Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back for part two of our series on the
Speaker 1: possible evidence for memory and learning in plants. Now, this
Speaker 1: is one of our series where if you haven't listened
Speaker 1: to part one yet, you really should go back and
Speaker 1: do that one first, since we clear a lot of
Speaker 1: the ground for what we're gonna be talking about today.
Speaker 1: This is one that I think is going to be
Speaker 1: kind of hard to jump in in the middle. But
Speaker 1: in that past episode for a refresher, we talked about
Speaker 1: a plant called known as the sensitive plant or the
Speaker 1: humble plant, the shame plant that touched me, not scientific name,
Speaker 1: Mimosa pudica, which is one of the few plants in
Speaker 1: the world that displays rapid movement or movement on the
Speaker 1: time scale usually associated with animal life. And we talked
Speaker 1: about experiments from san that appeared to show a form
Speaker 1: of rudimentary learning called habituation in these plants, where, for example,
Speaker 1: if you take a potted Mimosa putica and you drop
Speaker 1: it the exact same way over many training sessions, it
Speaker 1: will adapt so that it no longer closes its leaves
Speaker 1: defensively in response to a drop, but it will still
Speaker 1: close its leaves in response to other types of disturbance.
Speaker 1: So if this type of finding holds up to scrutiny
Speaker 1: and replication, it would be evidence that even though this
Speaker 1: plant has no brain, it has some kind of internal
Speaker 1: mechanism for learning from experience in order to maximize its fitness.
Speaker 1: And of course, at some level learning requires a form
Speaker 1: of what we would think of as memory. In order
Speaker 1: to learn from the past, you have to have some
Speaker 1: way of being changed by the past, to store the
Speaker 1: past within you in an organized way that can influence
Speaker 1: future behavior, which of course we do with our brains.
Speaker 1: But if plants in some cases also do this, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a great question what is the mechanism? They obviously
Speaker 1: don't have brains and h Finally, in the last episode,
Speaker 1: we tried to disentangle different claims about so called plant cognition,
Speaker 1: which is a controversial concept. We noted that memory is
Speaker 1: not the same thing as reasoning, which is not the
Speaker 1: same as consciousness, which is not the same as emotion
Speaker 1: or communication, or or or or or plant uh. Like
Speaker 1: psychic plant mind reading, which some people have also claimed
Speaker 1: evidence of without without much justification, and with the final
Speaker 1: point being that evidence for one of these traits is
Speaker 1: not necessarily evidence for others. But today we're gonna look
Speaker 1: at some more research that has been interpreted as showing
Speaker 1: plant memory or plant cognition in the past decade, as
Speaker 1: well as some reaction and criticism to that. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: in the last episode I mentioned some music. I mentioned
Speaker 1: both Celtic Frost's metal album to Megatherian uh and mort
Speaker 1: Garson's plant Asia, and but both were kind of off
Speaker 1: hand references, uh. And afterwards I was looking into it
Speaker 1: a little bit more and I was the first of
Speaker 1: all delighted to see that Plantasia is more widely regarded
Speaker 1: as a classic than I thought it was. Um. I
Speaker 1: was familiar with more Garson's work, and UM, you know,
Speaker 1: I was delighted that his work had recently been reissued
Speaker 1: by Sacred Bones Records. I think I had to make
Speaker 1: do with some some uh, some some bad copies back
Speaker 1: in the day. Sorry, we refresh on the more on
Speaker 1: the more Garson album, It was so more Garson. It
Speaker 1: was a pioneer of electronic music and synth work, and
Speaker 1: he had a few different monikers that he used. He
Speaker 1: did some like some cult sounding sounds and so forth.
Speaker 1: But he also put out this album Plantasia, which was
Speaker 1: music to be played for your plants very much. Jumping
Speaker 1: in on this, uh the Secret Lives of Plants um. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say hysteria, will say um popularity
Speaker 1: during the nineties seventies and uh as as we discussed
Speaker 1: in that episode, and we'll discuss a little bit here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this album is not actually going to help your
Speaker 1: plants out any of your plants. Do not care about
Speaker 1: more Garson's discography as much as you do or I do.
Speaker 1: But it is a very nice album for human listeners. Sure.
Speaker 1: And hey, as I said in the last episode, even
Speaker 1: if it doesn't actually do anything for your plans, which
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't, no reason not to play it for
Speaker 1: your plants. I mean that sounds fun. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: was delighted to see that, even if there was a
Speaker 1: New York Times article about uh, this album's popularity and
Speaker 1: it's increased popularity I think in part due to the reissue,
Speaker 1: but also they were making the point due to the
Speaker 1: resurgence and interest in house plants during the pandemic. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know about about you, but I
Speaker 1: think I don't know if we actually picked up that. No,
Speaker 1: we we did pick up more house plants. I think
Speaker 1: some of them were gifted to us. But we have
Speaker 1: all sorts of little succulents like hanging out all over
Speaker 1: the house that we accumulated over the past couple of years.
Speaker 1: I don't know the name for them. Rachel has some
Speaker 1: kind of house plant that repeatedly produces. It's like, I
Speaker 1: guess stalks will come off of it, and you can
Speaker 1: separate them and turn them into their own new potted
Speaker 1: version of that same plant, kind of like getting a
Speaker 1: grimlin wet or something. Uh. Just you know, they repopulate
Speaker 1: and go all over the place. So I think we
Speaker 1: have had at least proliferation of existing plants. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and house plants are great, no doubt about it. But
Speaker 1: at this on the other hand, I was looking around
Speaker 1: for stuff on this, and I was kind of taken
Speaker 1: aback and just how much content there is out there
Speaker 1: on the Internet regarding playing music for plants. And while
Speaker 1: I didn't find anyone actually exalting the benefits of playing
Speaker 1: Celtic frost for your philodendrons. There are pages talking about
Speaker 1: the merits of different musical genres, alleged merits, I should say,
Speaker 1: for plant growth, including the idea that heavy metal can
Speaker 1: improve plant mass and fruit taste, provided that it's not
Speaker 1: too noisy or presumably too heavy beautiful. What is the
Speaker 1: best thrash metal for your plants? I've to assume downstream
Speaker 1: of this some people who believe in this really that
Speaker 1: they think their plants have individual tastes, like my plants
Speaker 1: really love motor Head. Yeah. I mean, I think we
Speaker 1: said before death metal bands need to get in on
Speaker 1: beans and realize that in the folklore a cannon being
Speaker 1: plant plants are closely associated with the world of the dead,
Speaker 1: and this should be embraced. Sure, now, all this being said,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, not not every source popping up on the
Speaker 1: subject is something that that I would take to the
Speaker 1: bank at all. But plants do produce sound vibrations and
Speaker 1: can respond to sound vibrations. Now I got interested in
Speaker 1: this idea of thinking about plants responding to sound, and
Speaker 1: I started wondering about a question. I think this is
Speaker 1: always something good to wonder about when you hear a
Speaker 1: claim about a life form. You think, what would be
Speaker 1: the original ecological relevance of this, like in the actual environment,
Speaker 1: not in a you know, in a house or a
Speaker 1: lab or something. Why would this kind of stim llist
Speaker 1: be relevant? So I looked it up in the scientific
Speaker 1: literature and I did find some interesting examples. One of
Speaker 1: them was a paper published in ecologiaen by Heidi M
Speaker 1: Apple and Reginald B. Cocroft called Plants respond to leaf
Speaker 1: vibrations caused by insect herbivore chewing. And this study found
Speaker 1: that if you reproduce the sounds made by a caterpillar
Speaker 1: feeding on a leaf and then expose those sounds to
Speaker 1: what's known as a thail cress plant, the plant will
Speaker 1: respond by producing higher levels of glucosinolate and anthocyanin, which
Speaker 1: are defensive chemicals. So if this finding is sound, then
Speaker 1: the plant does actually detect sound, and it is ecologically relevant.
