If you’re a vegetarian, someone has asked you one of these three things at some point in your life. First, where do you get your protein? Second, what would you do if you were stranded on a desert island? And third, do plants feel pain? For us, the answers usually go something like, “No,” “How likely is that to actually happen?” and “beyond tofu, beans, and burgers.” But, taking new research into account, we may have to rethink that last one. Or shall we?
According to a recent study, plants make frantic sounds when they are cut or need water, indicating distress. But the fact is that plants do not have brains or central nervous systems. So what does noise mean? Here, we take a closer look at the results.
What are the results of the research?
A study, published in the journal cell In March, it was suggested that tomato, tobacco and cacti plants all emit tiny ultrasonic clicks.
The research team from Tel Aviv University, MIT and Harvard noted that when plants are healthy, these clicks are very slow and the plants generally seem quite calm. But when they don’t have enough water or are cut off, the click speed increases.
Pexels
The clicks cannot be picked up by normal human hearing, so to determine if the plants are making noise, the team used ultrasonic microphones to conduct the research. They then feed these sounds into a computer, which separates the sounds into healthy and “sad” plants.
More study is needed into the clicking noise and what causes it, but researchers believe it may be caused by a passive process called cavitation. This is when the sap evaporates, filling the tracheids with water vapor. This means that the noise can be air bubbles popping inside the plants.
So does this mean plants can feel pain?
Lead researcher Lilach Hadani said internal that The results are not proof that plants can necessarily “feel” pain like humans and other animals.
“We cannot say that plants feel stress and therefore make noise. It could be that sounds are made entirely passively, like a physical process,” Hadani explained.
But it probably indicates that plants are exchanging information with the environment around them, and we can benefit from that too. Hadani explained that tomato plants, for example, start making annoying sounds before they show any signs of wilting, which can help tomato growers keep their crops healthy.
The study adds to a growing body of research that suggests the plant world can actually communicate. For example, last year, a scientist theorized that mushrooms may actually use electrical impulses as a form of communication. But again, much more research is needed on this topic to understand what’s going on.
“We don’t know if there is a direct correlation between spiking patterns in fungi and human speech. Probably not,” said Professor Andrew Adamatzki guardian. “On the other hand, different classes, families and species have many similarities in information processing in living substrates. I was interested in the comparison.”
Pexels
Why going vegan is still the most compassionate diet
Plants are living things, with interesting ways of keeping themselves alive and interacting with their surroundings. Undoubtedly, scientists still have a lot to understand about the wildlife around us.
But does that mean we should stop eating plants? Let’s cut to the chase with the very obvious: no. If we didn’t eat them, we would struggle to survive.
Although the animal-rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has indicated that if it is proven that trees do feel pain, it will consider promoting a fruit diet (which is when you eat nothing more than fruit that falls from trees). don’t eat—it’s not recommended by most nutritionists), the group is skeptical that this will actually happen.
“It shouldn’t come as a shock that plants make noise,” Elissa Allen, PETA’s vice president of programs, said. mailonline. “[It’s] Probably from the formation and bursting of air bubbles in the plant’s vascular system – the reason they communicate through fungal networks to warn each other of impending threats.”
He adds that being vegan still makes sense if one is concerned about plant welfare. After all, eating the plants directly instead of feeding the animals and then eating the animals means fewer living things suffer.
Other animal-rights advocates dismiss the idea that plants feel pain the way we do as “ridiculous.” Rory Cockshaw of the animal-rights group Viva! Said that the sounds associated with the cavity could not be compared to “the cry of a pig while suffocating in a gas chamber”.
This is because pigs, like other animals, have a central nervous system and a brain, which is the part of the body responsible for sensing pain. Plants have none of these things. “As a vegetarian, I would feel bad eating animals, because animals have nervous systems — they’re sentient — they have the ability to feel pain,” Kaksha said. “Plants don’t have the ability to feel pain or experience the world.”
To learn more about vegan ethics, read:
Charlotte is a writer and editor based in sunny Southsea on the south coast of England.