Plants have been observed to interact with their environment in a way that one scientist claimed 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 and found that the mimosa seems 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, then not folding, is consistent with the idea that this plant learned something as a result of experience, not from its genes.”
The professor also noted that other plants communicate with each other through chemicals, solve problems and even seem to have memories.
Many scientists define intelligence as the 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, fuels, oxygen, textiles, 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, we might understand what connects us all in the tree of life.
“We have to find the master key.
Certain plants appear to “remember” drought and conserve water more efficiently than plants that have not previously experienced drought, and strawberries can be taught to associate light with nutrients, the professor said.
He went on to explain that plants also learn to time their pollen release to when pollinators such as bees are present.
Scientists have also speculated that plants may be able to count, make decisions, recognize their relatives and even remember events.
The problem is that humans understand intelligence based on ourselves – which focuses on animals with brains and leads us to ignore other possible intelligences and consciousnesses.
“Our view is that you have to be an animal or you can’t be smart. That’s very short-sighted,” Calvo said.
A recent study at Cornell University found that goldenrods, when eaten by bugs, secrete a chemical that tricks the insects into thinking they are damaged and a bad food source—then nearby goldenrods do the same.
Andre Kessler, a chemical ecologist and professor at Cornell, said: “That would fit our definition of intelligence.
“Depending on the information the plant receives from the environment, it 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 he said the way they do it is in many ways similar to how humans “think,” just without one central brain.
Plant cells fire voltage spikes in the form of action potentials, just like brain cells. When you touch the trigger hair of a Venus flytrap twice and it clicks, that’s an action potential,” he said.
“Just because you don’t have a brain or a nervous system doesn’t mean you can’t have electrochemical communication!”
Calvo also proposed that plants “think” using their vascular system, a network of cells that transport water, minerals, and nutrients to help them grow.
But it is also used to transmit information, he noted.
“Just because you don’t have 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 simply respond where it was stimulated, it can respond at the other end of the plant.
“Plants don’t have brains, but they still use electrochemical communication on their own time scale to stay alive.”
Calvo said the same neurotransmitters present in human brains (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 and creates a defensive chemical weapon that repels the caterpillar,” he said. 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 to “divide and conquer.”
“So if you try to grab or attack the animal, it can fight back,” he explained.
“With plants, they can’t do any of that — so their strategy is to have everything really decentralized.
“If you cut a branch, another will grow. That won’t happen to me if you cut my hand off.’
Research into understanding plant intelligence could be crucial to understanding ourselves and fighting climate change.
“We think of plants as resources, fuels, oxygen, textiles, 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, we might understand what connects us all in the tree of life. We need to find the master key.’