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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday,

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Speaker 1: so we are heading into the vault for an older

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Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one originally

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Speaker 1: aired on April fourteenth, twenty twenty two, and it's part

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Speaker 1: two of our series on whether or not plants have

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Speaker 1: memories or anything analogous to memory. So we hope you

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Speaker 1: enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: we're back for part two of our series on the

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Speaker 1: possible evidence for memory and learning in plants. Now, this

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Speaker 1: is one of our series where if you haven't listened

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Speaker 1: to part one yet, you really should go back and

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Speaker 1: do that one first, since we clear a lot of

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Speaker 1: the ground for what we're going to be talking about today.

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Speaker 1: This is one that I think is going to be

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Speaker 1: kind of hard to jump in in the middle. But

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Speaker 1: in that past episode, for a refresher, we talked about

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Speaker 1: a plant called known as the sensitive plant or the

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Speaker 1: humble plant, the shame plant that touched me not scientific

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Speaker 1: name Mimosa pudica, which is one of the few plants

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Speaker 1: in the world that displays rapid movement or movement on

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Speaker 1: the time scale usually associated with animal life, and we

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Speaker 1: talked about experiments from twenty fourteen that appeared to show

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Speaker 1: a form of rudimentary learning called habituation in these plants,

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Speaker 1: where for example, if you take a potted Mimosa pudica

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Speaker 1: and you drop it the exact same way over many

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Speaker 1: training sessions, it will adapt so that it no longer

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Speaker 1: closes its leaves defensively in response to a drop, but

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Speaker 1: it will still close its leaves in response to other

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Speaker 1: types of disturbance. So if this type of finding holds

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Speaker 1: up to scrutiny and replication, it would be evidence that

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Speaker 1: even though this plant has no brain, it has some

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Speaker 1: kind of internal mechanism for learning from experience in order

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Speaker 1: to maximize its fitness. And of course, at some level,

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Speaker 1: learning requires a form of what we would think of

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Speaker 1: as memory. In order to learn from the past, you

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Speaker 1: have to have some way of being changed by the past,

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Speaker 1: to store the past within you in an organized way

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Speaker 1: that can influence future behavior, which, of course we do

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Speaker 1: with our brains. But if plants in some cases also

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Speaker 1: do this, it's a great question what is the mechanism

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Speaker 1: They obviously don't have brains. And finally, in the last episode,

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Speaker 1: we tried to disentangle different claims about so called plant cognition,

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Speaker 1: which is a controversial concept. We noted that memory is

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Speaker 1: not the same thing as reasoning, which is not the

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Speaker 1: same as consciousness, which is not the same as emotion

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Speaker 1: or communication or or or plant like psychic plant mind reading,

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Speaker 1: which some people have also claimed evidence oft without much justification,

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Speaker 1: and with the final point being that evidence for one

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Speaker 1: of these traits is not necessarily evidence for others. But

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Speaker 1: today we're going to look at some more research that

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Speaker 1: has been interpreted as showing plant memory or plant cognition

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Speaker 1: in the past decade, as well as some reaction and

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Speaker 1: criticism to that. Yeah. Now, in the last episode I

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Speaker 1: mentioned some music. I mentioned both Celtic Frost's metal album

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Speaker 1: to Megatherian Uh and mort Garson's Plantasia, and both were

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Speaker 1: kind of offhand references, and afterwards I was looking into

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Speaker 1: it a little bit more, and I was first of

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Speaker 1: all delighted to see that Plantasia is more widely regarded

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Speaker 1: as a classic than I thought it was. Um, I

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Speaker 1: was familiar with mort Garson's work, and um, you know,

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Speaker 1: I was delighted that his work had recently been reissued

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Speaker 1: by Sacred Bones Records. I think I had to make

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Speaker 1: do with some some some some bad copies back in

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Speaker 1: the day. Sorry, we refresh on the on the mort

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Speaker 1: Garson album, it was so mort Garson. It was a

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Speaker 1: pioneer of electronic music and synth work. And he had

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Speaker 1: a few different monikers that he used. He did some

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Speaker 1: like some occult sounding sounds and so forth. But he

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Speaker 1: also put out this album Plantasia, which was music to

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Speaker 1: be played for your plants very much. Jumping in on

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Speaker 1: this The Secret Lives of Plants one, I don't want

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Speaker 1: to say hysteria, We'll say popularity during the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 1: And as we discussed in that episode, and we'll discuss

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Speaker 1: a little bit here. Yeah, this album is not actually

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Speaker 1: going to help your plants out in any of your plants.

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Speaker 1: Do not care about Mark Garson's discography as much as

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Speaker 1: you do or I do, But it is a very

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Speaker 1: nice album for human listeners. Sure, And hey, as I

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Speaker 1: said in the last episode, even if it doesn't actually

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Speaker 1: do anything for your plants, which it probably doesn't no

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Speaker 1: reason not to play it for your plants. I mean

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Speaker 1: that sounds fun. Yeah, so I was delighted to see that,

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Speaker 1: even though there was a New York Times article about

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Speaker 1: this album's popularity and increased popularity I think in part

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Speaker 1: due to the reissue, but also they were making the

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Speaker 1: point due to the resurgence and interest in houseplants during

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Speaker 1: the pandemic, you know, don't. I don't know about about you,

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Speaker 1: but I think I don't know if we actually picked

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Speaker 1: up that. No, we did pick up more house plants.

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Speaker 1: I think some of them were gifted to us. But

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Speaker 1: we have all sorts of little succulents like hanging out

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Speaker 1: all over the house that we accumulated over the past

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Speaker 1: couple of years. I don't know the name for them.

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Speaker 1: At Rachel has some kind of houseplant that repeatedly produces buds,

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Speaker 1: like I guess, stalks will come off of it, and

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Speaker 1: you can separate them and turn them into their own

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Speaker 1: new potted version of that same plant, kind of like

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Speaker 1: getting a grimlin wet or something. Just you know, they

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Speaker 1: repopulate and go all over the place. So I think

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Speaker 1: we have had at least proliferation of existing plants. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and house plants are great, no doubt about it. But

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, I was looking around for stuff

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Speaker 1: on this, and I was kind of taken aback at

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Speaker 1: just how much content there is out there on the

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Speaker 1: Internet regarding playing music for plants. And while I didn't

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Speaker 1: find anyone actually exalting the benefits of playing Celtic Frost

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Speaker 1: for your philodendrons, there are pages talking about the merits

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Speaker 1: of different musical genres alleged merits, i should say, for

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Speaker 1: plant growth, including the idea that heavy metal can improve

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Speaker 1: plant mass and fruit taste, provided that it's not too

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Speaker 1: noisy or presumably too heavy beautiful. What is the best

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Speaker 1: thrash metal for your plants? I've got to assume downstream

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Speaker 1: of this, some people who believe in this, really they

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Speaker 1: think their plants have individual tastes, like my plants really

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Speaker 1: love motor Head. Yeah. I mean, I think we said

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Speaker 1: before death metal bands need to get in on beans

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Speaker 1: and realize that in the folklore it canon, bean plants

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Speaker 1: are closely associated with the world of the dead and

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Speaker 1: this should be embraced. Sure, Now, all this being said, yeah,

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Speaker 1: not every source popping up on the subject is something

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Speaker 1: that I would take to the bank at all. But

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Speaker 1: plants do produce vibrations and can respond to sound vibrations.

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Speaker 1: Now I got interested in this idea thinking about plants

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Speaker 1: responding to sound, and I started wondering about a question.

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Speaker 1: I think this is always something good to wonder about.

