Plants make ultrasonic squeals when stressed

a reply to: dawnstar
Storms are natural, so are we humans. Trees grow and die. If that old half dead tree would not get wiped out by a storm, it would not be able to give back it's nutrients to the forest and the new, soon to be old trees.

On a big scale I agree with you. If we do not get our stuff together as one species or planet, we will vanish. Earth will recover just fine without us.

a reply to: Oleandra88

It's just my quirk... I really dont expect anyone else to see it the way I do anyways. It's only nature at work when that puppy or kitten has been your companion through its lifetime into old age also, but it still bites when old age causes its demise. If you dont mind I will still pay a little homage to the trees that have stood for hundreds of years offering its shade to those who walk in its shadow and homes to a multitude of critters through its life.

a reply to: dawnstar
I would never mind that. I think we got off on the wrong foot.

Awesome!
This is a huge deal!

a reply to: Oleandra88

Plants are not intelligent. They don't have a nerve system to form thoughts. Reacting to the environment does not require intelligence or a nervous system, just cells that are sensitive to particular stimuli (say, light) and a biochemistry that allows to transmit a signal to parts of the plant that need to react a certain way. Without a nervous system, plants have neither a mechanism for feeling pain, nor a brain to have emotions like suffering. Plants don't know that they want to live, plants don't feel love in the same manner as humans do. It's just a weak argument (not from you).

a reply to: Skorpiogurl
Please define intelligence before you discard the thought that plants can be intelligent.

You mix up different categories and equate emotional intelligence to logic intelligence.

Plants do not know they want to live but yet they go to lengths (pun intended) to avoid dying.

Listen, I am not saying that plants can reason like we do but they

I) plan for the future
II) avoid dangers
III) can remember earlier threats and droughts and change their grow rate

You really should read up on recent, as in the last 20 years, of research about plants.

a reply to: Oleandra88

Plants are not able to learn or understand or use reason to deal with difficult situations. They have no ability to apply learned knowledge to manipulate or think abstractly. They have no mental acuteness. They have no basic understanding or comprehension. They are not truly sentient. Though certain scientific studies have shown that plants can react to stimuli, these reactions do not point to having feelings because they lack three basic qualifications for requiring sentience:

1. Sensory organs - which enable them to see, hear, taste, etc.

2. Variability of response - conscious perception which acts as an intermediary between their environment and their many different behavioral responses to it. In other words - plants will act exactly the same, react in the same manner regardless of difference scenarios.

3. Appetite and locomotion - nature has enabled humans and animals to be sentient because we have the ability to move around. In other words - if plants could feel, they'd be able to get up and move away from a fire, or a lawn mower.
Pain exists and sentient creatures learn what stimuli to seek out.

Plants do not feel pain the way humans animals do because they have no reason for it. If a plant had the means to get up and walk away from an area that was too dry, wet or cold, it would make sense for nature to enable the plant to feel pain. Enabling a living organism to feel pain without the ability for that organism to alleviate that pain is not something done by nature unless by some sort of mutation (i.e.: a creature being born without limbs or with mental or physical disabilities).

Taking the above into consideration, for the sake of argument I will ignore the fact that there are clear biological and differences between plants, animals/humans. So, intelligence? Let's see - Again there is no variability of response, to respond differently in different situations. There is no appetite or locomotion, to seek food through foraging or hunting, which requires the ability to move around. In order for animals and humans to learn what to move toward and what to move away from, they require the ability to perceive pain and pleasure in relation to the objects around them.
Not plants.

a reply to: Skorpiogurl

To be honest, much of what you are describing is more like lack of the ability to judge, not lack of intelligence. Animals pretty much lack it also. Much of their actions are driven by instinct. Sure, some have learned and adapted to con us into taking them In and taking care of them. But, if you've ever watched an animal give birth, compared to how a human handles it, it's obvious that they either dont feel pain like we do or they just dont react to it the same. Because they don't have any preconceived judgements connected to the pain. We judge it as being a sensation that should be avoided, so out natural reaction is to try to avoid the labor pains, while they just accept it and go with the flow. I doesnt mean they dont feel it, they just ain't 'intelligent' enough to think that it's not a good sensation to feel and fight to avoid it. That is the reward eating an apple will get you.
You claim the trees have no intelligence because they dont up and move on when the drought hits. But many animals and humans have died throughout the centuries because of droughts while the tress just planted their roots deeper into the ground, where great reservoirs of water lay, and stood their ground. Who's the intelligent one here the one that is moving place to place, fighting for fertile land, war after war? Sheltering themselves from the forces of nature to the point where they negate the force that powers their evolutionary growth, or the other creatures that stand and bare those elements and allow adaptations to equip thier species for survival in an ever changing world?

a reply to: Skorpiogurl

Plants are not able to learn or understand or use reason to deal with difficult situations. They have no ability to apply learned knowledge to manipulate or think abstractly. They have no mental acuteness. They have no basic understanding or comprehension. They are not truly sentient. Though certain scientific studies have shown that plants can react to stimuli, these reactions do not point to having feelings because they lack three basic qualifications for requiring sentience

It is like you do not read my sentences but just have made up your mind about me. Nothing of what you wrote above and cross out so fast, nothing of this is, what I wrote.