Speaker 1: Sound is an indicator of nearby predation the plant is
Speaker 1: it is being threatened by what is producing this, uh,
Speaker 1: this caterpillar eating sound. Yeah, and there's another study that
Speaker 1: I believe came out the same year conducted by Italian
Speaker 1: botanist Stefano um Mancuso, who found that roots could seek
Speaker 1: out buried um pipes of running water seemingly attracted to
Speaker 1: the sound. So um, again, if this if, if these
Speaker 1: results hold up? Basically, the idea here is you have
Speaker 1: water running through a pipe that is otherwise you know,
Speaker 1: completely set apart from the dirt, from the dirt from
Speaker 1: the soil. Uh. And yet the roots are are moving
Speaker 1: towards the water anyway, how would they know the water
Speaker 1: is there? The ideas that they're picking up on the sound,
Speaker 1: they're picking up on the vibrations, right, and so again
Speaker 1: you could wonder how would that be ecologically relevant? It
Speaker 1: seems plausible to me. I mean, they're all kinds of
Speaker 1: like underground water flows and so and those would of
Speaker 1: course produce vibrations right now. And you might then wonder, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if there's a sound of running water and my ambient music,
Speaker 1: does that mean my plant wants it? Um? I think
Speaker 1: that's a more maybe that's a kind of a simple,
Speaker 1: um simplified argument to make. I think you get into
Speaker 1: a lot of discussions about like the differences between how
Speaker 1: the plant is quote unquote hearing and how we are
Speaker 1: quote unquote hearing something. Right, I mean, I would say
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine that there's a evolutionarily justified reason
Speaker 1: a plant would respond to music in particular, But of
Speaker 1: course there are probably good reasons for plants to respond
Speaker 1: to certain types of noise. So to be very generous,
Speaker 1: I guess it's possible that in some cases some types
Speaker 1: of music might accidentally trigger something like a tropism or
Speaker 1: a stress response in a plant, where where it might
Speaker 1: make the plant, I don't know, look different in some
Speaker 1: way that the owner would be able to detect. It's possible.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of skeptical even as far as that goes,
Speaker 1: like the accidental byproduct of certain types of music. But
Speaker 1: as I said in the last episode, again, if you
Speaker 1: want to play music for your plants, go for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think it makes sense to literally believe it's
Speaker 1: doing anything for the plant itself, but it sounds like
Speaker 1: a perfectly wonderful activity. Especially prints. Everybody loves prints, so
Speaker 1: it makes sense that plants would love prints as well. Now,
Speaker 1: this is just one of the senses that plants seem
Speaker 1: to possess. Um. I've read that plants have somewhere between
Speaker 1: fifteen and twenty distinct senses and some of these can
Speaker 1: be compared to our basic set of human senses. UH.
Speaker 1: In addition to sound, as Michael Paullen points out in
Speaker 1: his wonderful article UH the Intelligent Plant from The New Yorker. UH,
Speaker 1: we have, of course, on the human side, smell and taste,
Speaker 1: and plants do seem to sense and respond to chemicals
Speaker 1: in the air or on their bodies. We have sight,
Speaker 1: and plants react differently to various wavelengths of light as
Speaker 1: well as to shadows. So plants like us live in
Speaker 1: a world of of periodic light and darkness, and of
Speaker 1: course they depend heavily upon the light because of photosenses.
Speaker 1: Is so it makes sense that this would be in place.
Speaker 1: And then we have the sense of touch, and a
Speaker 1: vine or root seems to know when it encounters a
Speaker 1: solid object. So plant roots have been found to be
Speaker 1: able to sense gravity, moisture, light, pressure, firmness, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's like they're encountering something that seems to be a
Speaker 1: solid as opposed to something they can continue to grow
Speaker 1: in into volume. Nitrogen, phosphorus, salt, various toxins a lot
Speaker 1: of times. Uh. Pollen points out that the roots of
Speaker 1: the toxins are going to be first encountered by those
Speaker 1: roots microbes as well as chemical signals from other plants,
Speaker 1: and in that just a little bit, you get into
Speaker 1: the realm of communication. Yeah, And so my read on
Speaker 1: this this domain is that while a lot of the
Speaker 1: other things in so called plant cognition could be considered
Speaker 1: pretty controversial, even some of the stuff with better evidence
Speaker 1: for it, like the memory stuff we're talking about, that's
Speaker 1: still somewhat controversial. But but plant sensation plant the plants
Speaker 1: being able to gather information about all kinds of different
Speaker 1: things in their environment, that seems to me to be
Speaker 1: utterly uncontroversial. That's just they clearly do that right now.
Speaker 1: A lot of the more controversial and um uh, it's
Speaker 1: just flat out unbelievable stuff you encounter out there about
Speaker 1: plants listening to music and so forth. This is still
Speaker 1: stemm stemming from that nine The Secret Life of Plants
Speaker 1: book by Tompkins and Bird that we we talked about
Speaker 1: in the first episode. Um popular work of mostly pseudoscience,
Speaker 1: that was also a huge setback for legitimate research. And
Speaker 1: we should also point out that make the point here
Speaker 1: too that there was, of course movement in the field
Speaker 1: of plant research into plants senses and and you know,
Speaker 1: potentially plant intelligence decades earlier before, before Baxter, before these uh,
Speaker 1: these authors wrote this book. UH. For instance, decades before this,
Speaker 1: scientist jagades Chandra bows demonstrated the plants were aware of
Speaker 1: their environment and that they responded to electrical stimulation. But
Speaker 1: then comes The Secret Life of Plants, And it was interesting.
Speaker 1: I was reading what Paul and had to say about
Speaker 1: it in the in that article, and he points out
Speaker 1: that this book may have resulted in the self censorship
Speaker 1: of researchers that were touching on areas of plant cognition
Speaker 1: or anything that hinted at similarities between plant and animal senses.
Speaker 1: Paullen writes, quote, Americans began talking to their plants and
Speaker 1: playing Mozart for them, and no doubt many still do.
