similar combination of chemical and electrical responses to animals, but through machinery that is specific to plants.

"We've known for a long-time that the animal neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is produced by plants under stress, for example when they encounter drought, salinity, viruses, acidic soils or extreme temperatures," says senior author Associate Professor Matthew Gilliham, ARC Future Fellow in the University's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.

"But it was not known whether GABA was a signal in plants. We've discovered that plants bind GABA in a similar way to animals, resulting in electrical signals that ultimately regulate plant growth when a plant is exposed to a stressful environment."

... (More at the full article linked above)
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I've got a copy or that album on LP - haven't warmed to it I'm afraid.
 
Cleve Backster, Jr. (February 27, 1924 – June 24, 2013) was an interrogation specialist for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), best known for his experiments with plants using a polygraph instrument in the 1960s which led to his theory of "primary perception" where he claimed that plants "feel pain" and have extrasensory perception (ESP), which was widely reported in the media but was rejected by the scientific community.

...

In February 1966, Backster attached polygraph electrodes to a Dracaena cane plant, to measure at first the time taken for water to reach the leaves. The electrodes are used to measure galvanic skin response and the plant showed readings which resembled that of a human. This made Backster try different scenarios, and the readings went off the chart when he pictured burning the leaf, because according to him, the plant registered a stress response to his thoughts of harming it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleve_Backster

We have a Dracaena Avenue in Falmouth, named for the dracaena palms planted along it. Not sure if that's related to a dracaena cane, though.
 
LaurenChurchill said:
" ... Curiousity led Backster in search of other reactions, and he decided to burn a leaf of the plant. While he was thinking about this, there was a dramatic upward sweep in the tracing pattern. He had not moved or even touched the plant. Backster is certain that he had frightened the plant with his decision to burn it. If he is correct, not only can plants feel thimgs, but they can also, in effect, read people's minds."
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I wonder if this sort of plant reaction to human actions (or even just intentions) is related to whatever underlies the alleged Solomon Islanders' practice of collectively yelling / cursing at large trees to make them fall without laborious cutting. :thought:

Solomon Islanders' Tree Cursing
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/solomon-islanders-tree-cursing.64368/
 
Didn't I see an item recently about two plants in a school which were subjected to either positive or negative comments?
The flattered and praised plants grew tall and lush while the derided ones drooped.
 
escargot said:
Didn't I see an item recently about two plants in a school which were subjected to either positive or negative comments?
The flattered and praised plants grew tall and lush while the derided ones drooped.
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I suspect you're referring to one of the follow-on posts in the Solomon Islanders thread, which was recently 'surfaced' and extended.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
... I've got a story somewhere about an ex-FBI geezer who experimented with plants as witnesses to "crimes" and claimed they exhibited alarm in the presence of a culprit who had committed herbicide. :eek:
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I believe this is a reference to ex-CIA polygraph specialist and famous polygraph advocate Cleve Backster, who devoted several years from the 1960's onward to investigating what he labeled "primary perception" in plants. This line of research was motivated by his noticing anomalous polygraph results from wired-up plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleve_Backster

The excerpt from an online transcription of The Secret Life of Plants seems to be the experiment in question ...

To see if a plant could display memory, a scheme was devised whereby Backster was to try to identify the secret killer of one of two plants. Six of Backster's polygraph students volunteered for the experiment, some of them veteran policemen. Blindfolded, the students drew from a hat folded slips of paper, on one of which were instructions to root up, stamp on, and thoroughly destroy one of two plants in a room. The criminal was to commit the crime in secret; neither Backster nor any of the other students was to know his identity; only the second plant would be a witness. By attaching the surviving plant to a polygraph and parading the students one by one before it, Backster was able to establish the culprit. Sure enough, the plant gave no reaction to five of the students, but caused the meter to go wild whenever the actual culprit approached. Backster was careful to point out that the plant could have picked up and reflected the guilt feelings of the culprit; but as the villain had acted in the interests of science, and was not particularly guilty, it left the possibility that a plant could remember and recognize the source of severe harm to its fellow.
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SOURCE: https://www.slideshare.net/TheOccultTruthDotCom/the-secret-life-of-plants-by-tompkins-and-bird
 
MrRING said:
I think that case is the the basis for the film The Kirlian Witness by Joe Sarno.
A movie site here ... has this to say about the film:

The script is based on the true-life 1960 murder of a young woman in New Jersey, and subsequent detective work to nab the killer. In reality the authorities, were more open-minded than those who relied on psychic Peter Hurkos to track the Boston Strangler. They enlisted the aid of a polygraph expert who believed in the psychic power of plants. He reportedly hooked up a lie detector to a plant that had witnessed" the murder, and was able, through emotional reactions of the plant toward suspects, to finger the guilty party.
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For the record, and for what it's worth ...

