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Even Darwin put forward the hypothesis that the tips of the roots play the role of the brain in plants. However, after him, for a whole century, no one tried to study the plant analogue of the nervous system. A small group of modern biologists managed to prove that plants are capable of sight, feel pain and intoxication. Why this area of knowledge is surrounded by a veil of silence and what success has it achieved in recent years, writes the magazine Nautilus.
František Baluszka, professor of plant cytology at the University of Bonn, together with Stefano Mancuso of the University of Florence and other colleagues decided to investigate the effects of anesthesia on plants. For the experiment, the Venus flytrap was chosen - a plant that lures its victims into a trap of double leaves, which slam shut as soon as the insect touches the hairs on their inner side. The leaf halves close in the blink of an eye, forming a "stomach" in which food is digested.
By experimenting with anesthetics, including those used in operations on humans, the scientists succeeded in stopping the electrical activity inside the plant, as a result of which the trap stopped responding to touch. Peas behaved in a similar way under anesthesia: its antennae, which usually stretch in all directions in search of surfaces for fastening, stopped stretching and curled in place. After the introduced substance was split, the natural activity of the plants resumed.
Does this mean that the plants regained consciousness in the same way that people recover after general anesthesia? This is a very important question, because in order to regain consciousness, you need to have it.
“Plants and trees can no doubt be in pain,” says Balushka. "Any living organism needs this in order to respond appropriately to what is happening." Proof of this, he explains, can be seen at the molecular level.
Plants, like animals, secrete pain-suppressing substances. If they didn’t experience it, what would be the need?
Balushka also made several other discoveries. In South America, a vine grows whose leaves take the form of the leaves of the host plant, which it twines around. It would be logical to assume that this behavior is based on chemical activity: the vine reveals the aromatic substances of the tree and reacts, modifying its leaves in a genetically predetermined way.
One of the researchers came up with the idea of planting a vine on an artificial plant with plastic leaves. As a result, she imitated the shape of artificial leaves just like real ones.
Balushka considers this to be proof that the vine is able to see, because in this case the host plant did not release chemicals or send electrical signals. According to Balushka, all plants can see.
The fact that trees know how to distinguish light from darkness was known before. We also knew that beeches could measure the length of the day by using light receptors that signal wake-up calls. But this is still far from vision in the sense of recognizing shapes and colors.
Here Balushka refers to research on the cuticle, a layer of tissue on the surface of plants. For most of them, this layer is completely transparent. If all plants do is capture sunlight to produce glucose, chloroplasts, the organs needed for photosynthesis, must be placed on their surface (where the most light gets). It is known that the farther from the surface, the less light is absorbed.
And yet the cuticle is transparent. Moreover, in some plants it looks like a lens, that is, it focuses light - just like the cornea of the eye does. If photosynthesis is the only task of the leaves, it would be much more sensible to just let the rays through rather than collect them. Focusing does not increase the amount of light hitting the sheet.
Leaves that play the role of eyes? This idea seems especially strange when you consider that trees shed their "eyes" every fall.
However, six months (in the climatic conditions of Europe) is a rather long period for the animal world. Flies, for example, use their eyes for about a month - this is about how long their life lasts. Mayflies, whose adults live for about one day, use their eyesight for less than 24 hours.
Another interesting fact related to trees: after the leaves have formed, the cells in them do not renew during the entire ripening season, that is, for quite a long time. In comparison, the cells in the cornea of the human eye are completely replaced every 7 days.
It would seem that discoveries such as pain and vision in plants should shock the scientific community. However, the reaction was restrained. Balushka is almost the only one who seriously deals with this topic. This means that this branch of science may soon disappear again, as it already happened once in the time of Darwin.
Darwin suggested that the tips of the roots perform functions similar to those of the brain in simple animals. The chasm between these two kingdoms could have been bridged even then, but research was suspended for a hundred years. In 1973 Peter Tompkins and Christopher Beard published The Secret Life of Plants. It was based on unrepeatable experimentation and hit the industry with a blow from which it has not yet recovered.
There is another problem, Balushka explains. All studies of the nervous system, the brain, and phenomena such as pain were originally conducted in humans. Therefore, the necessary terms are already taken. It would be incorrect to transfer these concepts to plants in which similar processes are observed. Neurobiology turned out to be reserved for animals.
Achieving equality between different forms of life requires foresight and scientific clarity. Darwin's idea of "survival of the fittest" does not imply that all life forms are at war with each other and the fittest wins. Rather, it is about the ability to adapt to a specific environment and reproduce successfully. This means that species betting on amalgamation can also do well.
The example of trees, wolves and especially humans shows how successful communities can be. Therefore, it is more correct to speak about the "survival of the fittest", rather than the strongest and most aggressive species.
Moreover, the early species were not primitive and underdeveloped, but well adapted to the conditions of their time. Nature is changeable, continents are moving, the climate is changing, so the task of evolution is not to improve organisms, but to settle in a new configuration of the environment.
According to the outdated concept of the development of life forms, living beings constantly improved until finally a man appeared, standing at the top of creation. Foresters see themselves as a kind of intermediaries: they are convinced that trees, belonging not only to different, but also to the same species, compete among themselves for light, water and nutrients. It is even believed that natural forests would not have survived without the help of foresters.
Still, trees are over 300 million years old, modern humans 300,000, and forestry only 300. For most of their history, trees have done well without middlemen, in part because they never competed with each other.
