WEBVTT - From the Vault: Plant Memories, Part 2 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:07.840 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:11.240 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:13.480 so we are heading into the vault for an older 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:16.600 episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one originally 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.560 aired on April fourteenth, twenty twenty two, and it's part 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.079 two of our series on whether or not plants have 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:26.639 memories or anything analogous to memory. So we hope you 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:32.839 enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:42.920 of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.720 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:48.440 we're back for part two of our series on the 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:53.519 possible evidence for memory and learning in plants. Now, this 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:55.080 is one of our series where if you haven't listened 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:56.920 to part one yet, you really should go back and 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:58.880 do that one first, since we clear a lot of 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:00.680 the ground for what we're going to be talking about today. 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:01.720 This is one that I think is going to be 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:03.960 kind of hard to jump in in the middle. But 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:07.759 in that past episode, for a refresher, we talked about 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:10.320 a plant called known as the sensitive plant or the 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.000 humble plant, the shame plant that touched me not scientific 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:17.720 name Mimosa pudica, which is one of the few plants 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.039 in the world that displays rapid movement or movement on 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:25.200 the time scale usually associated with animal life, and we 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:29.199 talked about experiments from twenty fourteen that appeared to show 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:33.480 a form of rudimentary learning called habituation in these plants, 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.600 where for example, if you take a potted Mimosa pudica 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:39.520 and you drop it the exact same way over many 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:42.600 training sessions, it will adapt so that it no longer 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:46.440 closes its leaves defensively in response to a drop, but 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.160 it will still close its leaves in response to other 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:52.400 types of disturbance. So if this type of finding holds 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:55.400 up to scrutiny and replication, it would be evidence that 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:59.000 even though this plant has no brain, it has some 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:03.160 kind of internal mechanism for learning from experience in order 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:06.480 to maximize its fitness. And of course, at some level, 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.200 learning requires a form of what we would think of 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.320 as memory. In order to learn from the past, you 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.200 have to have some way of being changed by the past, 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.400 to store the past within you in an organized way 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.960 that can influence future behavior, which, of course we do 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:27.400 with our brains. But if plants in some cases also 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:30.960 do this, it's a great question what is the mechanism 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:35.000 They obviously don't have brains. And finally, in the last episode, 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:40.120 we tried to disentangle different claims about so called plant cognition, 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:44.040 which is a controversial concept. We noted that memory is 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:46.240 not the same thing as reasoning, which is not the 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:48.760 same as consciousness, which is not the same as emotion 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:55.280 or communication or or or plant like psychic plant mind reading, 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:59.760 which some people have also claimed evidence oft without much justification, 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.320 and with the final point being that evidence for one 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.440 of these traits is not necessarily evidence for others. But 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:08.960 today we're going to look at some more research that 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.640 has been interpreted as showing plant memory or plant cognition 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.440 in the past decade, as well as some reaction and 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:18.760 criticism to that. Yeah. Now, in the last episode I 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:22.920 mentioned some music. I mentioned both Celtic Frost's metal album 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:28.640 to Megatherian Uh and mort Garson's Plantasia, and both were 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:32.000 kind of offhand references, and afterwards I was looking into 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:33.440 it a little bit more, and I was first of 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:37.440 all delighted to see that Plantasia is more widely regarded 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:40.840 as a classic than I thought it was. Um, I 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:43.640 was familiar with mort Garson's work, and um, you know, 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:47.240 I was delighted that his work had recently been reissued 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:49.840 by Sacred Bones Records. I think I had to make 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:54.040 do with some some some some bad copies back in 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:56.640 the day. Sorry, we refresh on the on the mort 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.720 Garson album, it was so mort Garson. It was a 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:05.040 pioneer of electronic music and synth work. And he had 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:07.640 a few different monikers that he used. He did some 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:10.760 like some occult sounding sounds and so forth. But he 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:14.040 also put out this album Plantasia, which was music to 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:17.360 be played for your plants very much. Jumping in on 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:22.440 this The Secret Lives of Plants one, I don't want 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:26.200 to say hysteria, We'll say popularity during the nineteen seventies. 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.839 And as we discussed in that episode, and we'll discuss 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.880 a little bit here. Yeah, this album is not actually 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:35.680 going to help your plants out in any of your plants. 