Speaker 1: This might seem harmless enough, there will probably always be
Speaker 1: a strain of romanticism running through our thinking about plants.
Speaker 1: Luther Burbank and George Washington Carver both reputedly talked to
Speaker 1: and listen to the plants they did such brilliant work with.
Speaker 1: But in the view of many plants scientists, the science
Speaker 1: The Secret Life of Plants has done lasting damage to
Speaker 1: their field. Yeah, and you can understand how this would happen.
Speaker 1: So there is a there is a very culturally popular
Speaker 1: work of largely based on pseudoscience or not well founded
Speaker 1: claims about the about the intelligence or cognition of plants,
Speaker 1: and then for decades after that, Uh, you would have
Speaker 1: some reticence to get into thematically similar research areas, even
Speaker 1: if you did have a better evidential grounding for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say it reminds me a little bit
Speaker 1: of the situation with dolphin communication research coming out in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, with its reputation somewhat tarnished or
Speaker 1: or at least endangered, you know, by some perspectives by
Speaker 1: John C. Lily's work and uh. And also it reminds
Speaker 1: me a bit of the state of psychedelic research coming
Speaker 1: out of the same time period. Um though of course,
Speaker 1: um here with psychedelics there was the added um situation
Speaker 1: of these substances becoming federally outlawed. So no one was
Speaker 1: outlawing speaking to plants or playing music for them, um.
Speaker 1: After the Secret Life of Plants came out. But we
Speaker 1: can see how the whole affair became somewhat distracting and
Speaker 1: off putting to serious researchers. You know, you're you're, you're
Speaker 1: very this is your life's work. You don't want it
Speaker 1: to be associated with this work of pseudoscience, with this
Speaker 1: popular conception um of of what plants are doing, um, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can totally see the parallel to psychedelic research, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: in recent years there's been a thaw on psychedelic research
Speaker 1: and there's more legitimate experiment being done with them. But
Speaker 1: I think for a long time, yeah, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the law. There was a I think a scientific stigma
Speaker 1: about them because there had been a lot of the
Speaker 1: early work on psychedelics was clearly done by people who
Speaker 1: were not practicing unbiased, objective science, but had become sort
Speaker 1: of psychedelic evangelists. And we're we're we're dedicated, uh, proponents
Speaker 1: of psychedelics, and we're just like, how can I make
Speaker 1: them look good? I'll do anything, Yeah, Ti Timothy Learry
Speaker 1: being the major figure that fits that classification. And I
Speaker 1: have to say, in my very brief survey of some
Speaker 1: of this plant cognition stuff, one thing that does make
Speaker 1: me a little suspicious, perhaps unfairly um of even the
Speaker 1: more legitimate seeming plant cognition research is that plant cognition
Speaker 1: concepts seem to attract partisans who, uh, at least as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, sometimes over extend what can
Speaker 1: be concluded based on a piece of research. Like you
Speaker 1: could look at a single study about you know, habituation
Speaker 1: or something that looks like learning or memory and plants
Speaker 1: and conclude from that that this means plants are conscious,
Speaker 1: they can think, they can read my mind, they have
Speaker 1: a soul, or so something like that, you know, over
Speaker 1: extrapolating from actually what is a fairly contained result, or
Speaker 1: I think also you see examples of some people and
Speaker 1: I'm not accusing uh, the researchers themselves of this, but
Speaker 1: more like people who are excited about this research proponents,
Speaker 1: people who want to use plant cognition research to prove
Speaker 1: ideas they've already acquired elsewhere, like uh, you know, ideas
Speaker 1: about like a universal life spirit per permeating all things
Speaker 1: or something, or who take on a kind of in
Speaker 1: all actual murder persona like the closed Minded Academy wants
Speaker 1: to destroy the truth, all of which are major red flags. Uh,
Speaker 1: But of course it's something I've noticed more in the
Speaker 1: fans of plant cognition research than in the research itself.
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't hold that against the studies we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about. Yeah, anytime science is used to advance
Speaker 1: a non scientific um, you know, say that theology or
Speaker 1: some sort of an ideology, you get into murky territory,
Speaker 1: even if said um theology or ideology isn't, at least
Speaker 1: on the surface, something that's particularly harmful, even if it's
Speaker 1: yet something like, oh, all life forms are connected on Earth,
Speaker 1: you know, Oh, so nothing nothing wrong with believing that
Speaker 1: is just like, this study does not show that, right, right,
Speaker 1: But the situation is there is a lot of wonderfully
Speaker 1: impressive evidence on the different ways that the plants, since
Speaker 1: their environment, they compete with each other, communicate, and much more.
Speaker 1: And so this this research did continue and in continues
Speaker 1: to this day. A Pollen points to a shifting point
Speaker 1: around the year two thousand six. This is when an
Speaker 1: article came that came out in Trends and Plants Science
Speaker 1: by six scientists who were active in this field of research,
Speaker 1: and they proposed a new field be established plant neurobiology,
Speaker 1: and Pollen writes that more than a decade after this,
Speaker 1: this term was first proposed. The plant science community was
Speaker 1: still somewhat split on all of this, with some arguing
Speaker 1: that this was a necessary step in the right direction
Speaker 1: of reconsidering what constitutes intelligence and and indeed this is
Speaker 1: something we see similar discussions going on regarding the likes
Speaker 1: of ants and slime molds, the ideas of you know,
Speaker 1: emergent intelligence intelligence without brains, uh, you know, getting outside
Speaker 1: of the sort of you know, basic human and animal
Speaker 1: conception of what intelligence is. And of course this is
Speaker 1: also important when we get into discussions of artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and contemplations of what alien intelligence could consist of. Well,
Speaker 1: this also recalls other types of research along these lines,
Speaker 1: not in plants, but in say, animals, are parts of
Speaker 1: animals in which a brain is not present. You know,
Speaker 1: we did a couple of episodes about, uh, the the
Speaker 1: research perhaps indicating that certain types of flatworms could learn
Speaker 1: without a brain, or that part of their body, when
Speaker 1: cut off, could retain memories without the brain present. It's
Speaker 1: an older series, so I know, I'm I'm forgetting some details,
Speaker 1: but if you want the full story on that, the
Speaker 1: pair of episodes we did, I think we're called Devourer
Speaker 1: of Memories thank so. Anyway, plant neurobiology, some people, some
Speaker 1: researchers in this field very much behind the idea of
Speaker 1: this classification, while others considered it kind of a backslide
Speaker 1: to the seventies, you know, saying, look, we're trying to
Speaker 1: get past the stigma of the secret life of plants. Um.
