Imagine you put something in your mouth that is still breathing, still feeling pain and still communicating this pain to others.
That happens if you eat a freshly picked salad or carrot.
For a long time vegetarians could present themselves as morally superior, because people believed that plants cannot feel pain. But science has shown that plants can indeed feel pain – and even communicate this to other plants!
For example some trees, when attacked by bark beetles, emit a pheromone-like substance. Other trees that inhale that pheromone start to produce more anti-beetle substances.
Plants can also make risk assessments that should only be possible with logical thinking. They can change behavior based on experience and have memories.
But the most astounding fact may be that plants can lose consciousness – or at least what we would call consciousness in humans.
It is still largely a mystery how anesthetics work in humans, but tests have shown that they also work in plants.
Under anesthetics, the physical properties of cell membranes change, becoming more flexible. Apply pressure to the cells, this effect is reversed and the anesthetic wears off. This suggests that something simple, like what is physically happening to a cell’s membrane, may be the common denominator explaining anesthetics’ effects across the plant and animal kingdoms, Dr. Baluska and colleagues suggest.
Sorry for starting this post with the “vegetarian attack”. But I guess it lured a lot of readers in.
I did not want to talk about vegetarianism, but purely about the amazing abilities that plants have and we did not know about just a few decades ago. Can plants dream of green sheep?
Still, those researches cast a shadow on the vegetarian ideal. I wonder what effect that will have? Will we have to – like for animals – anesthetize plants before harvesting them?
Whatever that will lead to, I will now go and eat a nice steak. At least that will not be still breathing and screaming in my mouth.
As far as we know today, that is...