The above-quoted passage comes from a 2003 movie download(?) site that's now defunct. This site is the only source I've found that makes any claim The Kirlian Witness was based on any actual murder case.

Neither the movie's IMDb entry nor the two online-accessible contemporary reviews from its release:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077808/
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-06-12-ca-10348-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/06/14/...rapsychology-in-sohoonly-the-plants-know.html

... make any mention of the script / story being based on an actual case.

I would point out that a murder being investigated in 1960 would pre-date Backster's discovery of plant / polygraph effects - and hence his research into the subject - circa 6 years later. As far as I know, Backster was the first to note or investigate this subject.

Based on these points I suspect the claim of connection to an actual case is either bogus or perhaps a mistaken regurgitation of imaginative advertising copy for the movie as if it were factual.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
They "confirmed" that plants react to emotional and verbal stimuli on Mythbusters didn't they?
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No.

The Mythbusters crew has performed two investigations of plant emotional / perceptual capabilities and effects.

One set of experiments was aimed at testing the claim talking to plants with positivity facilitated their growth and well-being. The final evaluation was that the claim was "Plausible", but only because test plants subjected to either positive or negative chatter did better than plants left in silence.

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/talking-to-plants/

The more relevant set of experiments were intended to test Backster's claims about plants generating a detectable signal or activation state when they can witness ill treatment or destruction. Their conclusion was negative. Here's the summary text:

Do Plants Have Feelings?

Finding: BUSTED

Explanation: In the 1960s, Cleve Backster, founder of the FBI's polygraph unit, took a detour from crime fighting to develop his pet theory of primary perception. Using polygraph (lie detector) tests, Backster concluded that everything — and we mean everything in the universe is interconnected and capable of producing emotional responses.

For instance, according to Backster's far-out research, a polygraph machine hooked up to a plant leaf can detect the vegetation's inner energy.

MythBusters Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci replicated a series of Backster's polygraph experiments with dracaena plants (the same kind Backster tested), yogurt, saliva and eggs to find out whether the inanimate objects really can empathize with the stuff around them. After a series of tests — and after all possible human and environmental stimuli were removed that could sway the trial outcomes — the myth's prognosis came down to whether a plant would react to "seeing" eggs being catapulted into boiling water.

Because all living organisms emit a slight electric pulse, the MythBusters connected the plant to a pulse-reading EEG machine, which is more sensitive than Backster's vintage polygraph. Then Grant set the timer on a machine in the plant's sight line that would catapult the eggs into boiling water at random intervals and left the room.

Although the eggs faced a fate worse than Humpty Dumpty's, the plant showed no regard whatsoever. The EEG results revealed no spikes in dracaena electrical activity, leaving the myth — and a whole lot of eggs — totally cracked.
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SOURCE: http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/plants-have-feelings/
 
I read about this yesterday. The Queen insisted on grabbing the spade and doing some of the actual work of planting a tree rather than symbolically sprinkling a bit of dirt over the roots -

The Queen planting a tree

I like this bit -
Once said tree was officially planted, she even leant on the spade like an allotment pro before her equerry Major Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah discreetly spirited away the implement.
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However, this version is from the Standard. The one I read was in the Times (which I can't post as it's behind a firewall) and it mentions that the Queen seemed generally caring towards the young tree and spoke to it. And we thought only Mad Charlie did that!
 
A newly published opinion piece from an interdisciplinary group of scientists strongly disputes the notion that plants are conscious or are even structurally capable of consciousness. Here's the Live Science popular summary of their argument(s)
:
Don't Waste Your Emotions on Plants, They Have No Feelings, Grumpy Scientists Say

A tree falls in the woods; but whether or not anyone hears it, the tree has no regrets. Nor does it experience fear, anger, relief or sadness as it topples to the ground. Trees — and all plants, for that matter — feel nothing at all, because consciousness, emotions and cognition are hallmarks of animals alone, scientists recently reported in an opinion article.

The idea that plants have some degree of consciousness first took root in the early 2000s; the term "plant neurobiology" was coined around the notion that some aspects of plant behavior could be compared to intelligence in animals. Though plants lack brains, the firing of electrical signals in their stems and leaves nonetheless triggered responses that hinted at consciousness, researchers previously reported.