Speaker 1: This just judges it all back up again. Though though
Speaker 1: to be clear, none of these plant neurobiology proponents were
Speaker 1: making these outrageous claims about telepathy or or plants having emotions. Uh,
Speaker 1: And the sort of intelligence they're proposing is more in
Speaker 1: line with the emergent modes of intelligence that we're discussing
Speaker 1: here now. One of the key arguments for reconsidering the
Speaker 1: lives of plants um actually comes down to big revelations
Speaker 1: made through time lapse footage or if not key to
Speaker 1: the arguments, key to to ways of of illustrating and
Speaker 1: and UM and studying the plants in question. By speeding
Speaker 1: up long shots of growing stems and leaves and vines,
Speaker 1: were able to sort of translate that time scale of
Speaker 1: plants into the time scale of human beings. And it's
Speaker 1: not just a matter of oh, look, if you speed
Speaker 1: up the footage it looks like a vine is crawling.
Speaker 1: Now the vine is kind of like a snake, and
Speaker 1: the snakes and animal, And now I'm viewing the plant
Speaker 1: as more of you know, a national being sort of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess that's inherently part of it, at least to
Speaker 1: the you know, the casual viewer. Uh. If you're flipping
Speaker 1: around on the TV and you happen to come across
Speaker 1: you know, one of these Planet Earth documentaries and you
Speaker 1: see even brilliant footage like that, but in various experiments,
Speaker 1: it actually allows us, this kind of footage allows us
Speaker 1: to better consider environmental interactions. So one example that Balan
Speaker 1: has brought up before, I believe he. I think he
Speaker 1: brings it up in if not in this article, he
Speaker 1: brings it up in some of his books, but brings
Speaker 1: it up in some some video interview footage that was
Speaker 1: there to the World Science Festival several years back. But
Speaker 1: you have being plants that are competing for a single
Speaker 1: poll on which to grow. And when you when you
Speaker 1: speed up that footage and you watch the time lapse
Speaker 1: of it, you can see them competing. You can see
Speaker 1: them both going after the same pole. You can see
Speaker 1: one uh, claiming the pole, and then the other retreating,
Speaker 1: giving up the fight, saying all right, fair enough, you've
Speaker 1: got it. And so this, you know, this sort of
Speaker 1: reaction to competition, uh, you know, rather than inanimate objects
Speaker 1: is key to tostms in many of these studies like
Speaker 1: this seems to be an area where plants are are
Speaker 1: even more likely to to have this sort of rapid response. Yes, though,
Speaker 1: of course this invites I think highly relevant and interesting
Speaker 1: questions about what intelligence actually is. Intelligence is a concept
Speaker 1: that is notoriously difficult to define, um because I mean,
Speaker 1: just think about it for a second, how would you
Speaker 1: define intelligence? It's clear like there there are some things
Speaker 1: that seem very clearly suggested by the concept, and one
Speaker 1: of them I think is interesting has to do with speed.
Speaker 1: Intelligence clearly has something to do with the rate of things, because,
Speaker 1: like you know, an animal that solves them is quickly.
Speaker 1: We look at that behavior and we say, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: indicative of intelligence. But a slime mold that solves them
Speaker 1: slowly we look at that and say, yeah, that that
Speaker 1: doesn't so much look like intelligence. So our intuition to
Speaker 1: have something to do with speed. But I would also
Speaker 1: say another part is um I think we tend to
Speaker 1: assume that intelligence involves the uh, the selection of behaviors
Speaker 1: or acquisition of goals in ways that are not strictly
Speaker 1: instinctually programmed, but are somehow adaptive to individual situations. Though
Speaker 1: then again, that's that's often difficult to detect. Like when
Speaker 1: you see time lapse footage of a bean stock competing
Speaker 1: for a pole and then reacting to the pole already
Speaker 1: being claimed. Don't is that a purely genetically programmed instinctual
Speaker 1: reaction or should you think of that as in some
Speaker 1: way individually adaptive or reactive to the specific situation? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean so much regarding intelligence and certainly cognition. You know,
Speaker 1: it comes back to the old idea that's just so
Speaker 1: hard to put aside the human perception of the thing.
Speaker 1: It's so hard to uh to to even think about say,
Speaker 1: intelligence in our household hats without comparing it to ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's it's tricky now, this this, you know,
Speaker 1: coming back to the idea of neurobiology, plant neurobiology. Of
Speaker 1: those opposed to this notion um have frequently stated, well, okay,
Speaker 1: plants just simply do not have neurons, synapses or a brain. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those Pollen points out legitimate scientists in this field are
Speaker 1: not making that claim. They're only suggesting that there might
Speaker 1: be something analogous to a brain to uh, two neurons, etcetera.
Speaker 1: UM So Pollen speaks with plant biologists Lincoln Tays who
Speaker 1: opposes the idea of plant neurobiology as a sort of
Speaker 1: animism which takes the realities of both short and long
Speaker 1: term electrical signaling and neurotransmitter like chemicals and plants. And
Speaker 1: then the argument is over interprets these realities, ultimately leading
Speaker 1: to quote anthropomorphizing, philosophizing and wild speculations. And I suppose
Speaker 1: I can see like the would point to be made
Speaker 1: between these these two sides, right. I mean, for instance,
Speaker 1: we often talk about evolution on the show, and it's
Speaker 1: very easy to fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing evolution,
Speaker 1: discussing it as if it has a will. You know,
Speaker 1: this is the sort of thing that can make it
Speaker 1: easier to comprehend what we're talking about. It can make
Speaker 1: it easier to explain some of what's happening. UM drive
Speaker 1: home what makes it interesting and making it make it exciting.
Speaker 1: But you can also do injustice to the appreciation of
Speaker 1: what it actually is, either subtly or overtly. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And likewise, it seems to me that yeah, comparing plants
Speaker 1: to animals, it can help explain, it can help excite,
Speaker 1: It can force us to reconsider outdated notions and limitations
Speaker 1: about what plants are and what they're capable of. But
Speaker 1: you can also potentially get into those murky waters. So
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I think either side is is totally
Speaker 1: in the right here, but I can see why there
Speaker 1: is an issue. But Pollen drive something that. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are some very strong feelings among plant biologists about all
Speaker 1: of this, which actually results and at least a little
Speaker 1: more heat and name calling than usually encounter in the sciences.
Speaker 1: But perhaps it's not all bad. Um Pollen writes, quote
Speaker 1: The controversy is less about the remarkable discoveries of recent
Speaker 1: plants science than about how to interpret and name them.
Speaker 1: Whether behaviors observed in plants which look very much like learning, memory,
Speaker 1: decision making, and intelligence deserve to be called by those terms,
Speaker 1: or whether those words should be reserved exclusively for creatures
Speaker 1: with brains. Yeah, that absolutely tracks with my experience reading
Speaker 1: about a lot of this plant cognition stuff that. Either way,
Speaker 1: you have some very interesting experimental results, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the conflict seems to be in arguing about what
Speaker 1: those results mean and what is a reasonable way to
Speaker 1: characterize them. Yeah. Now, on the topic of plants and brains,
Speaker 1: you might wonder, why don't they have a brain. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you've played a video game before where you have to
Speaker 1: blast the vital organs out of some sort of monster
Speaker 1: plant in order to defeat it. Um, Why does that
Speaker 1: not seem to be the case. Why is the reality
Speaker 1: instead that a plant can lose up to around nine
Speaker 1: of its body without being killed. I mean this this
Speaker 1: all comes down to the fact that plants are are stationary.