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.320 Do not care about Mark Garson's discography as much as 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.720 you do or I do, But it is a very 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.680 nice album for human listeners. Sure, And hey, as I 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:47.760 said in the last episode, even if it doesn't actually 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:50.839 do anything for your plants, which it probably doesn't no 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:52.680 reason not to play it for your plants. I mean 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.320 that sounds fun. Yeah, so I was delighted to see that, 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:57.479 even though there was a New York Times article about 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:02.080 this album's popularity and increased popularity I think in part 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:04.479 due to the reissue, but also they were making the 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:07.880 point due to the resurgence and interest in houseplants during 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.440 the pandemic, you know, don't. I don't know about about you, 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:13.240 but I think I don't know if we actually picked 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:15.479 up that. No, we did pick up more house plants. 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:17.520 I think some of them were gifted to us. But 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.240 we have all sorts of little succulents like hanging out 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:22.480 all over the house that we accumulated over the past 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:24.200 couple of years. I don't know the name for them. 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:27.800 At Rachel has some kind of houseplant that repeatedly produces buds, 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:29.360 like I guess, stalks will come off of it, and 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.640 you can separate them and turn them into their own 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:33.800 new potted version of that same plant, kind of like 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:38.320 getting a grimlin wet or something. Just you know, they 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.440 repopulate and go all over the place. So I think 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:46.600 we have had at least proliferation of existing plants. Yeah, 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:49.600 and house plants are great, no doubt about it. But 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:52.400 on the other hand, I was looking around for stuff 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:54.000 on this, and I was kind of taken aback at 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:56.960 just how much content there is out there on the 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.960 Internet regarding playing music for plants. And while I didn't 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:04.080 find anyone actually exalting the benefits of playing Celtic Frost 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:08.320 for your philodendrons, there are pages talking about the merits 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:12.680 of different musical genres alleged merits, i should say, for 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:16.400 plant growth, including the idea that heavy metal can improve 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.919 plant mass and fruit taste, provided that it's not too 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:24.239 noisy or presumably too heavy beautiful. What is the best 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:28.640 thrash metal for your plants? I've got to assume downstream 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:30.840 of this, some people who believe in this, really they 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:33.680 think their plants have individual tastes, like my plants really 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.600 love motor Head. Yeah. I mean, I think we said 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:40.320 before death metal bands need to get in on beans 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:44.719 and realize that in the folklore it canon, bean plants 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:48.360 are closely associated with the world of the dead and 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:54.080 this should be embraced. Sure, Now, all this being said, yeah, 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.520 not every source popping up on the subject is something 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:58.680 that I would take to the bank at all. But 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:03.880 plants do produce vibrations and can respond to sound vibrations. 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:06.880 Now I got interested in this idea thinking about plants 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:11.720 responding to sound, and I started wondering about a question. 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:14.400 I think this is always something good to wonder about. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:16.960 When you hear a claim about a life form, you think, 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.800 what would be the original ecological relevance of this, like 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:24.239 in the actual environment, not in a in a house 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:27.320 or a lab or something. Why would this kind of 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:29.960 stimulus be relevant? So I looked it up in the 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.840 scientific literature and I did find some interesting examples. One 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:36.560 of them was a paper published in Ecologia in twenty 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:40.880 fourteen by HIGDM Apple and Reginald B. Cocroft called plants 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:45.640 respond to leaf vibrations caused by insect herbivore chewing. And 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.720 this study found that if you reproduce the sounds made 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.400 by a caterpillar feeding on a leaf and then expose 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:57.160 those sounds to what's known as a thail cress plant, 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:01.840 the plant will respond by producing higher level of glucosinolate 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:06.360 and anthocyanin, which are defensive chemicals. So, if this finding 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.800 is sound, then the plant does actually detect sound, and 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:14.480 it is ecologically relevant. Sound is an indicator of nearby predation. 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:18.400 The plant is it is being threatened by what is 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:23.000 producing this caterpillar eating sound. Yeah, and there's another study 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.440 that I believe came out the same year, conducted by 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:31.640 Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso, who found that roots could seek 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:36.480 out buried pipes of running water seemingly attracted to the sound. 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:42.840 So again, if if these results hold up. Basically, the 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:45.200 idea here is you have water running through a pipe 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:49.120 that is otherwise, you know, completely set apart from the dirt, 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:52.440 from the dirt from the soil, and yet the roots 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:56.760 are moving towards the water anyway, how would they know 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:59.319 the water? Is there? The ideas that they're picking up 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:01.880 on the sound, picking up on the vibrations, right, and 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:04.600 so again you could wonder how would that be ecologically relevant? 