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Speaker 1: When you hear a claim about a life form, you think,

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Speaker 1: what would be the original ecological relevance of this, like

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Speaker 1: in the actual environment, not in a in a house

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Speaker 1: or a lab or something. Why would this kind of

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Speaker 1: stimulus be relevant? So I looked it up in the

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Speaker 1: scientific literature and I did find some interesting examples. One

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Speaker 1: of them was a paper published in Ecologia in twenty

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Speaker 1: fourteen by HIGDM Apple and Reginald B. Cocroft called plants

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Speaker 1: respond to leaf vibrations caused by insect herbivore chewing. And

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Speaker 1: this study found that if you reproduce the sounds made

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Speaker 1: by a caterpillar feeding on a leaf and then expose

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Speaker 1: those sounds to what's known as a thail cress plant,

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Speaker 1: the plant will respond by producing higher level of glucosinolate

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Speaker 1: and anthocyanin, which are defensive chemicals. So, if this finding

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Speaker 1: is sound, then the plant does actually detect sound, and

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Speaker 1: it is ecologically relevant. Sound is an indicator of nearby predation.

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Speaker 1: The plant is it is being threatened by what is

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Speaker 1: producing this caterpillar eating sound. Yeah, and there's another study

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Speaker 1: that I believe came out the same year, conducted by

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Speaker 1: Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso, who found that roots could seek

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Speaker 1: out buried pipes of running water seemingly attracted to the sound.

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Speaker 1: So again, if if these results hold up. Basically, the

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Speaker 1: idea here is you have water running through a pipe

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Speaker 1: that is otherwise, you know, completely set apart from the dirt,

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Speaker 1: from the dirt from the soil, and yet the roots

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Speaker 1: are moving towards the water anyway, how would they know

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Speaker 1: the water? Is there? The ideas that they're picking up

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Speaker 1: on the sound, picking up on the vibrations, right, and

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Speaker 1: so again you could wonder how would that be ecologically relevant?

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Speaker 1: It seems plausible to me. I mean, they're all kinds

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Speaker 1: of like underground water flows and so and those would

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Speaker 1: of course produce vibrations right now, And you might then wonder, well, okay,

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Speaker 1: if there's a sound of running water and my ambient music,

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Speaker 1: does that mean my plant wants it. I think that's

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Speaker 1: a more Maybe that's a kind of a simple, simplified

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Speaker 1: argument to make. I think you get into a lot

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Speaker 1: of discussions about like the differences between how the plant

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Speaker 1: is quote unquote hearing and how we are quote unquote

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Speaker 1: hearing something, right, I mean, I would say it's hard

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Speaker 1: to imagine that there's a evolutionarily justified reason a plant

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Speaker 1: would respond to music in particular, But of course there

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Speaker 1: are probably good reasons for plants to respond to certain

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Speaker 1: types of noise. So to be very generous, I guess

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Speaker 1: it's possible that in some cases, some types of music

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Speaker 1: might accidentally trigger something like a tropism or a stress

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Speaker 1: response in a plant, where it might make the plant,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, look different in some way that the

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Speaker 1: owner would be able to detect. It's possible. I'm sort

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Speaker 1: of skeptical even as far as that goes like the

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Speaker 1: accidental byproduct of certain types of music. But as I

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Speaker 1: said in the last episode, again, if you want to

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Speaker 1: play music for your plants, go for it. You know,

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Speaker 1: I don't think it makes sense to literally believe it's

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Speaker 1: doing anything for the plant itself, but it sounds like

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Speaker 1: a perfectly wonderful activity. Yeah, especially prints. Everybody loves prints,

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Speaker 1: so it makes sense that plants would love prints as well.

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Speaker 1: Now this is just one of the senses that plants

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Speaker 1: seem to possess. I've read that plants have somewhere between

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Speaker 1: fifteen and twenty distinct senses, and some of these can

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Speaker 1: be compared to our basic set of human senses. In

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Speaker 1: addition to sound, as Michael Pollen points out in his

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Speaker 1: wonderful article The Intelligent Plant from The New Yorker in

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Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, we have, of course, on the human side,

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Speaker 1: smell and taste, and plants do seem to sense and

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Speaker 1: respond to chemicals in the air or on their bodies.

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Speaker 1: We have sight, and plants react differently to various wavelengths

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Speaker 1: of light as well as to shadow. So plants like

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Speaker 1: us live in a world of periodic light and darkness,

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Speaker 1: and of course they depend heavily upon the light because

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Speaker 1: of photosenses, So it makes sense that this would be

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Speaker 1: in place. And then we have the sense of touch,

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Speaker 1: and a vine or root seems to know when it

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Speaker 1: encounters a solid object. So plant roots have been found

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Speaker 1: to be able to sense gravity, moisture, light, pressure, firmness,

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Speaker 1: so you know it's like they're encountering something that seems

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Speaker 1: to be a solid as opposed to something they can

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Speaker 1: continue to grow in into volume, nitrogen, phosphorus, salt, various toxins.

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Speaker 1: A lot of times, Pollen points out that the roots,

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Speaker 1: the toxins are going to be first encountered by those

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Speaker 1: roots microbes as well as chemical signals from other plants,

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Speaker 1: and in that just a little bit, you get into

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Speaker 1: the realm of communication. Yeah, And so my read on

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Speaker 1: this domain is that while a lot of the other

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Speaker 1: things in so called plant cognition could be considered pretty controversial,

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Speaker 1: even some of the stuff with better evidence for it,

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Speaker 1: like the memory stuff we're talking about, that's still somewhat controversial.

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Speaker 1: But plant sensation, the plants being able to gather information

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Speaker 1: about all kinds of different things in their environment, that

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Speaker 1: seems to me to be utterly uncontroversial. That's just they

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Speaker 1: clearly do that right now. A lot of the more

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Speaker 1: controversial and it's just flat out unbelievable stuff you encounter

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Speaker 1: out there about plants listening to music and so forth.

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Speaker 1: This is still st stemming from that nineteen seventy three

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Speaker 1: The Secret Life of Plants book by Tompkins and Bird

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Speaker 1: that we we talked about in the first episode, popular

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Speaker 1: work of mostly pseudoscience. That was also a huge setback

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Speaker 1: for legitimate research. And we should also point out that

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Speaker 1: make the point here too that there was of course

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Speaker 1: movement in the field of plant research into plants senses

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Speaker 1: and and you know, potentially plant intelligence decades earlier before Baxter,

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Speaker 1: before these these authors wrote this book. For instance, decades

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Speaker 1: before this, scientist jagades Chandra bows demonstrated the plants were

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Speaker 1: aware of their environment and that they responded to electrical stimulation. Sure,

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Speaker 1: but then comes The Secret Life of Plants, and it

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Speaker 1: was interesting. I was reading what Paullen had to say

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Speaker 1: about it in the in that article, and he points

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Speaker 1: out that this book may have resulted in the self

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Speaker 1: censorship of researchers that were touching on areas of plant

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Speaker 1: cognition or anything that hinted at similarities between plant and

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Speaker 1: animal senses. Paullen writes, quote, Americans began talking to their

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Speaker 1: plants and playing Mozart for them, and no doubt many

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Speaker 1: still do. This might seem harmless enough, there will probably

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Speaker 1: always be a strain of romanticism running through our thinking

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Speaker 1: about plants. Luther Burr Bank and George Washington Carver both

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Speaker 1: reputedly talk to and listen to the plants they did

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Speaker 1: such brilliant work with. But in the view of many

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Speaker 1: plants scientists, the science the secret life of plants has

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Speaker 1: done lasting damage to their field. Yeah, and you can

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Speaker 1: understand how this would happen. So there is a there

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Speaker 1: is a very culturally popular work of largely based on

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Speaker 1: pseudoscience or not well founded claims about the about the

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Speaker 1: intelligence or cognition of plants, and then for decades after

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Speaker 1: that you would have some reticence to get into thematically

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Speaker 1: similar research areas, even if you did have a better

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Speaker 1: evidential grounding for them. Yeah, I have to say it

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Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of the situation with dolphin

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Speaker 1: communication research coming out in the sixties and seventies, with

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Speaker 1: its reputation somewhat tarnished or at least endangered by some

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Speaker 1: perspectives by John C. Lilli's work. And also it reminds

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Speaker 1: me a bit of the state of psychedelic research coming

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Speaker 1: out of the same time period, though of course, here

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Speaker 1: with psychedelics there was the added situation of these substances

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Speaker 1: becoming federally outlawed so no one was outlawing speaking to

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Speaker 1: plants or playing music for them after the Secret Life

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Speaker 1: of Plants came out, But we can see how the

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Speaker 1: whole affair became somewhat distracting and off putting to serious researchers.