Speaker 1: They they stay in one spot. I mean, with some
Speaker 1: um you know, they are rooted to the ground. We
Speaker 1: have some situations where guess plants can travel and UH
Speaker 1: to varying degrees, But for the most part, where the
Speaker 1: plant takes root, the plant stays. The plant can't run away.
Speaker 1: It's got to be ready to sacrifice large portions of
Speaker 1: its body, and so it simply doesn't make sense for
Speaker 1: it to evolve some sort of a centralized, irreplaceable and
Speaker 1: UH insensitive organ like this. UM. The sesile lifestyle requires
Speaker 1: different approaches to two problem solving. Um. And it also
Speaker 1: ends up being one of the reasons that you have
Speaker 1: such a robust biochemical weapons. Why it has such a
Speaker 1: such a robust biochem call arsenal. Uh and there the
Speaker 1: plant the power here, for plants are famous, you know,
Speaker 1: far far more opponent than anything you'll find in animals.
Speaker 1: And that's why so much of human medicine is based
Speaker 1: in Okay, I have this ailment, which plant should I eat?
Speaker 1: And how much of that plant should I eat in
Speaker 1: order to fight it? Yeah. Another way to put that
Speaker 1: is just that the plant kingdom is full of internal
Speaker 1: chemicals that have potent effects on the physiology of animals. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course Pollen has written about this quite a bit,
Speaker 1: including the book The Botany of Desire that In this
Speaker 1: New Yorker article he summarizes the biochemical arsenal quite quite nicely. Says,
Speaker 1: unable to run away, plants deploy a complex molecular vocabulary
Speaker 1: to signal, to stress, deter or poison enemies, and recruit
Speaker 1: animals to perform various services for them. Uh So, um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he puts it quite well there. It's almost
Speaker 1: like sort of asking yourself, well, okay, I have a
Speaker 1: computer system. Why doesn't the computer system have a knife?
Speaker 1: Why does it have a lub? It should? It should? Right? Well, no,
Speaker 1: it has these other things and it has them to
Speaker 1: uh you know, all these other defenses are in place
Speaker 1: because it's it's fighting a different type of battle, uh,
Speaker 1: in a on a on a different scale. So again, yeah,
Speaker 1: so much of the of what makes the plant different,
Speaker 1: you know, we can look at the time scale. Uh,
Speaker 1: certainly is a is a huge factor, but also the
Speaker 1: fact that it is a sessile organism. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: if a plant does indeed contain something that is it
Speaker 1: could legitimately be considered intelligence. It would need a different
Speaker 1: kind of substrate to contain that intelligence than than the
Speaker 1: human brain, which is a centralized command center. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: because again, like you said, the plant might get of
Speaker 1: it might get eaten, and then it needs to be
Speaker 1: able to grow back. So if you allow for the
Speaker 1: concept of plant intelligence, it would probably need to somehow
Speaker 1: be more modular or distributed rather than housed in a
Speaker 1: command center like the human brain. And so what would
Speaker 1: some of these uh, these physical abstrates or systems b
Speaker 1: I think that is largely unknown, though there are some
Speaker 1: interesting ideas. Like in the previous episode, one of the
Speaker 1: papers we looked at the one that looked at habituation
Speaker 1: in Mimosa putica. It hypothesized one of the possible substrates
Speaker 1: of plant memory formation could be what are called calcium
Speaker 1: ion channels within the plant's tissues, which can form these
Speaker 1: kind of UH sensory chains throughout the plant's body. But
Speaker 1: it's it's still unknown. But but but I guess we
Speaker 1: should look at at least one more study, look at
Speaker 1: some more lab research. So in the previous study we
Speaker 1: looked at the one from in the last episode. It
Speaker 1: found apparent demonstration of a very rudimentary form of learning
Speaker 1: known as habituation in these sensitive plants that could close
Speaker 1: their leaves. And habituation could be defined as the diminishment
Speaker 1: of a programmed reaction to a repeated stimulus. So, maybe
Speaker 1: you jump with fright when you hear a sudden clattering
Speaker 1: sound behind you. Most people would. But if that clattering
Speaker 1: sound is repeated every five minutes, you will eventually stop
Speaker 1: jumping with fright. You will become accustomed to it. You
Speaker 1: will just start ignoring it because you've become habituated, and
Speaker 1: this doesn't require conscious effort. It just happens unconsciously, naturally.
Speaker 1: When you're exposed to the same salient stimulus over and
Speaker 1: over again. What seems salient at first has been encountered
Speaker 1: enough times that your body has just been trained to
Speaker 1: no longer regarded as salient. Is just noise, it's background.
Speaker 1: But of course, there are other types of learning and
Speaker 1: memory that could of course be considered more complex. So
Speaker 1: could plants actually demonstrate any of these other forms of
Speaker 1: memory as well? The next study I want to talk
Speaker 1: about looked at whether you could find evidence of classical
Speaker 1: conditioning in plants. Classical conditioning is one of the big
Speaker 1: concepts in behavioral psychology. I would say it is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest discoveries of psychology in the in the
Speaker 1: last I don't know about the last the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: It is a type of unconscious learning, usually observed in animals,
Speaker 1: in which you repeatedly pair a salient stimulus with a
Speaker 1: neutral stimulus, and over time the animal will eventually respond
Speaker 1: to the previously neutral stimulus the way they respond to
Speaker 1: the salient one. So, if you concrete examples, the original
Speaker 1: one is the story of Pavlov's dogs. This goes back
Speaker 1: to the Russian physiologist Yvon Pavlov, who lived eighteen forty
Speaker 1: nine and nineteen thirty six. He was studying digestion in
Speaker 1: dogs and he started to notice that the dogs in
Speaker 1: his lab would drool not only when their food was
Speaker 1: in sight, but when they saw the specific lab assistant
Speaker 1: who always fed them. So the production of saliva and
Speaker 1: the presence of food is a natural, unconditioned response, that's
Speaker 1: just something that makes sense for the body to do.
Speaker 1: The saliva will be useful once you start eating, but
Speaker 1: the dogs come to associate the assistant with food food,
Speaker 1: so their glands start jacking up the saliva when they
Speaker 1: see and smell that specific person who feeds them, even
Speaker 1: though the person themselves is not actually food. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it of course can be any stimulus that The classic
Speaker 1: example is a sound such as a bell or a metronome.
Speaker 1: So if I give you a painful electric shock every
Speaker 1: time I start playing we Built this City by Starship,
Speaker 1: you will start to have a reaction to the song
Speaker 1: without the shock. Even if there's no shock, you hear
Speaker 1: that first line and you'll you'll probably freeze or wins.