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:06.560 It seems plausible to me. I mean, they're all kinds 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.440 of like underground water flows and so and those would 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:14.560 of course produce vibrations right now, And you might then wonder, well, okay, 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:16.760 if there's a sound of running water and my ambient music, 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:20.000 does that mean my plant wants it. I think that's 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:24.079 a more Maybe that's a kind of a simple, simplified 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:26.400 argument to make. I think you get into a lot 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:30.960 of discussions about like the differences between how the plant 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:33.720 is quote unquote hearing and how we are quote unquote 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.640 hearing something, right, I mean, I would say it's hard 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:41.320 to imagine that there's a evolutionarily justified reason a plant 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:45.920 would respond to music in particular, But of course there 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.280 are probably good reasons for plants to respond to certain 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.440 types of noise. So to be very generous, I guess 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.360 it's possible that in some cases, some types of music 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:59.880 might accidentally trigger something like a tropism or a stress 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.079 response in a plant, where it might make the plant, 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:06.520 I don't know, look different in some way that the 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.880 owner would be able to detect. It's possible. I'm sort 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:11.880 of skeptical even as far as that goes like the 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:14.800 accidental byproduct of certain types of music. But as I 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:16.800 said in the last episode, again, if you want to 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:18.800 play music for your plants, go for it. You know, 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:21.160 I don't think it makes sense to literally believe it's 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:23.720 doing anything for the plant itself, but it sounds like 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:28.000 a perfectly wonderful activity. Yeah, especially prints. Everybody loves prints, 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.120 so it makes sense that plants would love prints as well. 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.560 Now this is just one of the senses that plants 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.600 seem to possess. I've read that plants have somewhere between 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:40.200 fifteen and twenty distinct senses, and some of these can 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.840 be compared to our basic set of human senses. In 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.440 addition to sound, as Michael Pollen points out in his 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:50.839 wonderful article The Intelligent Plant from The New Yorker in 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:53.920 twenty thirteen, we have, of course, on the human side, 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:57.440 smell and taste, and plants do seem to sense and 0:10:57.520 --> 0:10:59.840 respond to chemicals in the air or on their bodies. 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:05.240 We have sight, and plants react differently to various wavelengths 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.640 of light as well as to shadow. So plants like 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:13.160 us live in a world of periodic light and darkness, 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:17.360 and of course they depend heavily upon the light because 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:19.880 of photosenses, So it makes sense that this would be 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.360 in place. And then we have the sense of touch, 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:26.000 and a vine or root seems to know when it 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:30.240 encounters a solid object. So plant roots have been found 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:35.440 to be able to sense gravity, moisture, light, pressure, firmness, 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:37.800 so you know it's like they're encountering something that seems 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:39.480 to be a solid as opposed to something they can 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:46.079 continue to grow in into volume, nitrogen, phosphorus, salt, various toxins. 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.960 A lot of times, Pollen points out that the roots, 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.199 the toxins are going to be first encountered by those 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:57.160 roots microbes as well as chemical signals from other plants, 0:11:57.559 --> 0:11:59.319 and in that just a little bit, you get into 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.240 the realm of communication. Yeah, And so my read on 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.440 this domain is that while a lot of the other 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.599 things in so called plant cognition could be considered pretty controversial, 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:11.960 even some of the stuff with better evidence for it, 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.319 like the memory stuff we're talking about, that's still somewhat controversial. 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:20.920 But plant sensation, the plants being able to gather information 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.560 about all kinds of different things in their environment, that 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:26.480 seems to me to be utterly uncontroversial. That's just they 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.880 clearly do that right now. A lot of the more 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:34.360 controversial and it's just flat out unbelievable stuff you encounter 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:36.760 out there about plants listening to music and so forth. 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.760 This is still st stemming from that nineteen seventy three 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:43.120 The Secret Life of Plants book by Tompkins and Bird 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:47.160 that we we talked about in the first episode, popular 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:51.560 work of mostly pseudoscience. That was also a huge setback 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.600 for legitimate research. And we should also point out that 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:58.800 make the point here too that there was of course 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:03.880 movement in the field of plant research into plants senses 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:10.439 and and you know, potentially plant intelligence decades earlier before Baxter, 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:15.320 before these these authors wrote this book. For instance, decades 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.880 before this, scientist jagades Chandra bows demonstrated the plants were 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:24.160 aware of their environment and that they responded to electrical stimulation. Sure, 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:26.760 but then comes The Secret Life of Plants, and it 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:29.240 was interesting. I was reading what Paullen had to say 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:31.960 about it in the in that article, and he points 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.000 out that this book may have resulted in the self 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:39.160 censorship of researchers that were touching on areas of plant 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:43.120 