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Speaker 1: You know, you're very this is your life's work. You

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Speaker 1: don't want it to be associated with this work of pseudoscience,

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Speaker 1: with this popular conception of what plants are doing, etc. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can totally see the parallel to psychedelic research because, yeah,

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Speaker 1: in recent years there's been a thaw on psychedelic research

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Speaker 1: and there's more legitimate experiment being done with them. But

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Speaker 1: I think for a long time, yeah, it wasn't just

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Speaker 1: the law. There was a I think a scientific stigma

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Speaker 1: about them because there had been a lot of the

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Speaker 1: early work on psychedelics was clearly done by people who

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Speaker 1: were not practicing unbiased objectives science, but had become sort

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Speaker 1: of psychedelic evangelists. And we're we're dedicated proponents of psychedelics,

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Speaker 1: and we're just like, how can I make them look good?

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Speaker 1: I'll do anything. Yeah, Ti Timothy Learry to be out

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Speaker 1: there being the major figure that fits that classification, and

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Speaker 1: I have to say, in my very brief survey of

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Speaker 1: some of this plant cognition stuff, one thing that does

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Speaker 1: make me a little suspicious, perhaps unfairly, of even the

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Speaker 1: more legitimate seeming plant cognition research, is that plant cognition

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Speaker 1: concepts seem to attract partisans who, at least as far

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Speaker 1: as I can tell, sometimes overextend what can be concluded

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Speaker 1: based on a piece of research. Like you could look

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Speaker 1: at a single study about you know, habituation or something

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Speaker 1: that looks like learning or memory and plants and conclude

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Speaker 1: from that that this means plants are conscious, they can think,

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Speaker 1: they can read my mind, they have a soul, or

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Speaker 1: so something like that, you know, over extrapolating from actually

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Speaker 1: what is a fairly contained result, or I think also

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Speaker 1: you see examples of some people and I'm not accusing

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Speaker 1: the researchers themselves of this, but more like people who

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Speaker 1: are excited about this research proponents, people who want to

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Speaker 1: use plant cognition research to prove ideas they've already acquired elsewhere,

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Speaker 1: like ideas about like a universal life spirit permeating all

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Speaker 1: things or something, or who take on a kind of

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Speaker 1: intellectual martyr persona like the closed minded academy wants to

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Speaker 1: destroy the truth, all of which are major red flags.

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Speaker 1: But of course it's something I've noticed more in the

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Speaker 1: fans of plant cognition research than in the research itself,

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Speaker 1: So I wouldn't hold that against the studies we're about

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Speaker 1: to talk about. Yeah, anytime science is used to advance

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Speaker 1: a non scientific you know, say a theology or some

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Speaker 1: sort of an ideology, you get into murky territory, even

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Speaker 1: if said theology or ideology isn't, at least on the surface,

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Speaker 1: something that's particularly harmful, even if it's yet something like, oh,

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Speaker 1: all life forms are connected on Earth, you know, Oh,

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Speaker 1: nothing wrong with believing that, is just like this study

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Speaker 1: does not show that, right, right, But the situation is

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Speaker 1: there is a lot of wonderfully impressive evidence on the

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Speaker 1: different ways that the plant, since their environment, they compete

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Speaker 1: with each other, communicate, and much more. And so this

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Speaker 1: research did continue and and continues to this day. A

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Speaker 1: pollen points to a shifting point around the year two

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Speaker 1: thousand and six. This is when an article came that

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Speaker 1: came out in Trends and Plant Science by six scientists

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Speaker 1: who were active in this field of research, and they

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Speaker 1: proposed a new field be established plant neurobiology, and Pollen

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Speaker 1: writes that more than a decade after this term was

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Speaker 1: first proposed, the plant science community was still somewhat split

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Speaker 1: on all of this, with some arguing that this was

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Speaker 1: a necessary step in the right direction of reconsidering what

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Speaker 1: institutes intelligence, and indeed this is something we see similar

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Speaker 1: discussions going on regarding the likes of ants and slime molds,

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Speaker 1: the ideas of you know, emergent intelligence, intelligence without brains,

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Speaker 1: you know, getting outside of the sort of you know,

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Speaker 1: basic human and animal conception of what intelligence is. Right

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Speaker 1: and of course this is also important when we get

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Speaker 1: into discussions of artificial intelligence and contemplations of what alien

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Speaker 1: intelligence could consist of. Well, this also recalls other types

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Speaker 1: of research along these lines, not in plants, but in say, animals,

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Speaker 1: are parts of animals in which a brain is not present.

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Speaker 1: You know, we did a couple of episodes about the

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Speaker 1: research perhaps indicating that certain types of flatworms could learn

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Speaker 1: without a brain, or that part of their body, when

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Speaker 1: cut off, could retain memories without the brain present. It's

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Speaker 1: an older series, so I know I'm forgetting some details,

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Speaker 1: but if you want the full story on that, the

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Speaker 1: pair of ses we did. I think we're called devourer

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Speaker 1: of memories. So anyway, plant neurobiology, some people, some researchers

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Speaker 1: in this field, very much behind the idea of this classification,

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Speaker 1: while others considered it kind of a backslide to the seventies,

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Speaker 1: you know, saying, look, we're trying to get past the

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Speaker 1: stigma of the secret life of plants. This just judges

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Speaker 1: it all back up again. Though though to be clear,

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Speaker 1: none of these plant neurobiology proponents were making these outrageous

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Speaker 1: claims about telepathy or plants having emotions, and the sort

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Speaker 1: of intelligence they're proposing is more in line with the

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Speaker 1: emergent modes of intelligence that we're discussing here now. One

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Speaker 1: of the key arguments for reconsidering the lives of plants

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Speaker 1: actually comes down to big revelations made through time lapse footage,

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Speaker 1: or if not key to the arguments, key to a

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Speaker 1: way of illustrating and studying the plants in question. By

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Speaker 1: speeding up long shots of growing stems and leaves and vines,

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Speaker 1: were able to sort of translate that timescale of plants

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Speaker 1: into the time scale of human beings. And it's not

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Speaker 1: just a matter of oh, look, if you speed up

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Speaker 1: the footage, it looks like a vine is crawling. Now

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Speaker 1: the vine is kind of like a snake and a

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Speaker 1: snakes and animal. And now I'm viewing the plant as

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Speaker 1: more of a you know, a rational being sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's inherently part of it, at least to

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Speaker 1: the you know, the casual viewer. You're flipping around on

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Speaker 1: the TV and you happen to come across, you know,

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Speaker 1: one of these Planet Earth documentaries, and you see brilliant

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Speaker 1: footage like that. But in various experiments, it actually allows us,

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Speaker 1: this kind of footage allows us to better consider environmental interactions.