Speaker 1: Thank thank Anyway, given that there is some preliminary evidence
Speaker 1: that at least some plant species can exhibit habituation, would
Speaker 1: it be possible to show this other kind of memory
Speaker 1: based learning in plants? Can plants be classically conditioned to
Speaker 1: associate a neutral queue with a biologically salient que? So
Speaker 1: the study I want to mention was published in Nature
Speaker 1: Scientific Reports and went sixteen by Monica Gagliano, Vladislav Viasovski,
Speaker 1: Alexander Borbelli, Maveri grimond Pres and Martial dep Chinsky. And
Speaker 1: it's called learning by association in plants. So the authors
Speaker 1: justify their investigation by explaining that they think there would
Speaker 1: in fact be evolutionary pressure on plants to show associate
Speaker 1: of learning. So, much like the question we asked earlier
Speaker 1: about sounds and and stuff in plants, it's worth thinking,
Speaker 1: is there actually an ecologically relevant reason for the creature
Speaker 1: you're studying to have the ability you're looking for? And
Speaker 1: uh so that they write quote. In complex and ever
Speaker 1: changing environments, resources such as food are often scarce and
Speaker 1: unevenly distributed in space and time. Therefore, utilizing external cues
Speaker 1: to locate and remember high quality sources allows more efficient foraging,
Speaker 1: thus increasing chances for survival. Associations between environmental cues and
Speaker 1: food are readily formed because of the tangible benefits they confer.
Speaker 1: While examples of the key role they play in shaping
Speaker 1: foraging behaviors are widespread in the animal world, the possibility
Speaker 1: that plants are also able to acquire learned associations to
Speaker 1: guide their foraging behavior has never been demonstrated. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the same ability to discern and make these associations would
Speaker 1: potentially be useful for plants, we just haven't documented evidence
Speaker 1: of it yet. And this study explored the question with
Speaker 1: the use of a different plant than the other one.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about Mimosa putica anymore. In this case,
Speaker 1: they looked at seedlings of the garden p plant or
Speaker 1: Pieceum sativum. Now it's worth clarifying that the plant behavior
Speaker 1: studied in this experiment occurs on a different time scale
Speaker 1: than the ones we talked about in the previous episode.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, uh, there were there were examples
Speaker 1: of the few plants with the ability to move rapidly,
Speaker 1: such as the venus fly trap or Mimosa putica, and
Speaker 1: these rapid movements were examples of what are called nast reflexes,
Speaker 1: reflexes that are independent of the direction of the stimulus
Speaker 1: and they're just guided by the plant's body form. Nastic
Speaker 1: movements were contrasted with what are called tropisms, which tend
Speaker 1: to be slower movements but are stimulus directed. And the
Speaker 1: most common plant tropism you will have observed pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody seen this is phototropism growing towards a light source,
Speaker 1: which totally makes sense for a plant because light provides
Speaker 1: the energy that powers photosynthesis. So you can roughly think
Speaker 1: of a plant growing toward light much like an animal
Speaker 1: moving toward a source of food. And that's what this
Speaker 1: experiment was studying, not nastic reflexes, but tropisms, growth in
Speaker 1: the direction of a biologically salient stimulus, in this case light.
Speaker 1: So the first experimental set up looked like this the
Speaker 1: author's right quote. In the first experiment, p seedlings, forty
Speaker 1: five of them were entrained to an eight hour light
Speaker 1: sixteen hour dark cycle for five to eight days. In
Speaker 1: the subsequent three day training period, they were kept in
Speaker 1: darkness with the exception of one hour light exposures during
Speaker 1: the three daily training sessions, and during this training period
Speaker 1: the seedlings they would place them in what's known as
Speaker 1: a y maze. So to picture this, you think of
Speaker 1: a y shaped pipe. The seedling is down at the
Speaker 1: bottom in the in the single channel part of the tube,
Speaker 1: and then above it the tube forks off into two arms.
Speaker 1: And then there are two different training conditions. One in
Speaker 1: which the seedlings are exposed to a light source from
Speaker 1: one arm of the tube with a fan blowing on
Speaker 1: them from the same arm, and then there's another test
Speaker 1: condition in which they are exposed to a light source
Speaker 1: from one arm and a fan blowing on them from
Speaker 1: the opposite arm. So we have the light associated with
Speaker 1: a fan or a light associated with being opposite the fan.
Speaker 1: So if the plants are capable of classically conditioned associations,
Speaker 1: one group should learn that the airflow from a fan
Speaker 1: is positively correlated with food, so it should start to
Speaker 1: associate a fan with food. And then the other we'll
Speaker 1: learn that the airflow is negatively correlated with food, and
Speaker 1: it should associate going in the opposite direction of the
Speaker 1: fan with food. And to make the direction of the
Speaker 1: incoming light unpredictable, its direction was repeatedly switched around during
Speaker 1: the training period. Though it's association or lack of association
Speaker 1: with the fan was kept consistent with each plan, and
Speaker 1: after this training period, the plants were further subdivided to
Speaker 1: put some in test groups and the other in the
Speaker 1: control group, and the two test groups would be exposed
Speaker 1: to a fan from one direction or the other without
Speaker 1: the light source along with it the author's right quote.
Speaker 1: In this group, to control for the influence of innate
Speaker 1: phototropic response, the fan was placed in the arm opposite
Speaker 1: to last light exposure in the fan plus light group
Speaker 1: and on the arm of the last light exposure in
Speaker 1: the fan versus light group. So that was the second
Speaker 1: is when they were on opposite sides of the y
Speaker 1: Mas quote. The seedlings of the control group were left undisturbed.
Speaker 1: On the morning after the testing day, we visually inspected
Speaker 1: the seedlings and recorded the arm of the maze they
Speaker 1: had grown into. So what did they find When the
Speaker 1: control group, this is the group that got no fan
Speaker 1: exposure in the test phase, so no fan, one of
Speaker 1: the plants grew in the direction of the most recent
Speaker 1: light exposure, wherever the light came from last that's where
Speaker 1: they went. But in the test groups, the author's report
Speaker 1: that the majority of seedlings did indeed show a conditioned response.
Speaker 1: So in the group that had been trained with the
Speaker 1: fan and the light on the same side, sixty two
Speaker 1: percent of them grew toward the fan without the light,
Speaker 1: and in the group that had been trained with the
Speaker 1: fan and the light on opposite sides, six grew away
Speaker 1: from the fan. So if this holds up, it would
Speaker 1: appear to show associate of learning in plants, a type
Speaker 1: of learning that in the majority of cases prevails over
Speaker 1: the basic reflexive tropism to grow in the direction of
Speaker 1: wherever the light came from last. But of course it's
Speaker 1: a good question does this study actually hold up. We
Speaker 1: will come and come back to that in a minute. Here.
Speaker 1: One more thing I wanted to mention, though, is that uh.
Speaker 1: There were also subsequent experiments in the same study, and
Speaker 1: the authors found that the associate of learning only succeeded
Speaker 1: when it took place during the quote daytime from the
Speaker 1: plant's perspective given its training regimen, which the authors suggest
Speaker 1: means that there are metabolic demands on the learning process. Quote.