cognition or anything that hinted at similarities between plant and 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:48.360 animal senses. Paullen writes, quote, Americans began talking to their 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.400 plants and playing Mozart for them, and no doubt many 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.760 still do. This might seem harmless enough, there will probably 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:58.080 always be a strain of romanticism running through our thinking 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.880 about plants. Luther Burr Bank and George Washington Carver both 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.480 reputedly talk to and listen to the plants they did 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:08.520 such brilliant work with. But in the view of many 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:11.559 plants scientists, the science the secret life of plants has 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:15.080 done lasting damage to their field. Yeah, and you can 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.480 understand how this would happen. So there is a there 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:22.320 is a very culturally popular work of largely based on 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:26.200 pseudoscience or not well founded claims about the about the 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:29.600 intelligence or cognition of plants, and then for decades after 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:35.440 that you would have some reticence to get into thematically 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.600 similar research areas, even if you did have a better 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:41.200 evidential grounding for them. Yeah, I have to say it 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:43.600 reminds me a little bit of the situation with dolphin 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:47.320 communication research coming out in the sixties and seventies, with 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:53.280 its reputation somewhat tarnished or at least endangered by some 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:57.400 perspectives by John C. Lilli's work. And also it reminds 0:14:57.400 --> 0:14:59.240 me a bit of the state of psychedelic research coming 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:03.760 out of the same time period, though of course, here 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.920 with psychedelics there was the added situation of these substances 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:11.600 becoming federally outlawed so no one was outlawing speaking to 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:15.080 plants or playing music for them after the Secret Life 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:16.720 of Plants came out, But we can see how the 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:21.520 whole affair became somewhat distracting and off putting to serious researchers. 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:24.440 You know, you're very this is your life's work. You 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:27.720 don't want it to be associated with this work of pseudoscience, 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:34.120 with this popular conception of what plants are doing, etc. Yeah, 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:37.840 I can totally see the parallel to psychedelic research because, yeah, 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:41.840 in recent years there's been a thaw on psychedelic research 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:45.440 and there's more legitimate experiment being done with them. But 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:47.360 I think for a long time, yeah, it wasn't just 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.560 the law. There was a I think a scientific stigma 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:53.560 about them because there had been a lot of the 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:56.800 early work on psychedelics was clearly done by people who 0:15:56.880 --> 0:16:01.360 were not practicing unbiased objectives science, but had become sort 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:07.520 of psychedelic evangelists. And we're we're dedicated proponents of psychedelics, 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:09.920 and we're just like, how can I make them look good? 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.120 I'll do anything. Yeah, Ti Timothy Learry to be out 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:17.520 there being the major figure that fits that classification, and 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.280 I have to say, in my very brief survey of 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:24.360 some of this plant cognition stuff, one thing that does 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:28.120 make me a little suspicious, perhaps unfairly, of even the 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:33.200 more legitimate seeming plant cognition research, is that plant cognition 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:38.440 concepts seem to attract partisans who, at least as far 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.800 as I can tell, sometimes overextend what can be concluded 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:44.520 based on a piece of research. Like you could look 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:48.240 at a single study about you know, habituation or something 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.600 that looks like learning or memory and plants and conclude 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:54.360 from that that this means plants are conscious, they can think, 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.520 they can read my mind, they have a soul, or 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:00.680 so something like that, you know, over extrapolating from actually 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:04.119 what is a fairly contained result, or I think also 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.800 you see examples of some people and I'm not accusing 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:11.640 the researchers themselves of this, but more like people who 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:15.359 are excited about this research proponents, people who want to 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:19.359 use plant cognition research to prove ideas they've already acquired elsewhere, 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:24.359 like ideas about like a universal life spirit permeating all 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:26.960 things or something, or who take on a kind of 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:32.080 intellectual martyr persona like the closed minded academy wants to 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:36.000 destroy the truth, all of which are major red flags. 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:39.399 But of course it's something I've noticed more in the 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.439 fans of plant cognition research than in the research itself, 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:44.880 So I wouldn't hold that against the studies we're about 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:49.680 to talk about. Yeah, anytime science is used to advance 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:54.119 a non scientific you know, say a theology or some 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.640 sort of an ideology, you get into murky territory, even 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:02.800 if said theology or ideology isn't, at least on the surface, 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.240 something that's particularly harmful, even if it's yet something like, oh, 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.200 all life forms are connected on Earth, you know, Oh, 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.720 nothing wrong with believing that, is just like this study 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.280 does not show that, right, right, But the situation is 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.399 there is a lot of wonderfully impressive evidence on the 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:21.160 different ways that the plant, since their environment, they