Do plants feel pain?

wegs

wegs

Matter and Pixie Dust
Valued Senior Member
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/plants-feel-pain.htm

According to researchers at the Institute for Applied Physics at the University of Bonn in Germany, plants release gases that are the equivalent of crying out in pain. Using a laser-powered microphone, researchers have picked up sound waves produced by plants releasing gases when cut or injured. Although not audible to the human ear, the secret voices of plants have revealed that cucumbers scream when they are sick, and flowers whine when their leaves are cut [source: Deutsche Welle].

From now on, I'm going to feel badly eating a salad. :rolleye:
 
wegs said:
the secret voices of plants have revealed that cucumbers scream when they are sick
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As a kid I did some research on balloons. I didn't know I was doing research at the time

I found once I had blown the balloon up, then held the neck a certain way as the air came out it sounded like a human fart

Since I had not farted into the balloon I, many many many years later conclude 1/ I might have silent farts in my breath or 2/ the balloon was in agony from my holding its neck a certain way

Extract from my up coming book

I Tortured Balloons as a Kid (and Killed a Few with Pins)

:)
 
wegs said:
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/plants-feel-pain.htm

According to researchers at the Institute for Applied Physics at the University of Bonn in Germany, plants release gases that are the equivalent of crying out in pain. Using a laser-powered microphone, researchers have picked up sound waves produced by plants releasing gases when cut or injured. Although not audible to the human ear, the secret voices of plants have revealed that cucumbers scream when they are sick, and flowers whine when their leaves are cut [source: Deutsche Welle].

From now on, I'm going to feel badly eating a salad. :rolleye:
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Maybe you should just avoid reading articles like that? :)

I saw a kid blow up a balloon the other day and when the air was released the balloon screamed out in pain. It was hard to watch. :) No more balloons for me!

Edit-This is funny, I just read Michael's post. I didn't read it before replying. :)
 
Mythbusters debunked "The Backster effect" but it has also been claimed that intentions of the observers can influence these results.

I do no know or care much about whether my lettuce can feel pain and anguish, but this topic screams "Backster effect, backster effect, backster effect".

So I will link a woo video on the topic.

I suppose one could buy their own lie detectors and emulate this experiment as Mythbusters did, but I have not been curious enough to bother.

NOTE: This is one of thousands of videos and blogs on this topic. I am not endorsing it. I am just saying many do think plants have emotions and can sense surroundings.

Point: The idea of plants having emotions is a woo topic to begin with so maybe this will add some crazy to it.

There is zero ways of measuring if telepathy is true or not so has no merit in science. Perhaps telepathy will be quantifiable some day. Maybe it will not.

I learned of this from MYTHBUSTERS (who exist) who proved it bunk. However the claim is that their debunking itself caused that effect. Its a funny topic.

 
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Jeeves said:
It's okay to eat salad. Those plants on your plate are just as dead as the chicken.
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Wellllll...

Unlike the chicken, they're raw, and there's still active biochemistry there. You could certainly put some of them in a glass of water and they would sprout roots.
 
Perhaps it's human nature to project our emotions/traits onto non-human entities - this is known as anthropomorphism. I guess we'll never really be able to know for sure, if cucumbers ''scream,'' as the article suggests. I'm reminded of an article I read a few years ago, talking about the ''altruism of bacteria.'' If bacteria could be altruistic, then clearly we aren't the only ones capable of emotion. The article discussed how altruism is part of the evolutionary path, in terms of society building and survival, not just in humans.

Where's Write4U when you need him?
 
wegs said:
Perhaps it's our human nature to project our emotions/traits onto non-human entities - this is known as anthropomorphism.
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Indeed.

One of the primary criteria for any life is that it is responsive to its environment. So any form of life will react when it is damaged.

What the article is implying is that 'reaction to damage' and 'feeling pain' are, quote: "equivalent" - i.e. that there is no distinction at all.

On that logic, plants can think, too.
 
DaveC426913 said:
Indeed.

One of the primary criteria for any life is that it is responsive to its environment. So any form of life will react when it is damaged.

What the article is implying is that 'reaction to damage' and 'feeling pain' are, quote: "equivalent" - i.e. that there is no distinction at all.

On that logic, plants can think, too.
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Hey, that's a great point. Merely reacting to changes in their environment, isn't enough to assume that plants feel what we feel, in terms of pain, etc.
 
Yep. A central nervous system is generally considered a prerequisite for what we mean by pain.

Plants don't have em. They don't communicate signals to a central location where they are processed and a reaction response is generated and sent out.
 
wegs said:
If bacteria could be altruistic, then clearly we aren't the only ones capable of emotion.
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Don't know about altruistic

There is a possibility we are living (or they live with us) in a symbiotic relationship with the mitochondria (the batteries) in our cells

We feed them and they provide the power

:)
 
wegs said:
I'm reminded of an article I read a few years ago, talking about the ''altruism of bacteria.'' If bacteria could be altruistic, then clearly we aren't the only ones capable of emotion. The article discussed how altruism is part of the evolutionary path, in terms of society building and survival, not just in humans.
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Multicellular life could not exist without this form of ersatz altruism. Every multi-cellular critter (anything more complex than an amoeba or paramecium) is comprised of individual specialized cells that rely on other cells to take on other functions (skin versus blood, versus digestion, etc).

In fact, every eukaryote (any cell that has a nucleus) evolved from the cooperation of two otherwise individual cells, where one absorbed the other and they have specialized interdependent functions.

Labelling cellular cooperation as "emotion" is even ore egregious than labelling chemical reaction as "pain".
 
wegs said:
Perhaps it's human nature to project our emotions/traits onto non-human entities
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how many parents feed their children chopped up baby lambs to eat ?
how many rural Americans have pet pigs cows and sheep that they kill and eat ?
how many american parents let their children have a pet animal that is the same type of animal that they kill and feed to their children ?

are you wanting to have a real scientific discussion or just play with emotively safe psychopathic paradigms for fun ?
 
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RainbowSingularity said:
how many parents feed their children chopped up baby lambs to eat ?
how many rural Americans have pet pigs cows and sheep that they kill and eat ?
how many american parents let their children have pet animal that is the same type of animal that the kill and feed to their children ?

are you wanting to have a real scientific discussion or just play with emotively safe psychopathic paradigms for fun ?
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Wtf are you talking about? We are having a discussion, here. What is your obsession with turning threads into some personal vendetta?
 
wegs said:
Pretty interesting! Do you think it sounds like ''woo,'' sculptor?
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no
however
we may not be understanding exactly how and why we react to anesthetics

if: given that we can anesthetize both fauna and flora using the same agent
then
do we really understand the mechanism?
..........................................................
The first study I read on the subject was via a female researcher who anesthetized a mimosa plant, rendering it non-reactive
(i couldn't find a link to that one)
 
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