Speaker 1: This experiment, in which plants were trained at three different
Speaker 1: time periods within twenty four hours, revealed that the learning
Speaker 1: effect disappears when training occurred during the evening hours, when
Speaker 1: light would not normally be available. This finding is particularly
Speaker 1: intriguing and bolsters the argument that associate of learning is
Speaker 1: an adaptive response that is only utilized during daylight hours
Speaker 1: when it is most useful via an internal circadian clock,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because that also invokes a sort of
Speaker 1: second order type of thing that people would have called
Speaker 1: it a type of plant intelligence, which is its ability
Speaker 1: to measure spans of time. Anyway, in the end, the
Speaker 1: authors of this study, they say, quote, our results show
Speaker 1: that associate of learning is an essential component of plant behavior.
Speaker 1: We conclude the dissociative learning represents a universal adaptive mechanism
Speaker 1: shared by both plants, animals and plants. Now this was
Speaker 1: in TWI and I did find a study following up
Speaker 1: on this and attempting a replication and failing. So the
Speaker 1: attempted replication was by Ksey Marcole published in E Life
Speaker 1: called lack of Evidence for Associate of learning and p Plants.
Speaker 1: The year was pretty straightforward. The author tried to repeat
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen experiment. They repeated the protocol described in
Speaker 1: the first experiment, and they write, quote, However, a replication
Speaker 1: of the protocol failed to demonstrate the same result, calling
Speaker 1: for further verification and study before mainstream acceptance of this
Speaker 1: paradigm shifting phenomenon. This replication attempt used a larger sample
Speaker 1: size and fully blinded analysis, and of course, uh, both
Speaker 1: of those things are always good. Larger samples are good,
Speaker 1: blinded analysis is always good. I wasn't a d percent
Speaker 1: sure exactly what that meant in this case, but I
Speaker 1: think it would mean that whoever compiled and analyzed the
Speaker 1: results of the experiment had no way of knowing which
Speaker 1: groups the subjects were in, which would help prevent any
Speaker 1: possible contamination, intentional or unintentional by experiment or bias. So
Speaker 1: we're we're in the in the middle ground here. One
Speaker 1: study gets a positive result, a follow up attempt does not.
Speaker 1: So how do we sort it out? Well, Actually, the
Speaker 1: authors of the original study replied, publishing a follow up
Speaker 1: comment in the same journal. Uh. They essentially to summarize
Speaker 1: their argument. They essentially say that the experiment may not
Speaker 1: have worked in the replication attempt because of some crucial
Speaker 1: differences in methodology, mainly that the unconditioned stimulus in this
Speaker 1: case light was not tightly controlled enough, and that They
Speaker 1: criticize some things about how the the plants had been
Speaker 1: mounted inside their growth case, and the idea that light
Speaker 1: from one tube may have been penetrating into other tubes,
Speaker 1: making a kind of light noisy environment. There were too
Speaker 1: many light sources and this would introduce randomness into the results.
Speaker 1: So to put it in terms of the Pavlov's dog example,
Speaker 1: this might be a kind of rough comparison, but uh,
Speaker 1: the unconditioned stimulus in Pavlov's dogs would be food. So
Speaker 1: if you were to have a poor control of the
Speaker 1: unconditioned stimulus in that case, it would be kind of
Speaker 1: like imagining that the dogs had constant ambient access to food.
Speaker 1: They're just food bowls constantly full throughout the room they're in.
Speaker 1: In that case, would they salivate when they saw an
Speaker 1: assistant coming in to put some more food in one
Speaker 1: of the bowls? Well, if they've just always got food anyway,
Speaker 1: probably not right. I don't know. I don't know enough
Speaker 1: about dogs. Sometimes I feel like sometimes my cat can
Speaker 1: be kind of like that, where it's like, really, do
Speaker 1: you have food? And here's more food, and now you're
Speaker 1: excited for this, how about the food you already have?
Speaker 1: I trust the research or something. If if they've just
Speaker 1: got food any time they want it, right, then they
Speaker 1: wouldn't associate the the assistant coming in to fill the
Speaker 1: food bowls with them getting the food. It would just,
Speaker 1: you know, that they would just get the food whenever
Speaker 1: they want. So that that's what the authors of the
Speaker 1: original study argued. But then there was a response to
Speaker 1: the response in the same journal again where Marco came
Speaker 1: back and argued for a number of technical reasons that
Speaker 1: the differences they highlighted are unlikely to explain the different outcomes. Quote.
Speaker 1: Despite considerable effort to match the experimental details of the experiment,
Speaker 1: the replication attempt did not find evidence for associate of
Speaker 1: learning and people lants. Of course, this does not rule
Speaker 1: out the existence of such learning, and I sincerely hope
Speaker 1: that future research demonstrates the phenomenon to be reproducible. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I feel like we're kind of in the middle ground here. Personally,
Speaker 1: I don't have the expertise or judgment to reach a
Speaker 1: conclusion on on the technical points they're arguing about in
Speaker 1: the experiment here, So I guess I would just say
Speaker 1: I would have to consider the results very interesting. Bit
Speaker 1: heavily caveatted until we see successful replication. Yeah, now, I
Speaker 1: will say that, Um, the the lead author on this paper,
Speaker 1: Monica Gagliano. I've seen her. Uh. She was part of
Speaker 1: a panel discussion at the World Science Festival back in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen I Believe Intelligence Without Brains That also featured
Speaker 1: an scientist Mark Moffatt, whose work we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: show before. And UM, yeah that Monica Gagliano's research research
Speaker 1: Associate Professor in Evolutionary ecology at the Biological Intelligence Lab
Speaker 1: at Southern Cross University in Australia. Her primary areas of
Speaker 1: researcher marine ecology and plant cognitive ecology. She also has
Speaker 1: a book out which I was not aware of until
Speaker 1: I was looking back into her work here. But the
Speaker 1: book is thus Spoke the Plant. Yeah, she seems to
Speaker 1: be one of the leading figures in the plant cognition
Speaker 1: domain these days. She wrote another article, uh in eighteen
Speaker 1: summing up some of this recent stuff in Ecologica called
Speaker 1: Plants Learn and Remember Let's get used to it. Actually, sorry,
Speaker 1: that had three authors. She was the first listed author. Well,
Speaker 1: I will say she did seem to have a good
Speaker 1: sense of humor about about herself and about her area
Speaker 1: of research. When I when I saw her gift that talk.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you want to see that
Speaker 1: talk for yourself, you can find it at the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival's website. Just look for Intelligence without Brains. They
Speaker 1: have the full the full talk up there. Now. I
Speaker 1: guess we've already covered this a good bit earlier on,
Speaker 1: so I won't get into too much detail. I did
Speaker 1: have a few notes about some other articles I was reading,
Speaker 1: for example, by one author you already sided, who came
Speaker 1: up in UM in Pollen's UH New Yorker piece, Lincoln
Speaker 1: tay Ease, who has been a critic of so called
Speaker 1: plant cognition or plant neurobiology UM, and UH comments by
Speaker 1: researchers from this camp. Though a lot of this seemed
Speaker 1: aimed at the kind of thing you were talking about,
Speaker 1: where they're objecting to certain extrapolations or characterizations, extrapolations from
Speaker 1: more characterization of this research rather than the research itself,
Speaker 1: like UM rejecting the idea of plant consciousness and so forth.