compete 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:24.920 with each other, communicate, and much more. And so this 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:28.639 research did continue and and continues to this day. A 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:32.200 pollen points to a shifting point around the year two 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.280 thousand and six. This is when an article came that 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:38.119 came out in Trends and Plant Science by six scientists 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:40.800 who were active in this field of research, and they 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:46.119 proposed a new field be established plant neurobiology, and Pollen 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:50.040 writes that more than a decade after this term was 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:54.119 first proposed, the plant science community was still somewhat split 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:56.159 on all of this, with some arguing that this was 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.640 a necessary step in the right direction of reconsidering what 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.600 institutes intelligence, and indeed this is something we see similar 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:07.479 discussions going on regarding the likes of ants and slime molds, 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:12.440 the ideas of you know, emergent intelligence, intelligence without brains, 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.000 you know, getting outside of the sort of you know, 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:20.440 basic human and animal conception of what intelligence is. Right 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:22.560 and of course this is also important when we get 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.960 into discussions of artificial intelligence and contemplations of what alien 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:31.720 intelligence could consist of. Well, this also recalls other types 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:35.360 of research along these lines, not in plants, but in say, animals, 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:37.960 are parts of animals in which a brain is not present. 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.840 You know, we did a couple of episodes about the 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:47.560 research perhaps indicating that certain types of flatworms could learn 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:50.240 without a brain, or that part of their body, when 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:54.160 cut off, could retain memories without the brain present. It's 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:56.720 an older series, so I know I'm forgetting some details, 0:19:56.720 --> 0:19:59.320 but if you want the full story on that, the 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:01.840 pair of ses we did. I think we're called devourer 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:13.919 of memories. So anyway, plant neurobiology, some people, some researchers 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.080 in this field, very much behind the idea of this classification, 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:20.639 while others considered it kind of a backslide to the seventies, 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.399 you know, saying, look, we're trying to get past the 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:28.280 stigma of the secret life of plants. This just judges 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:30.520 it all back up again. Though though to be clear, 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:35.240 none of these plant neurobiology proponents were making these outrageous 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:40.120 claims about telepathy or plants having emotions, and the sort 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:42.760 of intelligence they're proposing is more in line with the 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:45.760 emergent modes of intelligence that we're discussing here now. One 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:49.640 of the key arguments for reconsidering the lives of plants 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:54.879 actually comes down to big revelations made through time lapse footage, 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:59.679 or if not key to the arguments, key to a 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:06.680 way of illustrating and studying the plants in question. By 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.320 speeding up long shots of growing stems and leaves and vines, 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.800 were able to sort of translate that timescale of plants 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:16.800 into the time scale of human beings. And it's not 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:19.239 just a matter of oh, look, if you speed up 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:21.679 the footage, it looks like a vine is crawling. Now 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:23.119 the vine is kind of like a snake and a 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:26.480 snakes and animal. And now I'm viewing the plant as 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:28.840 more of a you know, a rational being sort of thing. 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:32.240 I guess that's inherently part of it, at least to 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:35.199 the you know, the casual viewer. You're flipping around on 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:37.000 the TV and you happen to come across, you know, 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.440 one of these Planet Earth documentaries, and you see brilliant 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:45.719 footage like that. But in various experiments, it actually allows us, 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:49.200 this kind of footage allows us to better consider environmental interactions. 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:52.119 So one example that bald has brought up before, I 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:54.520 believe he I think he brings it up in if 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:56.040 not in this article, he brings it up in some 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.800 of his books, but brings it up in some video 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:02.240 view footage that was there to the World Science Festival 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.919 several years back. But you have bean plants that are 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.639 competing for a single pole on which to grow. And 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:12.080 when you when you speed up that footage and you 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:14.880 watch the time laps of it, you can see them competing. 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:16.840 You can see them both going after the same pole. 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:20.439 You can see one claiming the pole, and then the 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:24.560 other retreating, giving up the fight, saying all right, fair enough, 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:26.920 you've got it. And so this, you know, this sort 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:31.280 of reaction to competition, h you know, rather than inanimate 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:34.320 objects is key to many of these studies like this 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:36.600 seems to be an area where plants are even more 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:41.120 likely to have this sort of rapid response. Yes, though, 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:45.000 of course this invites I think highly relevant and interesting 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:48.680 questions about what intelligence actually is. Intelligence is a concept 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:54.240 that is notoriously difficult to define, because I mean, just 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:56.800 think about it for a second, how would you define intelligence. 