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Speaker 1: So one example that bald has brought up before, I

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Speaker 1: believe he I think he brings it up in if

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Speaker 1: not in this article, he brings it up in some

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Speaker 1: of his books, but brings it up in some video

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Speaker 1: view footage that was there to the World Science Festival

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Speaker 1: several years back. But you have bean plants that are

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Speaker 1: competing for a single pole on which to grow. And

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Speaker 1: when you when you speed up that footage and you

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Speaker 1: watch the time laps of it, you can see them competing.

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Speaker 1: You can see them both going after the same pole.

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Speaker 1: You can see one claiming the pole, and then the

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Speaker 1: other retreating, giving up the fight, saying all right, fair enough,

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Speaker 1: you've got it. And so this, you know, this sort

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Speaker 1: of reaction to competition, h you know, rather than inanimate

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Speaker 1: objects is key to many of these studies like this

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Speaker 1: seems to be an area where plants are even more

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Speaker 1: likely to have this sort of rapid response. Yes, though,

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Speaker 1: of course this invites I think highly relevant and interesting

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Speaker 1: questions about what intelligence actually is. Intelligence is a concept

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Speaker 1: that is notoriously difficult to define, because I mean, just

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Speaker 1: think about it for a second, how would you define intelligence.

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Speaker 1: It's clear like there are some things it seem very

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Speaker 1: clearly suggested by the concept. And one of them, I

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Speaker 1: think is interesting has to do with speed. Intelligence clearly

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Speaker 1: has something to do with the rate of things, because

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Speaker 1: like a you know, an animal that solves ama is quickly,

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Speaker 1: we look at that behavior and we say, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: indicative of intelligence. But a slime mold that solves amas slowly,

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Speaker 1: we look at that and say, yeah, that that doesn't

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Speaker 1: so much look like intelligence. So our intuitions have something

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Speaker 1: to do with speed. But I would also say another

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Speaker 1: part is I think we tend to assume that intelligence

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Speaker 1: involves the selection of behaviors or acquisition of goals in

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Speaker 1: ways that are not strictly instinctually programmed, but are somehow

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Speaker 1: adaptive to individual situations. Though then again, that's often difficult

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Speaker 1: to detect, Like when you see time lapse footage of

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Speaker 1: a beanstock competing for a pole and then reacting to

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Speaker 1: the pole already being claimed. Don't is that a purely

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Speaker 1: genetically programmed instinctual reaction or should you think of that

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Speaker 1: as in some way individually adaptive or reactive to the

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Speaker 1: specific situation? Yeah? Absolutely, I mean some ut regarding intelligence

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Speaker 1: and certainly cognition. You know, it comes back to the

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Speaker 1: old idea that's just so hard to put aside the

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Speaker 1: human perception of the thing. It's so hard to uh

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Speaker 1: to even think about say intelligence in our household pets

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Speaker 1: without comparing it to ourselves. Yeah, it's it's it's tricky now,

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Speaker 1: this this you know, coming back to the idea of

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Speaker 1: of neurobiology plant neurobiology. Those opposed to this notion um

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Speaker 1: have frequently stated, well, okay, plants just simply do not

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Speaker 1: have neurons, synapses, or a brain. Those pollen points out.

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Speaker 1: Legitimate scientists in this field are not making that claim

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Speaker 1: they're only suggesting that there might be something analogous to

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Speaker 1: a brain, to to neurons, etc Um. So Pollen speaks

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Speaker 1: with plant biologists Lincoln Tays who opposes the idea of

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Speaker 1: plant neurobiology as a sort of animism which takes the

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Speaker 1: realities of both short and long term electrical signaling and

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Speaker 1: neurotransmitter like chemicals and plants, and then the argument is

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Speaker 1: over interprets these realities, ultimately leading to quote anthropomorphizing, philosophizing,

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Speaker 1: and wild speculations. Yeah, and I suppose I can see

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Speaker 1: like the valid point to be made between these two sides, right,

430
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:32,960
Speaker 1: I mean, for instance, we often talk about evolution on

431
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:35,720
Speaker 1: the show, and it's very easy to fall into the

432
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:39,960
Speaker 1: trap of anthropomorphizing evolution, discussing it as if it has

433
00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:42,080
Speaker 1: a will. You know, this is the sort of thing

434
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: that can make it easier to comprehend what we're talking about.

435
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 1: It can make it easier to explain some of what's happening,

436
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 1: drive home what makes it interesting and making it make

437
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: it exciting, But you can also do injustice to the

438
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:58,960
Speaker 1: appreciation of what it actually is, either subtly or overtly. Yeah, exactly,

439
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 1: And likewise seems to me that, Yeah, comparing plants to animals,

440
00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 1: it can help explain, it can help excite, It can

441
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: force us to reconsider outdated notions and limitations about what

442
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:13,399
Speaker 1: plants are and what they're capable of. But you can

443
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:15,919
Speaker 1: also potentially get into those murky waters. So I'm not

444
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: saying I think either side is totally in the right here,

445
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,120
Speaker 1: but I can see why there is an issue. Yeah,

446
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:24,119
Speaker 1: but pollen drives something that. Yeah, there are some very

447
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 1: strong feelings among plant biologists about all of this, which

448
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:30,240
Speaker 1: actually results in at least a little more heat in

449
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:34,880
Speaker 1: name calling than usually encounter in the sciences. But perhaps

450
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:38,639
Speaker 1: it's not all bad. Pollen writes quote. The controversy is

451
00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:42,239
Speaker 1: less about the remarkable discoveries of recent plant science than

452
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 1: about how to interpret and name them. Whether behaviors observed

453
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 1: in plants which look very much like learning, memory, decision making,

454
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:53,399
Speaker 1: and intelligence deserve to be called by those terms, or

455
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:58,920
Speaker 1: whether those words should be reserved exclusively for creatures with brains. Yeah,

456
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 1: that absolutely tracks with my experience reading about a lot

457
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:04,560
Speaker 1: of this plant cognition stuff. That either way, you have

458
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:08,679
Speaker 1: some very interesting experimental results, but a lot of the

459
00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: conflict seems to be in arguing about what those results

460
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:18,359
Speaker 1: mean and what is a reasonable way to characterize them. Yeah, now,

461
00:27:18,760 --> 00:27:22,480
Speaker 1: on the topic of plants and brains, you might wonder,

462
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 1: why don't they have a brain. Perhaps you've played a

463
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 1: video game before where you have to blast the vital

464
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:29,960
Speaker 1: organs out of some sort of monster plant in order

465
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:32,919
Speaker 1: to defeat it. Why does that not seem to be

466
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:36,399
Speaker 1: the case. Why is the reality instead that a plant

467
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:38,679
Speaker 1: can lose up to around ninety percent of its body

468
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: without being killed. I mean, this all comes down to

469
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 1: the fact that plants are are stationary. They stay in

470
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,119
Speaker 1: one spot. I mean, with some you know, they are

471
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:51,159
Speaker 1: rooted to the ground. We have some situations where yes,

472
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: plants can travel and to varying degrees, but for the

473
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: most part, where the plant takes root, the plant stays.

474
00:27:57,640 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: The plant can't run away. It's got to be ready

475
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 1: to sacrifice large portions of its body, and so it

476
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: simply doesn't make sense for it to evolve some sort

477
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 1: of a centralized, irreplaceable and insensitive organ like this. The

478
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:19,879
Speaker 1: sessile lifestyle requires different approaches to problem solving, and it

479
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:22,199
Speaker 1: also ends up being one of the reasons that you

480
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:26,160
Speaker 1: have such a robust biochemical weapons. Why it has such

481
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:30,439
Speaker 1: a such a robust biochemical arsenal and the plant the

482
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 1: power here, for plants are famous, you know, far more

483
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: opponent than anything you'll find in animals. And it's why

484
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 1: so much of human medicine is based in Okay, I

485
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: have this ailment, which plant should I eat? And how

486
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: much of that plant should I eat in order to

487
00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 1: fight it? Yeah. Another way to put that is just

488
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: that the plant kingdom is full of internal chemicals that

489
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 1: have potent effects on the physiology of animals. Yeah. And

490
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 1: of course Pollen has written about this quite a bit,

491
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 1: including the book The Botany of Desire that In this

492
00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:03,320
Speaker 1: New Yorker article he summarizes the biochemical arsenal quite quite nicely.