It is unfortunate that for the past hundred years we have viewed nature as a war zone between species. According to philosopher Emanuele Cocci, who recently wrote a book about plants called The Roots of the World, nature is not a war zone. On the contrary, solidarity reigns in her.
František Baluszka, professor of plant cytology at the University of Bonn, together with Stefano Mancuso of the University of Florence and other colleagues decided to investigate the effects of anesthesia on plants. For the experiment, the Venus flytrap was chosen - a plant that lures its victims into a trap of double leaves, which slam shut as soon as the insect touches the hairs on their inner side. The leaf halves close in the blink of an eye, forming a "stomach" in which food is digested.
By experimenting with anesthetics, including those used in operations on humans, the scientists succeeded in stopping the electrical activity inside the plant, as a result of which the trap stopped responding to touch. Peas behaved in a similar way under anesthesia: its antennae, which usually stretch in all directions in search of surfaces for fastening, stopped stretching and curled in place. After the introduced substance was split, the natural activity of the plants resumed.
Does this mean that the plants regained consciousness in the same way that people recover after general anesthesia? This is a very important question, because in order to regain consciousness, you need to have it.
“Plants and trees can no doubt be in pain,” says Balushka. "Any living organism needs this in order to respond appropriately to what is happening." Proof of this, he explains, can be seen at the molecular level.
Plants, like animals, secrete pain-suppressing substances. If they didn’t experience it, what would be the need?
Balushka also made several other discoveries. In South America, a vine grows whose leaves take the form of the leaves of the host plant, which it twines around. It would be logical to assume that this behavior is based on chemical activity: the vine reveals the aromatic substances of the tree and reacts, modifying its leaves in a genetically predetermined way.
One of the researchers came up with the idea of planting a vine on an artificial plant with plastic leaves. As a result, she imitated the shape of artificial leaves just like real ones.
Balushka considers this to be proof that the vine is able to see, because in this case the host plant did not release chemicals or send electrical signals. According to Balushka, all plants can see.
The fact that trees know how to distinguish light from darkness was known before. We also knew that beeches could measure the length of the day by using light receptors that signal wake-up calls. But this is still far from vision in the sense of recognizing shapes and colors.
Here Balushka refers to research on the cuticle, a layer of tissue on the surface of plants. For most of them, this layer is completely transparent. If all plants do is capture sunlight to produce glucose, chloroplasts, the organs needed for photosynthesis, must be placed on their surface (where the most light gets). It is known that the farther from the surface, the less light is absorbed.
And yet the cuticle is transparent. Moreover, in some plants it looks like a lens, that is, it focuses light - just like the cornea of the eye does. If photosynthesis is the only task of the leaves, it would be much more sensible to just let the rays through rather than collect them. Focusing does not increase the amount of light hitting the sheet.
Leaves that play the role of eyes? This idea seems especially strange when you consider that trees shed their "eyes" every fall.
However, six months (in the climatic conditions of Europe) is a rather long period for the animal world. Flies, for example, use their eyes for about a month - this is about how long their life lasts. Mayflies, whose adults live for about one day, use their eyesight for less than 24 hours.
Another interesting fact related to trees: after the leaves have formed, the cells in them do not renew during the entire ripening season, that is, for quite a long time. In comparison, the cells in the cornea of the human eye are completely replaced every 7 days.
It would seem that discoveries such as pain and vision in plants should shock the scientific community. However, the reaction was restrained. Balushka is almost the only one who seriously deals with this topic. This means that this branch of science may soon disappear again, as it already happened once in the time of Darwin.
Darwin suggested that the tips of the roots perform functions similar to those of the brain in simple animals. The chasm between these two kingdoms could have been bridged even then, but research was suspended for a hundred years. In 1973 Peter Tompkins and Christopher Beard published The Secret Life of Plants. It was based on unrepeatable experimentation and hit the industry with a blow from which it has not yet recovered.
There is another problem, Balushka explains. All studies of the nervous system, the brain, and phenomena such as pain were originally conducted in humans. Therefore, the necessary terms are already taken. It would be incorrect to transfer these concepts to plants in which similar processes are observed. Neurobiology turned out to be reserved for animals.
Achieving equality between different forms of life requires foresight and scientific clarity. Darwin's idea of "survival of the fittest" does not imply that all life forms are at war with each other and the fittest wins. Rather, it is about the ability to adapt to a specific environment and reproduce successfully. This means that species betting on amalgamation can also do well.
The example of trees, wolves and especially humans shows how successful communities can be. Therefore, it is more correct to speak about the "survival of the fittest", rather than the strongest and most aggressive species.
Moreover, the early species were not primitive and underdeveloped, but well adapted to the conditions of their time. Nature is changeable, continents are moving, the climate is changing, so the task of evolution is not to improve organisms, but to settle in a new configuration of the environment.
According to the outdated concept of the development of life forms, living beings constantly improved until finally a man appeared, standing at the top of creation. Foresters see themselves as a kind of intermediaries: they are convinced that trees, belonging not only to different, but also to the same species, compete among themselves for light, water and nutrients. It is even believed that natural forests would not have survived without the help of foresters.
Still, trees are over 300 million years old, modern humans 300,000, and forestry only 300. For most of their history, trees have done well without middlemen, in part because they never competed with each other.
It is unfortunate that for the past hundred years we have viewed nature as a war zone between species. According to philosopher Emanuele Cocci, who recently wrote a book about plants called The Roots of the World, nature is not a war zone. On the contrary, solidarity reigns in her.