0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:01.640 It's clear like there are some things it seem very 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.600 clearly suggested by the concept. And one of them, I 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:09.160 think is interesting has to do with speed. Intelligence clearly 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:12.840 has something to do with the rate of things, because 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:17.199 like a you know, an animal that solves ama is quickly, 0:23:17.280 --> 0:23:19.240 we look at that behavior and we say, yeah, that's 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:23.320 indicative of intelligence. But a slime mold that solves amas slowly, 0:23:23.400 --> 0:23:25.080 we look at that and say, yeah, that that doesn't 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:28.160 so much look like intelligence. So our intuitions have something 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:29.879 to do with speed. But I would also say another 0:23:29.880 --> 0:23:34.200 part is I think we tend to assume that intelligence 0:23:34.400 --> 0:23:39.719 involves the selection of behaviors or acquisition of goals in 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:44.400 ways that are not strictly instinctually programmed, but are somehow 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:51.000 adaptive to individual situations. Though then again, that's often difficult 0:23:51.080 --> 0:23:53.800 to detect, Like when you see time lapse footage of 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:58.159 a beanstock competing for a pole and then reacting to 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:02.040 the pole already being claimed. Don't is that a purely 0:24:02.119 --> 0:24:05.640 genetically programmed instinctual reaction or should you think of that 0:24:05.680 --> 0:24:10.200 as in some way individually adaptive or reactive to the 0:24:10.280 --> 0:24:16.040 specific situation? Yeah? Absolutely, I mean some ut regarding intelligence 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:18.119 and certainly cognition. You know, it comes back to the 0:24:18.160 --> 0:24:20.600 old idea that's just so hard to put aside the 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:24.240 human perception of the thing. It's so hard to uh 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:27.959 to even think about say intelligence in our household pets 0:24:28.320 --> 0:24:32.160 without comparing it to ourselves. Yeah, it's it's it's tricky now, 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:34.720 this this you know, coming back to the idea of 0:24:34.720 --> 0:24:39.560 of neurobiology plant neurobiology. Those opposed to this notion um 0:24:39.840 --> 0:24:42.480 have frequently stated, well, okay, plants just simply do not 0:24:42.600 --> 0:24:47.040 have neurons, synapses, or a brain. Those pollen points out. 0:24:47.119 --> 0:24:49.920 Legitimate scientists in this field are not making that claim 0:24:49.960 --> 0:24:53.080 they're only suggesting that there might be something analogous to 0:24:53.760 --> 0:24:58.879 a brain, to to neurons, etc Um. So Pollen speaks 0:24:58.880 --> 0:25:02.679 with plant biologists Lincoln Tays who opposes the idea of 0:25:02.680 --> 0:25:06.879 plant neurobiology as a sort of animism which takes the 0:25:07.080 --> 0:25:11.080 realities of both short and long term electrical signaling and 0:25:11.240 --> 0:25:15.399 neurotransmitter like chemicals and plants, and then the argument is 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:23.000 over interprets these realities, ultimately leading to quote anthropomorphizing, philosophizing, 0:25:23.160 --> 0:25:27.160 and wild speculations. Yeah, and I suppose I can see 0:25:27.240 --> 0:25:30.800 like the valid point to be made between these two sides, right, 0:25:30.880 --> 0:25:32.960 I mean, for instance, we often talk about evolution on 0:25:33.000 --> 0:25:35.720 the show, and it's very easy to fall into the 0:25:35.720 --> 0:25:39.960 trap of anthropomorphizing evolution, discussing it as if it has 0:25:40.000 --> 0:25:42.080 a will. You know, this is the sort of thing 0:25:42.080 --> 0:25:44.680 that can make it easier to comprehend what we're talking about. 0:25:44.680 --> 0:25:47.840 It can make it easier to explain some of what's happening, 0:25:48.760 --> 0:25:51.000 drive home what makes it interesting and making it make 0:25:51.000 --> 0:25:54.280 it exciting, But you can also do injustice to the 0:25:54.560 --> 0:25:58.960 appreciation of what it actually is, either subtly or overtly. Yeah, exactly, 0:25:59.160 --> 0:26:03.240 And likewise seems to me that, Yeah, comparing plants to animals, 0:26:03.640 --> 0:26:06.000 it can help explain, it can help excite, It can 0:26:06.000 --> 0:26:10.280 force us to reconsider outdated notions and limitations about what 0:26:10.359 --> 0:26:13.399 plants are and what they're capable of. But you can 0:26:13.440 --> 0:26:15.919 also potentially get into those murky waters. So I'm not 0:26:15.960 --> 0:26:18.960 saying I think either side is totally in the right here, 0:26:19.400 --> 0:26:22.120 but I can see why there is an issue. Yeah, 0:26:22.240 --> 0:26:24.119 but pollen drives something that. Yeah, there are some very 0:26:24.160 --> 0:26:27.280 strong feelings among plant biologists about all of this, which 0:26:27.280 --> 0:26:30.240 actually results in at least a little more heat in 0:26:30.320 --> 0:26:34.880 name calling than usually encounter in the sciences. But perhaps 0:26:34.880 --> 0:26:38.639 it's not all bad. Pollen writes quote. The controversy is 0:26:38.720 --> 0:26:42.239 less about the remarkable discoveries of recent plant science than 0:26:42.320 --> 0:26:46.000 about how to interpret and name them. Whether behaviors observed 0:26:46.000 --> 0:26:49.520 in plants which look very much like learning, memory, decision making, 0:26:49.520 --> 0:26:53.399 and intelligence deserve to be called by those terms, or 0:26:53.400 --> 0:26:58.920 whether those words should be reserved exclusively for creatures with brains. Yeah, 0:26:58.920 --> 0:27:01.840 that absolutely tracks with my experience reading about a lot 0:27:01.840 --> 0:27:04.560 of this plant cognition stuff. That either way, you have 0:27:04.600 --> 0:27:08.679 some very interesting experimental results, but a lot of the 0:27:08.840 --> 0:27:13.520 conflict seems to be in arguing about what those results 0:27:13.640 --> 0:27:18.359 mean and what is a reasonable way to characterize them. Yeah, now, 0:27:18.760 --> 0:27:22.480 on the topic of plants and brains, you might wonder, 0:27:22.680 --> 0:27:24.720 why don't they have a brain. Perhaps you've played a 0:27:24.800 --> 0:27:27.480 video game before where you have to blast the vital 0:27:27.600 --> 0:27:29.960 organs out of some sort of monster plant in order 0:27:30.000 --> 0:27:32.919 to defeat it. Why does that not seem to be 0:27:32.960 --> 0:27:36.399 the case. Why is the reality instead that a plant 0:27:36.440 --> 0:27:38.679 can lose up to around ninety percent of its body 0:27:38.760 --> 0:27:41.639 without being killed. I mean, this all comes down to 0:27:41.680 --> 0:27:46.359 the fact that plants are are stationary. They stay in 0:27:46.400 --> 0:27:49.119 one spot. I mean, with some you know, they are 0:27:49.160 --> 0:27:51.159 rooted to the ground. We have some situations where yes, 0:27:51.240 --> 0:27:54.760 plants can travel and to varying degrees, but for the 0:27:54.760 --> 0:27:57.320 most part, where the plant takes root, the plant stays. 0:27:57.640 --> 0:27:59.960 The plant can't run away. It's got to be ready 0:28:00.119 --> 0:28:03.760 to sacrifice large portions of its body, and so it 0:28:03.800 --> 0:28:06.320 simply doesn't make sense for it to evolve some sort 0:28:06.320 --> 0:28:12.320 of a centralized, irreplaceable and insensitive organ like this. The 0:28:12.400 --> 0:28:19.879 sessile lifestyle requires different approaches to problem solving, and it 0:28:19.920 --> 0:28:22.199 also ends up being one of the reasons that you 0:28:22.240 --> 0:28:26.160 have such a robust biochemical weapons. Why it has such 0:28:26.160 --> 0:28:30.439 a such a robust biochemical arsenal and the plant the 0:28:30.480 --> 0:28:32.800 power here, for plants are famous, you know, far more 0:28:32.800 --> 0:28:35.280 opponent than anything you'll find in animals. And it's why 0:28:35.320 --> 0:28:38.280 so much of human medicine is based in Okay, I 0:28:38.400 --> 0:28:41.400 have this ailment, which plant should I eat? And how 0:28:41.480 --> 0:28:43.480 much of that plant should I eat in order to 0:28:43.520 --> 0:28:45.400 fight it? Yeah. Another way to put that is just 0:28:45.440 --> 0:28:49.680 that the plant kingdom is full of internal chemicals that 0:28:49.720 --> 0:28:52.880 have potent effects on the physiology of animals. Yeah. And 0:28:52.960 --> 0:28:55.520 of course Pollen has written about this quite a bit, 0:28:55.560 --> 0:28:58.680 including the book The Botany of Desire that In this 0:28:58.800 --> 0:29:03.320 New Yorker article he summarizes the biochemical arsenal quite quite nicely. 