493
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 1: He says, unable to run away, plants deploy a complex

494
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: molecular vocabulary to signal, distress, deter, or poison enemies, and

495
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 1: recruit animals to perform various services for them. So, yeah,

496
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: I think he puts it quite well there. It's almost

497
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: like sort of asking yourself, well, okay, I have a

498
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,560
Speaker 1: computer system. Why doesn't the computer system have a knife.

499
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 1: Why does it have a club? It should? It should? Right? Well, no,

500
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:32,560
Speaker 1: it has these other things, and it has them to

501
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 1: you know, all these other defenses are in place because

502
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 1: it's it's fighting a different type of battle on a

503
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 1: different scale. So again, yeah, it's so much of the

504
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:45,160
Speaker 1: of what makes the plant different. You know. We can

505
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: look at the time scale certainly as a huge factor,

506
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: but also the fact that it is a sessile organism. Yeah,

507
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: and so if a plant does indeed contains something that

508
00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 1: is it could legitimately be considered intelligence. It would need

509
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 1: a different kind of substrate to conta that intelligence then

510
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: the human brain, which is a centralized command center, you know,

511
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: because again, like you said, the plant might get ninety

512
00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 1: percent of it might get eaten, and then it needs

513
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: to be able to grow back. So if you allow

514
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 1: for the concept of plant intelligence, it would probably need

515
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 1: to somehow be more modular or distributed rather than housed

516
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 1: in a command center like the human brain. And so

517
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: what would some of these these physical substrates or systems

518
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 1: be I think that is largely unknown, though there are

519
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:35,920
Speaker 1: some interesting ideas. Like in the previous episode, one of

520
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: the papers we looked at, the one that looked at

521
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 1: habituation in Mimosa pudica, it hypothesized one of the possible

522
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 1: substrates of plant memory formation could be what are called

523
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: calcium ion channels within the plant's tissues, which can form

524
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 1: these kind of sensory chains throughout the plant's body. But

525
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: it's it's still unknown. But but but I guess we

526
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: should look at least one more study. Look, it's more

527
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: lab research. So in the previous study, we looked at

528
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: the one from twenty fourteen. In the last episode, it

529
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 1: found apparent demonstration of a very rudimentary form of learning

530
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 1: known as habituation in these sensitive plants that could close

531
00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:22,640
Speaker 1: their leaves. And habituation could be defined as the diminishment

532
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 1: of a programmed reaction to a repeated stimulus. So maybe

533
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 1: you jump with fright when you hear a sudden clattering

534
00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: sound behind you. Most people would, But if that clattering

535
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:39,120
Speaker 1: sound is repeated every five minutes, you will eventually stop

536
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,400
Speaker 1: jumping with fright. You will become accustomed to it. You

537
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 1: will just start ignoring it because you've become habituated. And

538
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: this doesn't require conscious effort. It just happens unconsciously naturally.

539
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: When you're exposed to the same salient stimulus over and

540
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 1: over again. What seems salient at first has been encountered

541
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 1: enough times that your body's just been trained to no

542
00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: longer regard it as salient. It's just noise, it's background.

543
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:05,600
Speaker 1: But of course there are other types of learning and

544
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 1: memory that could of course be considered more complex. So

545
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 1: could plants actually demonstrate any of these other forms of

546
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,280
Speaker 1: memory as well? The next study I want to talk

547
00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: about looked at whether you could find evidence of classical

548
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 1: conditioning in plants. Classical conditioning is one of the big

549
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 1: concepts in behavioral psychology. I'd say it is one of

550
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: the biggest discoveries of psychology in the last I don't

551
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 1: know about the last of the twentieth century. It is

552
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: a type of unconscious learning, usually observed in animals, in

553
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: which you repeatedly pair a salient stimulus with a neutral stimulus,

554
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:44,840
Speaker 1: and over time the animal will eventually respond to the

555
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: previously neutral stimulus the way they respond to the salient one. So,

556
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 1: if you concrete examples, the original one is the story

557
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 1: of Pavlov's dogs. This goes back to the Russian physiologist

558
00:32:56,280 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 1: von Pavlov, who lived eighteen forty nine to nineteen thirty six.

559
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: He was studying digestion in dogs, and he started to

560
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:07,960
Speaker 1: notice that the dogs in his lab would drool not

561
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:10,479
Speaker 1: only when their food was in sight, but when they

562
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 1: saw the specific lab assistant who always fed them. So

563
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: the production of saliva and the presence of food is

564
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: a natural, unconditioned response, that's just something that makes sense

565
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 1: for the body to do. The saliva will be useful

566
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: once you start eating, but the dogs come to associate

567
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 1: the assistant with food, so their glands start jacking up

568
00:33:30,360 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 1: the saliva when they see and smell that specific person

569
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:36,480
Speaker 1: who feeds them, even though the person themselves is not

570
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 1: actually food, And it of course can be any stimulus.

571
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:43,040
Speaker 1: The classic example is a sound such as a bell

572
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 1: or a metronome. So if I give you a painful

573
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 1: electric shock every time I start playing we Built this

574
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: City by Starship, you will start to have a reaction

575
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 1: to the song without the shock. Even if there's no shock,

576
00:33:55,560 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 1: you hear that first line and you'll probably freeze or WinCE. Anyway,

577
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:09,359
Speaker 1: given that there is some preliminary evidence that at least

578
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: some plant species can exhibit habituation, would it be possible

579
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: to show this other kind of memory based learning in plants.

580
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:20,760
Speaker 1: Can plants be classically conditioned? To associate a neutral queue

581
00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 1: with a biologically salient queue. So the study I want

582
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:27,840
Speaker 1: to mention was published in Nature Scientific Reports in twenty

583
00:34:27,880 --> 00:34:36,840
Speaker 1: sixteen by Monica Gagliano, Vladislav Vasovski, Alexander Borbelli, Mavra Grimonprez

584
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:42,200
Speaker 1: and Martial Deptchinsky. And it's called learning by association in plants.

585
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 1: So the authors justify their investigation by explaining that they

586
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:51,280
Speaker 1: think there would in fact be evolutionary pressure on plants

587
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:53,760
Speaker 1: to show associate of learning. So, much like the question

588
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 1: we asked earlier about sounds and stuff in plants, it's

589
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: worth thinking is there actually an ecologically relevant reason for

590
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:04,879
Speaker 1: the creature you're studying to have the ability you're looking for?

591
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: And so they write quote. Incomplex and ever changing environments,

592
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 1: resources such as food are often scarce and unevenly distributed

593
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: in space and time. Therefore, utilizing external cues to locate

594
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 1: and remember high quality sources allows more efficient foraging, thus

595
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: increasing chances for survival. Associations between environmental cues and food

596
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 1: are readily formed because of the tangible benefits they confer,

597
00:35:31,120 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: while examples of the key role they play in shaping

598
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:37,520
Speaker 1: foraging behaviors are widespread in the animal world. The possibility

599
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 1: that plants are also able to acquire learned associations to

600
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 1: guide their foraging behavior has never been demonstrated. Okay, so

601
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:49,360
Speaker 1: the same ability to discern and make these associations would

602
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:52,800
Speaker 1: potentially be useful for plants, we just haven't documented evidence

603
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:55,400
Speaker 1: of it yet. And this study explored the question with

604
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:57,200
Speaker 1: the use of a different plant than the other one.