But such an idea is bunk, according to the authors of the new article. Plant biology is complex and fascinating, but it differs so greatly from that of animals that so-called evidence of plants' intelligence is intriguing but inconclusive, the scientists wrote. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/65905-plants-dont-think-or-feel.html

And here's the actual online publication:

Plants Neither Possess nor Require Consciousness

Lincoln Taiz, Daniel Alkon, Andreas Draguhn, Angus Murphy, Michael Blatt, Chris Hawes, Gerhard Thiel, David G. Robinson
Published:July 03, 2019DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2019.05.008

https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385(19)30126-8

NOTE: The publication can also be downloaded as a PDF file at:

https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1360-1385(19)30126-8
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Enola takes this plant stuff seriously - we should be afraid :thought::embryo::freak:
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Bwa-ha-ha-ha ... :twisted:

But seriously ...

I was looking for a place to enter my most recent post above. It turned out there were 4 or 5 redundant threads on plant consciousness (etc.) strewn throughout the two decades of the forum's existence. After a few hours of updating / editing / annotating, plus the eradication of two lengthy and unseemly flamefests on veganism / vegetarianism, I finally got them all consolidated into one thread.
 
argh. He'll get Mother Nature onto you.

But Seriously. Is there a thread on the sentience of fungus? I've heard a plausible argument that life on this planet was the result of spacespores - the great god Goldentop. I'm into the idea.
 
skinny said:
... Is there a thread on the sentience of fungus? I've heard a plausible argument that life on this planet was the result of spacespores - the great god Goldentop. I'm into the idea.
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No - we don't have a thread dedicated to fungal sentience.

I'd recommend posting anything about fungal sentience here (because fungi are casually construed as plants) or in the Fortean Fungi thread:

Fortean Fungi
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/fortean-fungi.15605/#post-1877295

If the topic generates substantial discussion we can always establish a dedicated thread for it.
 
More about communication / signaling among plants ...
We Just Learned Plants Under Attack Evolve a Universal 'Scream' to Warn Others

They may not have the muscles and reflexes of the animal kingdom, but that doesn't mean plants just passively sit around when something starts chewing them up.

We know damage triggers a signal that spreads through the plant, mounting its defensive response. And we know part of that response is the release of smelly volatile organic compounds.

Now new research has shed new light on what those compounds do. They signal to other plants nearby that a threat is imminent, allowing them to go on the defensive too. In other words, they're effectively a smelly warning cry.

In fact, this new study on Canada goldenrod (Solidago altissima) even found that the chemical compounds released are more similar in plants with a history of being attacked, whether or not they're related.

In other words, it seems plants evolve a universal 'language' in areas where they're under pressure of predation, to allow them to better warn others of damage.

"They kind of converge on the same language, or the same warning signs, to share the information freely," said biologist André Kessler of Cornell University.

"The exchange of information becomes independent of how closely related the plant is to its neighbour." ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-scream-to-each-other-in-smells-when-they-re-under-attack
 
I'm not sure which is more remarkable about this study's results - the specificity with which researchers were able to pinpoint how plants chemically signal (and respond to signals) or the fact that plants issue an urgent signal in response to something one would think they'd welcome - i.e., rain.
In an Unexpected Twist, Plants Enter a Type of 'Panic' State When It Rains

Just like us, plants need water to survive, but that doesn't mean these leafy greens enjoy a downpour any more than we do.

When the grey clouds loom and the rain begins to fall, their response is immediate, all-consuming and close to that of 'panic', a surprising discovery reveals.

Strange as that might seem (after all, water is supposed to bring life to plants, not death), experts say moisture is the number one way disease spreads among vegetation, even more so than temperature. The longer a leaf is wet, you see, the greater the chance that a pathogen will set up residence.

"When a raindrop splashes across a leaf, tiny droplets of water ricochet in all directions," says plant biochemist Harvey Millar from The University of Western Australia.

"These droplets can contain bacteria, viruses, or fungal spores. A single droplet can spread these up to 10 metres to surrounding plants."

In other words, a plant's reaction to rain is kind of like your reaction to someone else sneezing on you: it's not pleasant and it sends you straight into defence mode. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-surp...ur-plants-enter-a-sort-of-panic-when-it-rains
 
EnolaGaia said:
No - we don't have a thread dedicated to fungal sentience.
I'd recommend posting anything about fungal sentience here . . .
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Sometimes I feel I am a sentient fungus.
 
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