Most of what you wrote is based on your opinion, like your 'walking away - pain' reasoning.

Again there is no variability of response, to respond differently in different situations.

Plants turn/curl/recolor their leaves to adjust to sunlight. They do it by changing the angle of the cells by curling up or rotating the leaf away. If it is getting too cold, many plants start to build up a violet color, some turning into black to get more heat from the sunlight.
This is just about sunlight, do you want to hear about predatory responses, too?

There is no appetite or locomotion, to seek food through foraging or hunting, which requires the ability to move around

Their roots move around. You know, plants get most of their nutrients from their roots. Their roots can even detect obstacles like stones even before they physically touched it.

In order for animals and humans to learn what to move toward and what to move away from, they require the ability to perceive pain and pleasure in relation to the objects around them.

You made that up, I know about the theory you are implying but like you present it here, you did not understand it.

Following your reasoning, critters that science says they feel no pain or pleasure, would never move.


I could go on and on but I have better things to do now. Let us agree to disagree and maybe get back at each other at a different time.

a reply to: Skorpiogurl

There are studies that show plants respond to anesthesia and they also show rudimentary forms of learning, including awareness of objects at a distance.

a reply to: muzzleflash

Correct. They can remember droughts for example and take provisions for that. Mimosa plants can even count.

Just a few basic experiments

a reply to: Oleandra88

anesthesia works on plants same way as humans

So yes they apparently experience "pain"...

a reply to: Oleandra88

That's why I'm so gentle with plants and touch their leaves and stems very lovingly.

I talk to them and direct my positive energies into them.

I know it makes them feel great and I'm pretty sure they become happy.

It sounds nutty but this is scientifically the way we are supposed to interact with flora. It's perfectly natural to love all life.

a reply to: muzzleflash
Hm.
Not pain maybe but experiencing -or in this case- not experiencing signals.

It just becomes pain when the receptors interpret that signal. That is why I wrote earlier that stress can be viewed as pain. Pain is just many nerves firing at once, overloading your senses.

Imagine ripping a plant out of the ground. Plants do not have a nervous system but that is a weak argument made by others. There is communication going on inside the plant or else it would grow like cancer, irregular with no purpose. I do not care about the medium the information flows. It counts that it does, for this argument and for simplicity sake.

Okay, all life is sacred and all that. Gotcha. Plants screaming in pain. Gotcha. Animals screaming in pain. Gotcha. But here is the problem. It seems that almost no life form on Earth can survive without inflicting terrible pain and suffering on other lifeforms. Nature can be cruel. Gotcha. What does that say about the grand design? Is that it? You are born, you inflict torturous pain and suffering on other living beings, then you die? No peaceful co-existence? All of Mother Earth's children are a bunch of savages inflicting heinous suffering upon each other? I didn't sign up for that...

a reply to: Vroomfondel
Why I wrote without life no suffering, and no suffering without life.
It is like it is, that is why I do not take the plant intelligence too serious.

I eat animals, I would be a hypocrite to preach about plants. My only purpose here is trying to have an educated discussion.

a reply to: Oleandra88

Yes plants respond to human interaction and do better.

Plants grow better when you talk to them

In a study performed by the Royal Horticultural Society, researchers discovered that talking to your plants really can help them grow faster. They also found that plants grow faster to the sound of a female voice than to the sound of a male voice. Other studies have experimented with different sound levels and even the kinds of things that are said to plants—do they respond better to compliments or insults?

a reply to: Oleandra88

So that's why I talk to and love on plants, because it's actually helping them (and me) to do better biologically speaking.

a reply to: muzzleflash

Here a link:
www.bbc.com...

Originally I wanted to find that series of tests they did on plants and human intentions. I am unsure about the validity of it. But that link above, from 2017, kills all arguments of scorpiongurl about plants not have sensor input, a ridiculous claim to start begin with for the even most casual knowledge about what a plant is and does.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

But, maybe changing the way we think about things we could change the way we do things. I mean we might not be able to go through life without consuming lower lifeforms, but we could decide to try to reduce the level of suffering we cause in the world. And by doing so, reduce the level of suffering we bring into our future generations end up having to go through because of the damage we inflict on the earth.
We are all so concerned about the rain forests, but we forget, europe and the United states was also once covered in forest. Our ancestors in europe sacrificed forests just to hold the honor of having the grandest church or palace. Those rain forests wouldn't be so danged important if we had conserved our resources a little better.