Can Plants Think?

[Signa]

Responding to stimuli and and recording past information for future use is a far cry from what most people consider "thinking." Individual cells are capable of these things and we don't consider them to be cognizant.

Exactly. It's like saying Memory Foam can remember data too. It remembers the best position it was in, and in the case of the foam, the position it was made in.

 

[blindthrall]

"Coming up next, can bees think? A new study says no, they cannot."

Not having brains kind of gets in the way of cognizance. Fish have brains, and I sincerely doubt whether they can think. Well, aside from the Elephant Fish.

 

[Adventurer2626]

Not the way we do. Hormones...wait, okay well they don't think like human older than 30 or younger than 12...control they're growth to grow around things and towards light. Ever seen a tree that was knocked over that grew back up towards the sky? That's them not a central nervous at work. Plants take a different tact than animals. Animals chase food instead of making it so they need advantages to get it, such as beating competition, picking a healthy diet and tracking down mates which are moving around as well. Trees have it made for the most part; they can stick in one spot and live on the environment for years. They can just develop defenses to deal with predation, if they fall down they can just grow upwards again and if there's a forest fire and they've got more than a few rings they'll have a few dormant buds to sprout new branches and leaves. Beyond that, well, they'll likely have reproduced young'ns a few times with updated genes for the environment by the time something they can't survive happens. Things like movement and thought are beneath them. Up until the industrial age their only real competitors were insects which are still dependent upon them for food. Passive not active.

 

[AWDMANOUT]

No sir.

Mythbusters did an episode on this.

More recently, the television show MythBusters performed an experiment aiming to either verify or disprove the concept. The tests were done by connecting plants to a polygraph's galvanometer, and then employing both actual and imagined harm upon the plants, or upon others in the plant's vicinity. The galvanometer showed some readings which surprised the researchers initially, showing some kind of reaction about one third of the time. However, the experimenters were in the room with the plant and noted that the vibrations inherent to either their actions or the room could have had an effect on the polygraph. After leaving the room and performing the same experiments, the polygraph showed a response one third of the time again. The results were inconclusive as to whether the experiment or external influences were causing the results. Later experiments, which used an EEG for greater accuracy, failed to detect anything unusual. When the presenters used a machine that dropped eggs randomly into boiling water, the plant had no reaction whatsoever. Although, this could be due the possibility of the eggs being of a younger gestation; lacking consciousness. The show concluded that the theory was not true. Further, the anomalous readings were unable to be repeated during their tests, and stated that "if it's not repeatable, it's not science."

Edit:

I'm pretty sure this has been Mythbuster'd.

I think they did this on Mythbusters. I think they said they have feelings and can think. Not entirely sure though. (I'm too tired to remember correctly right this second.)

Damn Ninjas.