Speaker 1: Of course, that opens its own can of worms, because uh,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, there's no actual test for consciousness
Speaker 1: even in humans. Consciousness can only be experienced directly in
Speaker 1: the self and then inferred to exist by analogy and
Speaker 1: other humans and possibly in non human animals. But that
Speaker 1: they've got a number of arguments based on the uh,
Speaker 1: the just physical anatomical qualities of plants that that say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's very unlikely they would have the whatever
Speaker 1: kind of computational complexity the I don't know, calcium channels
Speaker 1: or anything like that, and plants might possess, it would
Speaker 1: be unlikely to possess the level of complexity that we
Speaker 1: see in animal brains and that we assume to be
Speaker 1: the necessary basis for consciousness. But anyway, I mean, so,
Speaker 1: I think where we're left right now, at least from
Speaker 1: my point of view, is that we're still in the
Speaker 1: middle of a research program. There. There's still like a
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of basic research in plant called
Speaker 1: action going on that maybe in five or ten more
Speaker 1: years we will have a better idea of of what
Speaker 1: the direct evidence is about what plants can actually do,
Speaker 1: and then it might we might be more well equipped
Speaker 1: to argue about whether it actually counts as X, Y
Speaker 1: or c that we you know, words we used to
Speaker 1: associate with the mental phenomena of humans. Yeah, yeah, or
Speaker 1: I do. Maybe we'll have a different terminology at that point,
Speaker 1: um it it it's yeah, we we end up in
Speaker 1: the same situation wherever, trying to divorce the study of
Speaker 1: intelligence and content and even potentially consciousness. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: on across multiple species and multiple organisms. Uh, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that we have this this this experience of these
Speaker 1: things and this this concept of these things that's you know,
Speaker 1: closer than our own breath. One thing that's got me
Speaker 1: thinking about again this is this is we're in the
Speaker 1: speculative realm. Now, this is not what's necessarily justified by
Speaker 1: the existing evidence. But if you were to discus, ever,
Speaker 1: for example, that maybe you can't justify the claim that
Speaker 1: plants can think, but you could justify the claim that
Speaker 1: plants can learn, it would be an important reminder to
Speaker 1: not blur all different types of mental phenomenon together into
Speaker 1: one single substance, Like there may be important differences between,
Speaker 1: for example, remembering and reasoning that make one but not
Speaker 1: the other possible given any physical substrates, say like the
Speaker 1: kinds of I don't know, computational chemical pathways that would
Speaker 1: exist in in plant stems and roots versus in the
Speaker 1: neural tissue of a human being or an animal. Maybe
Speaker 1: human brain tissue can do both, but plant tissue can
Speaker 1: only do one. And this has interesting implications for speculating
Speaker 1: about alien intelligence, Like if there there are other types
Speaker 1: of intelligence out there in the galaxy, we would tend
Speaker 1: to assume those intelligences to bundle together all the myriad
Speaker 1: functions performed by our own primate brains. But it's important
Speaker 1: to remember those are like specifically primate brains. We've got
Speaker 1: a very particular type of meat in our heads, and
Speaker 1: the type of intelligence were familiar with is what that
Speaker 1: meat can do. So what if, like there's another physical
Speaker 1: substrate that's unfamiliar to us and that constitutes what we
Speaker 1: would think of as the alien brain, whatever that is,
Speaker 1: should we be trying to think of it as capable
Speaker 1: of some of the subdivided parts of intelligence what we
Speaker 1: think of as intelligence, but not others. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great point, And uh, you know, I guess I would
Speaker 1: hope that we're at least reaching towards the point where
Speaker 1: we're going to have a more you know, um complicated
Speaker 1: understanding of what memory and learning are because we're already
Speaker 1: having to contend not just with with human and animal
Speaker 1: memory and learning, but also machine learning and machine memory
Speaker 1: and you know potentially uh, plant analogs as well, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, it just it kind of hopefully for us
Speaker 1: is to to push the human experience and the human
Speaker 1: model a little further aside and realize that, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is an example of a broader thing and
Speaker 1: it is not the thing itself. Like I'm imagining a
Speaker 1: sci fi concept of story about encountering aliens that maybe
Speaker 1: if this makes any sense, what if they could do
Speaker 1: something that looks like intelligence because they can learn and adapt,
Speaker 1: but they can't do what we would think of as reasoning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they can learn, but they can't think. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that even makes sense, but uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It gets my gears cranking. All right, we
Speaker 1: just had a brief conversation off Mike. Are we gonna
Speaker 1: are we gonna cap this series here? We're gonna go
Speaker 1: more with the the interesting hidden lives of plants, plant cognition,
Speaker 1: so called plant communication, things like that. Maybe we'll just
Speaker 1: leave it a mystery. You'll be surprised next Tuesday, which
Speaker 1: whether we're onto something else or whether the plants continue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and In the meantime, you've you've got some hanging out
Speaker 1: to do with your various house plants and and plants
Speaker 1: in the yard, maybe plants out in the wild. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, if if they're within your house, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: play them a little Starship, play them a little some
Speaker 1: prints and uh and some of the other musical examples
Speaker 1: we mentioned these episodes. Uh. We're not saying it's gonna
Speaker 1: do anything, but it might be fun to hang out
Speaker 1: with your plan and listen to Starship. You know. I
Speaker 1: think of it like the the semantic contents of talking
Speaker 1: to your dog. Like if the dogs mostly just going
Speaker 1: to be responding to the tone of your voice. If
Speaker 1: I tell my dog he's a he's a bad boy
Speaker 1: and a good boy voice, he's probably gonna be super happy.
Speaker 1: But you know, I want to say good boy anyway
Speaker 1: because that makes me feel good. All right, Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go and close it out here. But as always,
Speaker 1: you can find episodes core episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast
Speaker 1: feed every Thursday and Tuesday. UM. You will also find
Speaker 1: our short form artifact or Monster Fack episodes on Wednesdays.
Speaker 1: Listener Mail on Mondays and on Friday, well we do
Speaker 1: a little weird house cinema. That's when we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 1: And then on the weekend we have a Vault episode
Speaker 1: that is a rerun from yesteryear. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, though he
Speaker 1: is out this week, so big thanks to our excellent
Speaker 1: guest audio producer Paul decand huge thanks for stepping in
Speaker 1: this week, Poluh. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. US has a
Speaker 1: stomack about a prote