Sebastien Thibault - Source

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Hey there!

When I am not blogging on Steemit, I am studying International Forestry and Ecosystem Management, this got me interested in biology, especially plant-physiology (mechanisms in living systems).

One of the the really interesting fields of science, is where it meets with philosophy and spirituality. Physiology is no exception and the question if plants can "think" and "feel" had scientists wondering for ever so long.

In 1966, Cleve Backster, a CIA interrogation specialist made a mind-boggling discovery. Backster wanted to know how long it would take water to reach the leafs of a plant (a dracaena), so he attached polygraph electrodes to it. He hoped, that by measuring the electrical conductivity, he could register a change when the water reached the leafs. One can only assume how baffled Backster must have been when the plant showed readings similar to a human.

"Next he thought about burning the leaf"

This made Backster explore different scenarios. At first he dipped a leaf into his coffee, hoping to cause stress in the plant, without success. Next, he thought about burning one of the leafs, which must have caused a reaction. While thinking about it, the readings went off the chart. Backster suspected a connection between his thoughts and the readings of the graph. His following experiments included dropping a shrimp into boiling water next to the plant and it seemed like the plant would register the shrimp´s distress.

Backster was certain, that he found proof, that plants were capable of sentiments and had a sense of "awareness". He named his findings primary perception which got published in the International Journal of Parapsychology (1968).

"Primary perception could be measured in every living being"

In the following year, Backster took it even further and conducted tests on yoghurt bacteria, eggs and human sperm. According to him, primary perception could be measured in every living being.

This mirrors the beliefs of Hinduism and Buddhism. Hindus believe, that the soul (the inner most spirit) is in every living creature. So all living creatures should deserve respect. Buddhists also believe that it is wrong to hurt or kill animals, because all beings are afraid of injury and death.

"We know plants don't have nervous systems. But they do have little electrical currents flowing through them and are subject to outside manipulation."

Backster´s theory was not accepted by the scientific community since it did not follow the scientific method. Repeatability is a problem - his results seemed spontaneous and uncontrolled. Voices got loud that the polygraphs were responding to static electricity build-up in the room or changes in humidity.

Can a plant remember?

By definition, learning is a process for acquiring memories by which adaptive changes in an organism´s behaviour arise as a result of experience" - Okano et al. 2000

The idea that plants can learn and remember is not new. Sir J. C. Bose proposed this over a century ago.

In 2014, Monica Gagliano a Professor in Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Western Australia published a very exciting paper. (I know it is expensive, but the read is well worth it)

Gagliano had a plant which not only seemed to remember what happened. It was capable of storing memory for up to a month!

The plant we are talking about is Mimosa pudica. Have a quick look what it looks like and what it can do:

"The sensitive plant"

Mimosa pudica, also called "the sensitive plant" has the ability to fold its leaves, as a self-defense-mechanism.

With this knowledge, Gagliano build a device which could slide plant pots downwards a metallic rail, imitating the fall of the pot.

Drawing by Robert Krulwich Source

Each potted plant was dropped roughly six inches, not once, but 60 times in a row at five-second intervals. The plants would glide into a soft, cushiony foam that prevented bouncing. The drop was sufficiently speedy to alarm the plant and cause its teeny leaves to fold into a defensive curl. Source

By the end of the experiment, the plants leaves remained wide open - the plants did not care anymore. She repeated the experiment a week later and the plants still failed to get alarmed.

Could this be evidence of a "memory" or even an "intelligence" of plants?

“Plants may lack brains,” Gagliano says in her paper, “but they do possess a sophisticated … signaling network.” Could there be some chemical or hormonal “unifying mechanism” that supports memory in plants? It wouldn’t be like an animal brain. It would be radically different, a distributed intelligence, organized in some way we don’t yet understand. But Gagliano thinks Mimosa pudica is challenging us to find out. Source

We already know, that trees can communicate through gigantic Mycorrhizal networks. We are just starting to get a glimpse of how nature might work. I personally think, that everything is waves. And we most certainly lack the equipment to measure all the frequencys. So there is a good chance, that plants can communicate through mediums we are simply not able to measure at this point. I think there will be a need to redefine the meaning of "intelligence" and "feelings" in the coming years, things might not be as black and white as we think.

What do you think?

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Sources

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

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/15/can-a-plant-remember-this-one-seems-to-heres-the-evidence/

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/jun/10/research.highereducation4

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/plant-memory-hidden-vernalization

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose

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

https://www.monicagagliano.com/

https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/experience-teaches-plants-to-learn-faster-and-forget-slower-in-0ZgFoH4IWe