0:29:03.320 --> 0:29:06.520 He says, unable to run away, plants deploy a complex 0:29:06.560 --> 0:29:11.120 molecular vocabulary to signal, distress, deter, or poison enemies, and 0:29:11.200 --> 0:29:16.040 recruit animals to perform various services for them. So, yeah, 0:29:16.680 --> 0:29:19.080 I think he puts it quite well there. It's almost 0:29:19.080 --> 0:29:21.920 like sort of asking yourself, well, okay, I have a 0:29:22.440 --> 0:29:25.560 computer system. Why doesn't the computer system have a knife. 0:29:26.800 --> 0:29:30.240 Why does it have a club? It should? It should? Right? Well, no, 0:29:30.360 --> 0:29:32.560 it has these other things, and it has them to 0:29:33.440 --> 0:29:36.600 you know, all these other defenses are in place because 0:29:36.640 --> 0:29:39.760 it's it's fighting a different type of battle on a 0:29:40.120 --> 0:29:42.920 different scale. So again, yeah, it's so much of the 0:29:43.320 --> 0:29:45.160 of what makes the plant different. You know. We can 0:29:45.160 --> 0:29:48.640 look at the time scale certainly as a huge factor, 0:29:48.760 --> 0:29:52.000 but also the fact that it is a sessile organism. Yeah, 0:29:52.040 --> 0:29:54.760 and so if a plant does indeed contains something that 0:29:54.920 --> 0:29:58.040 is it could legitimately be considered intelligence. It would need 0:29:58.040 --> 0:30:01.200 a different kind of substrate to conta that intelligence then 0:30:01.560 --> 0:30:07.040 the human brain, which is a centralized command center, you know, 0:30:07.120 --> 0:30:09.920 because again, like you said, the plant might get ninety 0:30:09.920 --> 0:30:11.840 percent of it might get eaten, and then it needs 0:30:11.880 --> 0:30:14.320 to be able to grow back. So if you allow 0:30:14.360 --> 0:30:16.920 for the concept of plant intelligence, it would probably need 0:30:16.960 --> 0:30:22.040 to somehow be more modular or distributed rather than housed 0:30:22.080 --> 0:30:24.760 in a command center like the human brain. And so 0:30:25.040 --> 0:30:28.760 what would some of these these physical substrates or systems 0:30:28.800 --> 0:30:32.840 be I think that is largely unknown, though there are 0:30:32.840 --> 0:30:35.920 some interesting ideas. Like in the previous episode, one of 0:30:35.960 --> 0:30:38.200 the papers we looked at, the one that looked at 0:30:38.240 --> 0:30:42.560 habituation in Mimosa pudica, it hypothesized one of the possible 0:30:42.680 --> 0:30:46.560 substrates of plant memory formation could be what are called 0:30:46.600 --> 0:30:51.600 calcium ion channels within the plant's tissues, which can form 0:30:51.640 --> 0:30:57.000 these kind of sensory chains throughout the plant's body. But 0:30:57.440 --> 0:31:00.280 it's it's still unknown. But but but I guess we 0:31:00.320 --> 0:31:02.360 should look at least one more study. Look, it's more 0:31:02.600 --> 0:31:06.520 lab research. So in the previous study, we looked at 0:31:06.520 --> 0:31:09.560 the one from twenty fourteen. In the last episode, it 0:31:10.040 --> 0:31:14.360 found apparent demonstration of a very rudimentary form of learning 0:31:14.400 --> 0:31:18.040 known as habituation in these sensitive plants that could close 0:31:18.120 --> 0:31:22.640 their leaves. And habituation could be defined as the diminishment 0:31:23.080 --> 0:31:27.240 of a programmed reaction to a repeated stimulus. So maybe 0:31:27.240 --> 0:31:30.480 you jump with fright when you hear a sudden clattering 0:31:30.600 --> 0:31:34.920 sound behind you. Most people would, But if that clattering 0:31:35.000 --> 0:31:39.120 sound is repeated every five minutes, you will eventually stop 0:31:39.200 --> 0:31:42.400 jumping with fright. You will become accustomed to it. You 0:31:42.440 --> 0:31:46.080 will just start ignoring it because you've become habituated. And 0:31:46.200 --> 0:31:50.720 this doesn't require conscious effort. It just happens unconsciously naturally. 0:31:51.040 --> 0:31:54.280 When you're exposed to the same salient stimulus over and 0:31:54.320 --> 0:31:57.560 over again. What seems salient at first has been encountered 0:31:57.680 --> 0:32:00.400 enough times that your body's just been trained to no 0:32:00.480 --> 0:32:03.560 longer regard it as salient. It's just noise, it's background. 0:32:03.880 --> 0:32:05.600 But of course there are other types of learning and 0:32:05.720 --> 0:32:08.360 memory that could of course be considered more complex. So 0:32:08.400 --> 0:32:12.160 could plants actually demonstrate any of these other forms of 0:32:12.600 --> 0:32:15.280 memory as well? The next study I want to talk 0:32:15.320 --> 0:32:18.400 about looked at whether you could find evidence of classical 0:32:18.440 --> 0:32:22.080 conditioning in plants. Classical conditioning is one of the big 0:32:22.120 --> 0:32:25.080 concepts in behavioral psychology. I'd say it is one of 0:32:25.120 --> 0:32:29.640 the biggest discoveries of psychology in the last I don't 0:32:29.640 --> 0:32:31.960 know about the last of the twentieth century. It is 0:32:32.000 --> 0:32:35.680 a type of unconscious learning, usually observed in animals, in 0:32:35.720 --> 0:32:40.400 which you repeatedly pair a salient stimulus with a neutral stimulus, 0:32:40.880 --> 0:32:44.840 and over time the animal will eventually respond to the 0:32:44.880 --> 0:32:49.720 previously neutral stimulus the way they respond to the salient one. So, 0:32:49.800 --> 0:32:52.560 if you concrete examples, the original one is the story 0:32:52.680 --> 0:32:56.160 of Pavlov's dogs. This goes back to the Russian physiologist 0:32:56.280 --> 0:33:00.240 von Pavlov, who lived eighteen forty nine to nineteen thirty six. 0:33:00.720 --> 0:33:04.240 He was studying digestion in dogs, and he started to 0:33:04.280 --> 0:33:07.960 notice that the dogs in his lab would drool not 0:33:08.000 --> 0:33:10.479 only when their food was in sight, but when they 0:33:10.520 --> 0:33:14.120 saw the specific lab assistant who always fed them. So 0:33:14.160 --> 0:33:16.480 the production of saliva and the presence of food is 0:33:16.480 --> 0:33:20.240 a natural, unconditioned response, that's just something that makes sense 0:33:20.240 --> 0:33:22.840 for the body to do. The saliva will be useful 0:33:22.880 --> 0:33:26.080 once you start eating, but the dogs come to associate 0:33:26.160 --> 0:33:30.320 the assistant with food, so their glands start jacking up 0:33:30.360 --> 0:33:33.560 the saliva when they see and smell that specific person 0:33:33.600 --> 0:33:36.480 who feeds them, even though the person themselves is not 0:33:36.560 --> 0:33:39.880 actually food, And it of course can be any stimulus. 0:33:40.280 --> 0:33:43.040 The classic example is a sound such as a bell 0:33:43.240 --> 0:33:45.680 or a metronome. So if I give you a painful 0:33:45.720 --> 0:33:48.960 electric shock every time I start playing we Built this 0:33:49.000 --> 0:33:52.320 City by Starship, you will start to have a reaction 0:33:52.440 --> 0:33:55.240 to the song without the shock. Even if there's no shock, 0:33:55.560 --> 0:34:06.520 you hear that first line and you'll probably freeze or WinCE. Anyway, 0:34:06.640 --> 0:34:09.359 given that there is some preliminary evidence that at least 0:34:09.360 --> 0:34:13.520 some plant species can exhibit habituation, would it be possible 0:34:13.600 --> 0:34:16.480 to show this other kind of memory based learning in plants. 0:34:16.600 --> 0:34:20.760 Can plants be classically conditioned? To associate a neutral queue 0:34:20.880 --> 0:34:24.480 with a biologically salient queue. So the study I want 0:34:24.480 --> 0:34:27.840 to mention was published in Nature Scientific Reports in twenty 0:34:27.880 --> 0:34:36.840 sixteen by Monica Gagliano, Vladislav Vasovski, Alexander Borbelli, Mavra Grimonprez 0:34:37.200 --> 0:34:42.200 and Martial Deptchinsky. And it's called learning by association in plants. 