605
00:35:57,239 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: We're not talking about Mimosa pudica anymore. In this case,

606
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 1: they looked at seedlings of the garden p plant or

607
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:08,280
Speaker 1: Pisum sativum. Now it's worth clarifying that the plant behavior

608
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 1: studied in this experiment occurs on a different timescale than

609
00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 1: the ones we talked about in the previous episode. In

610
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 1: the last episode, there were examples of the few plants

611
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:22,080
Speaker 1: with the ability to move rapidly, such as the venus

612
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 1: flytrap or Mimosa putica, and these rapid movements were examples

613
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:30,759
Speaker 1: of what are called nastic reflexes, reflexes that are independent

614
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: of the direction of the stimulus and they're just guided

615
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 1: by the plant's body form. Nastic movements were contrasted with

616
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:42,280
Speaker 1: what are called tropisms, which tend to be slower movements,

617
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:45,759
Speaker 1: but are stimulus directed. And the most common plant tropism

618
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:48,759
Speaker 1: you will have observed pretty much everybody's seen this is

619
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:52,959
Speaker 1: phototropism growing towards a light source, which totally makes sense

620
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:57,200
Speaker 1: for a plant because light provides the energy that powers photosynthesis.

621
00:36:57,239 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 1: So you can roughly think of a plant growing toward

622
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: light much like an animal moving toward a source of food.

623
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:05,840
Speaker 1: And that's what this twenty sixteen experiment was studying, not

624
00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 1: nastic reflexes, but tropisms growth in the direction of a

625
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:14,400
Speaker 1: biologically salient stimulus, in this case light. So the first

626
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:18,080
Speaker 1: experimental setup looked like this the author's right quote. In

627
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:21,799
Speaker 1: the first experiment, p seedlings, forty five of them were

628
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:25,400
Speaker 1: entrained to an eight hour light sixteen hour dark cycle

629
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:29,239
Speaker 1: for five to eight days. In the subsequent three day

630
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:32,320
Speaker 1: training period, they were kept in darkness with the exception

631
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:36,280
Speaker 1: of one hour light exposures during the three daily training sessions.

632
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:40,080
Speaker 1: And during this training period the seedlings, they would place

633
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:42,719
Speaker 1: them in what's known as a y maze. So to

634
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:45,799
Speaker 1: picture this, you think of a Y shaped pipe. The

635
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:48,760
Speaker 1: seedling is down at the bottom in the single channel

636
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: part of the tube, and then above it the tube

637
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: forks off into two arms, and then there are two

638
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,960
Speaker 1: different training conditions, one in which the seedlings are exposed

639
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:01,359
Speaker 1: to a light source from one of the tube with

640
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: a fan blowing on them from the same arm, and

641
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: then there's another test condition in which they are exposed

642
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:10,479
Speaker 1: to a light source from one arm and a fan

643
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:12,839
Speaker 1: blowing on them from the opposite arm. So we have

644
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:16,399
Speaker 1: the light associated with a fan or a light associated

645
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:20,480
Speaker 1: with being opposite the fan. So if the plants are

646
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:25,160
Speaker 1: capable of classically conditioned associations, one group should learn that

647
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:28,640
Speaker 1: the airflow from a fan is positively correlated with food,

648
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: so it should start to associate a fan with food,

649
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:34,759
Speaker 1: and then the other will learn that the airflow is

650
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 1: negatively correlated with food, and it should associate going in

651
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:41,200
Speaker 1: the opposite direction of the fan with food. And to

652
00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: make the direction of the incoming light unpredictable, its direction

653
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 1: was repeatedly switched around during the training period, though its

654
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:50,239
Speaker 1: association or lack of association with the fan was kept

655
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:53,840
Speaker 1: consistent with each plan. And after this training period, the

656
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:56,880
Speaker 1: plants were further subdivided to put some in test groups

657
00:38:56,880 --> 00:38:59,080
Speaker 1: in the other in the control group, and the two

658
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:02,319
Speaker 1: test groups would be exposed to a fan from one

659
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:06,359
Speaker 1: direction or the other without the light source along with

660
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: it the author's right quote. In this group, to control

661
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:13,239
Speaker 1: for the influence of innate phototropic response, the fan was

662
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: placed in the arm opposite to last light exposure in

663
00:39:17,120 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 1: the fan plus light group and on the arm of

664
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 1: the last light exposure in the fan versus light group,

665
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:25,719
Speaker 1: So that was the second is when they were on

666
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 1: opposite sides of the y maze quote. The seedlings of

667
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: the control group were left undisturbed. On the morning after

668
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 1: the testing day, we visually inspected the seedlings and recorded

669
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: the arm of the maze they had grown into. So

670
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 1: what did they find. Well, in the control group, this

671
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: is the group that got no fan exposure in the

672
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: test phase, so no fan, one hundred percent of the

673
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:49,080
Speaker 1: plants grew in the direction of the most recent light exposure,

674
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:51,560
Speaker 1: wherever the light came from last that's where they went.

675
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 1: But in the test groups, the authors report that the

676
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:59,080
Speaker 1: majority of seedlings did indeed show a conditioned response. So

677
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:01,359
Speaker 1: in the group that it been trained with the fan

678
00:40:01,440 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: and the light on the same side, sixty two percent

679
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: of them grew toward the fan without the light, And

680
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:09,040
Speaker 1: in the group that had been trained with the fan

681
00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:12,160
Speaker 1: and the light on opposite sides, sixty nine percent grew

682
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: away from the fan. So if this holds up, it

683
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 1: would appear to show associate of learning in plants, a

684
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 1: type of learning that in the majority of cases prevails

685
00:40:23,080 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: over the basic reflexive tropism to grow in the direction

686
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 1: of wherever the light came from last. But of course

687
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:32,759
Speaker 1: it's a good question does this study actually hold up?

688
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: Will come and come back to that in a minute. Here.

689
00:40:35,880 --> 00:40:37,719
Speaker 1: One more thing I wanted to mention, though, is that

690
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:41,360
Speaker 1: there were also subsequent experiments in the same study, and

691
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:44,839
Speaker 1: the authors found that the associat of learning only succeeded

692
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: when it took place during the quote daytime from the

693
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: plant's perspective given its training regimen, which the authors suggest

694
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:57,080
Speaker 1: means that there are metabolic demands on the learning process. Quote.

