Plants have been observed to interact with their environment in ways that one scientist claims proves they are conscious.
Paco Calvo, a professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, has been researching plant intelligence and problem solving for years, discovering that the mimosa appears to “learn from experience” when it stops folding.
“In psychology, it’s the most basic form of learning,” Calvo told DailyMail.com.
“This pattern of folding and then not folding again is consistent with the idea that this plant learned something through experience rather than through its genes.”
The professor also noted that other plants communicate with each other through chemicals, solve problems and even appear to have memories.
Many scientists define intelligence as the presence of a central nervous system where electrical signals transmit messages to other nerves to process information.
Instead, plants have a vascular system, which is a network of cells that transports water, minerals, and nutrients to help them grow.
“We think of plants as resources, as fuel, as oxygen, as textiles, as food, but we don’t respect them for their own sake,” Calvo said.
“If we can understand another form of intelligence that doesn’t require a brain, maybe we can understand what unites us in the tree of life.”
“We need to find the master key.”
Some plants seem to “remember” droughts, conserving water more efficiently than plants that haven’t experienced droughts before, and strawberries can be trained to associate light with food patches, the professor said.
He went on to explain that plants also learn to time their pollen release by the time pollinators such as bees are present.
Researchers also speculate that plants can count, make decisions, recognize their relatives and even remember events.
The problem is that humans have an understanding of intelligence based on themselves – which focuses on animals with brains and causes us to ignore other possible intelligences and consciousnesses.
“Our view is that you have to be an animal or you can’t be smart. It’s very short-sighted,” Calvo said.
A recent study conducted at Cornell University found that goldenrods release a chemical when eaten by beetles, tricking the insects into thinking they are damaged and a bad food source—then nearby goldrods do the same.
Andre Kessler, a chemical ecologist and professor at Cornell, said: “This fits our definition of intelligence.
“Depending on the information it receives from the environment, the plant changes its default behavior.”
Calvo is among a growing number of scientists calling for a new understanding of how plants solve problems and communicate — and said the way they do it is in many ways similar to the way humans “think,” just without one central brain.
“Plant cells fire voltage spikes in the form of an action potential, just like brain cells. When you touch the trigger hair on the Venus flytrap twice and it clicks, that’s an action potential,” he said.
“Not having a brain or a nervous system doesn’t mean you can’t have electrochemical communication!”
Calvo also suggested that plants “think” using their vascular system, which is a network of cells that transport water, minerals and nutrients to help them grow.
But it is also used to convey information, he noted.
“Not having a brain or a nervous system doesn’t mean you can’t have some form of electrochemical communication,” the professor continued.
“You have electrical signals going through the vascular system – so your plant doesn’t just respond where it was stimulated, it can respond at the other end of the plant.
“Plants don’t have a brain, but they still use electrochemical communication on their own time scale to stay alive.”
Calvo said the same neurotransmitters present in the human brain (such as glutamate or GABA) are also present in plants — and sometimes used in the same way.
“So if you have a plant and you have this caterpillar chewing on the leaves, the plant can use the neurotransmitter glutamate to trigger a calcium wave that travels up its stem and leaves, creating a defensive chemical weapon to repel the caterpillar,” he explained .
Calvo said plants must have a different strategy for survival than humans because they are rooted in the soil — so their strategy is “divide and conquer.”
“So if you try to catch or attack an animal, it may fight back,” he explained.
“In the case of plants, they can’t do any of that – so their strategy is to make everything really decentralized.
“If you cut a branch, they will grow another branch. That won’t happen to me if you cut my arm off.
Research into understanding plant intelligence could be critical to understanding ourselves and the fight against climate change.
“We think of plants as resources, as fuel, as oxygen, as textiles, as food, but we don’t respect them for their own sake,” Calvo said.
“If we can understand another form of intelligence that doesn’t require a brain, maybe we can understand what unites us in the tree of life.” We need to find the master key.