695
00:40:57,120 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: This experiment, in which plants were trained at three different

696
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 1: time periods within twenty four hours, revealed that the learning

697
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 1: effect disappears when training occurred during the evening hours, when

698
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 1: light would not normally be available. This finding is particularly

699
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:14,759
Speaker 1: intriguing and bolsters the argument that associative learning is an

700
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: adaptive response that is only utilized during daylight hours when

701
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 1: it is most useful vin internal circadian clock, which is

702
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:26,640
Speaker 1: interesting because that also invokes a sort of second order

703
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: type of thing that some people would have called a

704
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:32,320
Speaker 1: type of plant intelligence, which is its ability to measure

705
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:35,360
Speaker 1: spans of time. Anyway, in the end, the authors of

706
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 1: this study, they say, quote, our results show that associative

707
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 1: learning is an essential component of plant behavior. We conclude

708
00:41:42,080 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 1: the associative learning represents a universal adaptive mechanism shared by

709
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:51,240
Speaker 1: both plants, animals and plants. Now, this was in twenty sixteen,

710
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: and I did find a study following up on this

711
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: and attempting a replication and failing. So the attempted replication

712
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 1: was by Casey Marcole published in ELFE called lack of

713
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:07,160
Speaker 1: Evidence for associate of Learning in p Plants. The year

714
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 1: was twenty twenty. Pretty straightforward. The author tried to repeat

715
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:14,880
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen experiment. They repeated the protocol described in

716
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 1: the first experiment, and they write quote, However, a replication

717
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:21,640
Speaker 1: of the protocol failed to demonstrate the same result, calling

718
00:42:21,640 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 1: for further verification and study before mainstream acceptance of this

719
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:30,360
Speaker 1: paradigm shifting phenomenon. This replication attempt used a larger sample

720
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 1: size and fully blinded analysis, and of course both of

721
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: those things are always good. Larger samples are good, blinded

722
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: analysis is always good. I wasn't one hundred percent sure

723
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:42,560
Speaker 1: exactly what that meant in this case, but I think

724
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:45,720
Speaker 1: it would mean that whoever compiled and analyzed the results

725
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 1: of the experiment had no way of knowing which groups

726
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:52,799
Speaker 1: the subjects were in, which would help prevent any possible contamination,

727
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:57,880
Speaker 1: intentional or unintentional by experiment or bias. So we're in

728
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: the middle ground here. One study gets a positive result,

729
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 1: a follow up attempt does not, So how do we

730
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: sort it out? Well? Actually, the authors of the original

731
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 1: study replied, publishing a follow up comment in the same journal.

732
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:12,880
Speaker 1: They essentially to summarize their argument. They essentially say that

733
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:16,040
Speaker 1: the experiment may not have worked in the replication attempt

734
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 1: because of some crucial differences in methodology, mainly that the

735
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 1: unconditioned stimulus in this case light was not tightly controlled enough,

736
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:29,839
Speaker 1: and that they criticize some things about the plants had

737
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:32,960
Speaker 1: been mounted inside their growth case, and the idea that

738
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 1: light from one tube may have been penetrating into other tubes,

739
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:39,319
Speaker 1: making a kind of light noisy environment. That there were

740
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: too many light sources and this would introduce randomness into

741
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:45,279
Speaker 1: the results. So to put it in terms of the

742
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 1: Pavlov's dog example, this might be a kind of rough comparison,

743
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:52,760
Speaker 1: But the unconditioned stimulus in Pavlov's dogs would be food.

744
00:43:53,280 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: So if you were to have a poor control of

745
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 1: the unconditioned stimulus in that case, it would be kind

746
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: of like imagining that the dogs had constant ambient access

747
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 1: to food. They were just food bowls constantly full throughout

748
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 1: the room they're in. In that case, would they salivate

749
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 1: when they saw an assistant coming in to put some

750
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,760
Speaker 1: more food in one of the bowls, Well, if they've

751
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: just always got food anyway, probably not right. I don't know.

752
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:18,840
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about dogs. Sometimes I feel like

753
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:20,879
Speaker 1: sometimes my cat can be kind of like that, where

754
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: it's like, really that you have food, and here's more food.

755
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 1: Now you're excited for this. How about the food you

756
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 1: already have? I trust the research or something. Right, Well,

757
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: if they've just got food anytime they want it, right,

758
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 1: then they wouldn't associate the assistant coming in to fill

759
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:36,960
Speaker 1: the food bowls with them getting the food. It would

760
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:39,280
Speaker 1: just you know, they would just get the food whenever

761
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:42,239
Speaker 1: they want. True. True. So that's what the authors of

762
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 1: the original study argued. But then there was a response

763
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 1: to the response in the same journal again where Markel

764
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 1: came back and argued, for a number of technical reasons

765
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:53,520
Speaker 1: that the differences they highlighted are unlikely to explain the

766
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:57,680
Speaker 1: different outcomes. Quote. Despite considerable effort to match the experimental

767
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 1: details of the twenty sixteen experiment, the application attempt did

768
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 1: not find evidence for associate of learning in PEP plants.

769
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: Of course, this does not rule out the existence of

770
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:09,440
Speaker 1: such learning, and I sincerely hope that future research demonstrates

771
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 1: the phenomenon to be reproducible. So I feel like we're

772
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:15,359
Speaker 1: kind of in a middle ground here. Personally, I don't

773
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 1: have the expertise or judgment to reach a conclusion on

774
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: the technical points they're arguing about in the experiment here,

775
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:24,960
Speaker 1: So I guess I would just say I'd have to

776
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 1: consider the twenty sixteen results very interesting, but heavily caveated

777
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:33,839
Speaker 1: until we see successful replication. Yeah. Now, I will say

778
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 1: that the lead author on this paper, Monica Gagliano, I've

779
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 1: seen her. She was part of a panel discussion at

780
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:46,760
Speaker 1: the World Science Festival back in twenty nineteen, I Believe

781
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 1: Intelligence Without Brains. That also featured ants scientist Mark Moffatt,

782
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:55,760
Speaker 1: whose work we've discussed in the show before. Oh yeah yeah.

783
00:45:55,760 --> 00:46:00,759
Speaker 1: Monica Gagliano's research Associate professor in Evolutionary ecology the Biological

784
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 1: Intelligence Lab at Southern Cross University in Australia. Her primary

785
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 1: areas of research or marine ecology and plant cognitive ecology.

786
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:11,400
Speaker 1: She also has a book out which I was not

787
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 1: aware of until I was looking back into her work here,

788
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:16,880
Speaker 1: but the book is thus Spoke the Plant. Yeah. She

789
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:18,759
Speaker 1: seems to be one of the leading figures in the

790
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:22,759
Speaker 1: plant cognition domain these days. She wrote another article in

791
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen summing up some of this recent stuff in

792
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:29,719
Speaker 1: ecologia called Plants Learn and Remember, Let's get used to it.

793
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: Actually sorry, that had three authors. She was the first

794
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 1: listed author. Well, I will say she did seem to

795
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:37,799
Speaker 1: have a good sense of humor about about herself and

796
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:41,640
Speaker 1: about her area of research when I saw her gift

797
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:42,920
Speaker 1: that talk. And by the way, if you want to

798
00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 1: see that talk for yourself, you can find it at

799
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 1: the World Science Festival's website. Just look for Intelligence Without brains.

800
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:52,560
Speaker 1: They have the full talk up there now. I guess

801
00:46:52,600 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 1: we've already covered this a good bit earlier on, so

802
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:56,800
Speaker 1: I won't get into too much detail. I did have

803
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 1: a few notes about some other articles I was reading,

804
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:01,960
Speaker 1: for example, by one author you already cited who came

805
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:07,279
Speaker 1: up in Pollen's New Yorker piece, Lincoln Tiez, who has

806
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:11,720
Speaker 1: been a critic of so called plant cognition or plant neurobiology,

807
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 1: and comments by researchers from this camp, though a lot

808
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: of this seemed aimed at the kind of thing you

809
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: were talking about, where they're objecting to certain extrapolations or characterizations,

810
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 1: extrapolations from or characterizations of this research, rather than the

811
00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 1: research itself, like rejecting the idea of plant consciousness and

812
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 1: so forth, And of course that opens its own cannon worms,

813
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:40,920
Speaker 1: because of course, you know, there's no actual test for consciousness,

814
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:44,560
Speaker 1: even in humans. Consciousness can only be experienced directly in

815
00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 1: the self and then inferred to exist by analogy and

816
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:51,759
Speaker 1: other humans, and possibly in non human animals. But they've

817
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:55,239
Speaker 1: got a number of arguments based on the the just

818
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:59,200
Speaker 1: physical anatomical qualities of plants that say, you know, it's

819
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 1: very unlikely they would have the whatever kind of computational

820
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:07,080
Speaker 1: complexity the I don't know, calcium channels or anything like that,

821
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:10,360
Speaker 1: and plants might possess it would be unlikely to possess

822
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 1: the level of complexity that we see in animal brains

823
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:16,680
Speaker 1: and that we assume to be the necessary basis for consciousness.

824
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: But anyway, I mean, so, I think where we're left

825
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 1: right now, at least from my point of view, is

826
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: that we're still in the middle of a research program.

827
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 1: There's still like a you know, a lot of basic

828
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:29,879
Speaker 1: research in plant cognition going on that maybe in five

829
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:32,360
Speaker 1: or ten more years we will have a better idea

830
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 1: of what the direct evidence is about what plants can

831
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 1: actually do, and then it might we might be more

832
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: well equipped to argue about whether it actually counts as X,

833
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:46,279
Speaker 1: y or z that we you know, words we use

834
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:49,439
Speaker 1: to associate with the mental phenomena of humans. Yeah, yeah,

835
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:52,160
Speaker 1: or I don't know, maybe we'll have different terminology at

836
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 1: that point that it's yeah, we end up in the

837
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 1: same situation where we're trying to divorce the study of

838
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:07,440
Speaker 1: intelligence and content and even potentially consciousness, you know, across

839
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:11,960
Speaker 1: multiple species and multiple organisms. Despite the fact that we

840
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:16,040
Speaker 1: have this this this experience of these things, and this

841
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: this concept of these things that's you know, closer than

842
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: our own breath. One thing that's got me thinking about

843
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 1: again this is this is we're in the speculative realm. Now,

844
00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 1: this is not what's necessarily justified by the existing evidence.

845
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:29,280
Speaker 1: But if you were to discover, for example, that maybe

846
00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:33,040
Speaker 1: you can't justify the claim that plants can think, but

847
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:37,000
Speaker 1: you could justify the claim that plants can learn, it

848
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:40,600
Speaker 1: would be an important reminder to not blur all different

849
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:44,839
Speaker 1: types of mental phenomenon together into one single substance, Like

850
00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:49,560
Speaker 1: there may be important differences between, for example, remembering and

851
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:53,760
Speaker 1: reasoning that make one but not the other possible given

852
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:57,520
Speaker 1: any physical substrates, say like the kinds of I don't know,

853
00:49:57,640 --> 00:50:02,080
Speaker 1: computational chemical pathway that would exist in plant stems and

854
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:05,200
Speaker 1: roots versus in the neural tissue of a human being

855
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:08,480
Speaker 1: or an animal. Maybe human brain tissue can do both,

856
00:50:08,719 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 1: but plant tissue can only do one. And this has

857
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 1: interesting implications for speculating about alien intelligence. If there are

858
00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 1: other types of intelligence out there in the galaxy, we

859
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:25,600
Speaker 1: would tend to assume those intelligences to bundle together all

860
00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 1: the myriad functions performed by our own primate brains, but

861
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 1: it's important to remember those are like specifically primate brains.

862
00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 1: We've got a very particular type of meat in our heads,

863
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:38,319
Speaker 1: and the type of intelligence we're familiar with is what

864
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 1: that meat can do. So what if, like there's another

865
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:46,879
Speaker 1: physical substrate that's unfamiliar to us and that constitutes what

866
00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 1: we would think of as the alien brain, whatever that is,

867
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: should we be trying to think of it as capable

868
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:57,440
Speaker 1: of some of the subdivided parts of intelligence what we

869
00:50:57,520 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 1: think of as intelligence, but not others. Yeah, that's a

870
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:02,879
Speaker 1: great point. And uh, you know, I guess I would

871
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: hope that we're at least reaching towards a point where

872
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: we're going to have a more you know, complicated understanding

873
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 1: of what memory and learning are because we're already having

874
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:16,920
Speaker 1: to contend not just with human and animal memory and learning,

875
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:20,799
Speaker 1: but also machine learning and machine memory and you know,

876
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 1: potentially plant analogs as well, and so yeah, it just

877
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 1: it kind of hopefully forces to push the human experience

878
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:34,520
Speaker 1: and the human model a little further aside and realize that, yeah,

879
00:51:34,560 --> 00:51:37,399
Speaker 1: this is this is an example of a broader thing,

880
00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:40,440
Speaker 1: and it is not the thing itself, Like I'm imagining

881
00:51:40,480 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 1: a sci fi concept of story about encountering aliens that maybe,

882
00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:47,680
Speaker 1: if this makes any sense, what if they could do

883
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 1: something that looks like intelligence because they can learn and adapt,

884
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:56,439
Speaker 1: but they can't do what we would think of as reasoning. Yeah,

885
00:51:56,440 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 1: like they can learn, but they can't think. I don't know,

886
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:02,239
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that even makes sense. But uh, I

887
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:05,000
Speaker 1: don't know. It gets my gears cranking. All right, we

888
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:07,360
Speaker 1: just had a brief conversation off Mike. Are we gonna

889
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:09,239
Speaker 1: Are we gonna cap this series here? Are we going

890
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:12,600
Speaker 1: to go more with the interesting hidden lives of plants,

891
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:17,120
Speaker 1: plant cognition, so called plant communication, things like that. Maybe

892
00:52:17,160 --> 00:52:19,920
Speaker 1: we'll just leave it a mystery. You'll be surprised next Tuesday,

893
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,560
Speaker 1: which whether we're onto something else or whether the plants continue. Yeah,

894
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, you've you've got some hanging out

895
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:28,120
Speaker 1: to do with your various house plants and plants in

896
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:31,239
Speaker 1: the yard, maybe plants out in the wild. Um, you know,

897
00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:33,799
Speaker 1: if if they're within your house, maybe maybe play them

898
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:37,000
Speaker 1: a little Starship, play them a little some prints and

899
00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:40,400
Speaker 1: some of the other musical examples we mentioned these episodes.

900
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:42,880
Speaker 1: We're not saying it's going to do anything, but it

901
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 1: might be fun to hang out with your plan and

902
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:47,600
Speaker 1: listen to Starship. You know, I think of it like

903
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:51,239
Speaker 1: the the semantic contents of talking to your dog, Like

904
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 1: if the dog's mostly just going to be responding to

905
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:55,640
Speaker 1: the tone of your voice. If I tell my dog

906
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,319
Speaker 1: he's a he's a bad boy and a good boy voice,

907
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: he's probably gonna be super happy. But you know, I

908
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 1: want to say good boy anyway because that makes me

909
00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:06,080
Speaker 1: feel good. All right, Well, we're gonna go and close

910
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 1: it out here, but as always, you can find episodes

911
00:53:10,040 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 1: core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the

912
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:16,239
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed every Thursday and Tuesday.

913
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 1: You will also find our short form Artifact or Monster

914
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 1: Fack episodes on Wednesdays, Listenermail on Mondays, and on Friday,

915
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 1: well we do a little Weirdout Cinema. That's when we

916
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:28,520
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a

917
00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 1: strange film. And then on the weekend we have a

918
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 1: vault episode that is a rerun from yesteryear. Huge thanks

919
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:38,480
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson,

920
00:53:38,520 --> 00:53:40,640
Speaker 1: though he is out this week. So big thanks to

921
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:44,279
Speaker 1: our excellent guest audio producer Paul deckand huge thanks for

922
00:53:44,360 --> 00:53:46,840
Speaker 1: stepping in this week, Paul. If you would like to

923
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:49,400
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

924
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:51,759
Speaker 1: or any other, suggest a topic for the future, or

925
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:54,759
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact

926
00:53:54,800 --> 00:54:05,600
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

927
00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:08,960
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

928
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:12,080
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

929
00:54:12,160 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.