0:34:43.160 --> 0:34:47.960 So the authors justify their investigation by explaining that they 0:34:48.000 --> 0:34:51.280 think there would in fact be evolutionary pressure on plants 0:34:51.280 --> 0:34:53.760 to show associate of learning. So, much like the question 0:34:53.800 --> 0:34:57.600 we asked earlier about sounds and stuff in plants, it's 0:34:57.600 --> 0:35:01.600 worth thinking is there actually an ecologically relevant reason for 0:35:01.640 --> 0:35:04.879 the creature you're studying to have the ability you're looking for? 0:35:05.719 --> 0:35:09.960 And so they write quote. Incomplex and ever changing environments, 0:35:10.040 --> 0:35:13.799 resources such as food are often scarce and unevenly distributed 0:35:13.840 --> 0:35:17.840 in space and time. Therefore, utilizing external cues to locate 0:35:17.840 --> 0:35:22.040 and remember high quality sources allows more efficient foraging, thus 0:35:22.080 --> 0:35:27.080 increasing chances for survival. Associations between environmental cues and food 0:35:27.400 --> 0:35:30.640 are readily formed because of the tangible benefits they confer, 0:35:31.120 --> 0:35:33.480 while examples of the key role they play in shaping 0:35:33.480 --> 0:35:37.520 foraging behaviors are widespread in the animal world. The possibility 0:35:37.560 --> 0:35:40.920 that plants are also able to acquire learned associations to 0:35:40.960 --> 0:35:44.640 guide their foraging behavior has never been demonstrated. Okay, so 0:35:45.120 --> 0:35:49.360 the same ability to discern and make these associations would 0:35:49.360 --> 0:35:52.800 potentially be useful for plants, we just haven't documented evidence 0:35:52.840 --> 0:35:55.400 of it yet. And this study explored the question with 0:35:55.480 --> 0:35:57.200 the use of a different plant than the other one. 0:35:57.239 --> 0:35:59.640 We're not talking about Mimosa pudica anymore. In this case, 0:35:59.760 --> 0:36:03.040 they looked at seedlings of the garden p plant or 0:36:03.200 --> 0:36:08.280 Pisum sativum. Now it's worth clarifying that the plant behavior 0:36:08.360 --> 0:36:12.160 studied in this experiment occurs on a different timescale than 0:36:12.200 --> 0:36:14.279 the ones we talked about in the previous episode. In 0:36:14.320 --> 0:36:19.520 the last episode, there were examples of the few plants 0:36:19.520 --> 0:36:22.080 with the ability to move rapidly, such as the venus 0:36:22.080 --> 0:36:26.200 flytrap or Mimosa putica, and these rapid movements were examples 0:36:26.239 --> 0:36:30.759 of what are called nastic reflexes, reflexes that are independent 0:36:30.840 --> 0:36:33.560 of the direction of the stimulus and they're just guided 0:36:33.560 --> 0:36:38.480 by the plant's body form. Nastic movements were contrasted with 0:36:38.520 --> 0:36:42.280 what are called tropisms, which tend to be slower movements, 0:36:42.320 --> 0:36:45.759 but are stimulus directed. And the most common plant tropism 0:36:46.120 --> 0:36:48.759 you will have observed pretty much everybody's seen this is 0:36:48.880 --> 0:36:52.959 phototropism growing towards a light source, which totally makes sense 0:36:52.960 --> 0:36:57.200 for a plant because light provides the energy that powers photosynthesis. 0:36:57.239 --> 0:36:59.640 So you can roughly think of a plant growing toward 0:36:59.760 --> 0:37:02.960 light much like an animal moving toward a source of food. 0:37:03.360 --> 0:37:05.840 And that's what this twenty sixteen experiment was studying, not 0:37:06.040 --> 0:37:09.840 nastic reflexes, but tropisms growth in the direction of a 0:37:09.880 --> 0:37:14.400 biologically salient stimulus, in this case light. So the first 0:37:14.440 --> 0:37:18.080 experimental setup looked like this the author's right quote. In 0:37:18.120 --> 0:37:21.799 the first experiment, p seedlings, forty five of them were 0:37:22.000 --> 0:37:25.400 entrained to an eight hour light sixteen hour dark cycle 0:37:25.480 --> 0:37:29.239 for five to eight days. In the subsequent three day 0:37:29.280 --> 0:37:32.320 training period, they were kept in darkness with the exception 0:37:32.360 --> 0:37:36.280 of one hour light exposures during the three daily training sessions. 0:37:37.200 --> 0:37:40.080 And during this training period the seedlings, they would place 0:37:40.120 --> 0:37:42.719 them in what's known as a y maze. So to 0:37:42.760 --> 0:37:45.799 picture this, you think of a Y shaped pipe. The 0:37:45.880 --> 0:37:48.760 seedling is down at the bottom in the single channel 0:37:48.800 --> 0:37:51.040 part of the tube, and then above it the tube 0:37:51.080 --> 0:37:54.000 forks off into two arms, and then there are two 0:37:54.000 --> 0:37:57.960 different training conditions, one in which the seedlings are exposed 0:37:58.360 --> 0:38:01.359 to a light source from one of the tube with 0:38:01.400 --> 0:38:05.120 a fan blowing on them from the same arm, and 0:38:05.160 --> 0:38:08.200 then there's another test condition in which they are exposed 0:38:08.239 --> 0:38:10.479 to a light source from one arm and a fan 0:38:10.560 --> 0:38:12.839 blowing on them from the opposite arm. So we have 0:38:12.920 --> 0:38:16.399 the light associated with a fan or a light associated 0:38:16.440 --> 0:38:20.480 with being opposite the fan. So if the plants are 0:38:20.600 --> 0:38:25.160 capable of classically conditioned associations, one group should learn that 0:38:25.200 --> 0:38:28.640 the airflow from a fan is positively correlated with food, 0:38:28.719 --> 0:38:32.120 so it should start to associate a fan with food, 0:38:32.560 --> 0:38:34.759 and then the other will learn that the airflow is 0:38:34.800 --> 0:38:38.440 negatively correlated with food, and it should associate going in 0:38:38.440 --> 0:38:41.200 the opposite direction of the fan with food. And to 0:38:41.280 --> 0:38:44.120 make the direction of the incoming light unpredictable, its direction 0:38:44.200 --> 0:38:47.040 was repeatedly switched around during the training period, though its 0:38:47.080 --> 0:38:50.239 association or lack of association with the fan was kept 0:38:50.239 --> 0:38:53.840 consistent with each plan. And after this training period, the 0:38:53.840 --> 0:38:56.880 plants were further subdivided to put some in test groups 0:38:56.880 --> 0:38:59.080 in the other in the control group, and the two 0:38:59.120 --> 0:39:02.319 test groups would be exposed to a fan from one 0:39:02.360 --> 0:39:06.359 direction or the other without the light source along with 0:39:06.400 --> 0:39:09.520 it the author's right quote. In this group, to control 0:39:09.600 --> 0:39:13.239 for the influence of innate phototropic response, the fan was 0:39:13.280 --> 0:39:17.080 placed in the arm opposite to last light exposure in 0:39:17.120 --> 0:39:20.160 the fan plus light group and on the arm of 0:39:20.200 --> 0:39:23.560 the last light exposure in the fan versus light group, 0:39:23.880 --> 0:39:25.719 So that was the second is when they were on 0:39:25.760 --> 0:39:28.960 opposite sides of the y maze quote. The seedlings of 0:39:28.960 --> 0:39:32.200 the control group were left undisturbed. On the morning after 0:39:32.239 --> 0:39:35.360 the testing day, we visually inspected the seedlings and recorded 0:39:35.360 --> 0:39:37.960 the arm of the maze they had grown into. So 0:39:38.040 --> 0:39:40.799 what did they find. Well, in the control group, this 0:39:40.880 --> 0:39:43.040 is the group that got no fan exposure in the 0:39:43.040 --> 0:39:45.680 test phase, so no fan, one hundred percent of the 0:39:45.680 --> 0:39:49.080 plants grew in the direction of the most recent light exposure, 0:39:49.120 --> 0:39:51.560 wherever the light came from last that's where they went. 0:39:52.160 --> 0:39:54.560 But in the test groups, the authors report that the 0:39:54.640 --> 0:39:59.080 majority of seedlings did indeed show a conditioned response. So 0:39:59.160 --> 0:40:01.359 in the group that it been trained with the fan 0:40:01.440 --> 0:40:04.080 and the light on the same side, sixty two percent 0:40:04.120 --> 0:40:07.200 of them grew toward the fan without the light, And 0:40:07.280 --> 0:40:09.040 in the group that had been trained with the fan 0:40:09.120 --> 0:40:12.160 and the light on opposite sides, sixty nine percent grew 0:40:12.200 --> 0:40:16.000 away from the fan. So if this holds up, it 0:40:16.280 --> 0:40:19.640 would appear to show associate of learning in plants, a 0:40:19.719 --> 0:40:23.040 type of learning that in the majority of cases prevails 0:40:23.080 --> 0:40:26.600 over the basic reflexive tropism to grow in the direction 0:40:26.680 --> 0:40:30.040 of wherever the light came from last. But of course 0:40:30.040 --> 0:40:32.759 it's a good question does this study actually hold up? 0:40:33.040 --> 0:40:35.160 Will come and come back to that in a minute. Here. 0:40:35.880 --> 0:40:37.719 One more thing I wanted to mention, though, is that 0:40:38.680 --> 0:40:41.360 there were also subsequent experiments in the same study, and 0:40:41.440 --> 0:40:44.839 the authors found that the associat of learning only succeeded 0:40:44.880 --> 0:40:48.000 when it took place during the quote daytime from the 0:40:48.040 --> 0:40:52.480 plant's perspective given its training regimen, which the authors suggest 0:40:52.600 --> 0:40:57.080 means that there are metabolic demands on the learning process. Quote. 0:40:57.120 --> 0:40:59.920 This experiment, in which plants were trained at three different 0:41:00.160 --> 0:41:03.160 time periods within twenty four hours, revealed that the learning 0:41:03.160 --> 0:41:07.560 effect disappears when training occurred during the evening hours, when 0:41:07.640 --> 0:41:11.520 light would not normally be available. This finding is particularly 0:41:11.520 --> 0:41:14.759 intriguing and bolsters the argument that associative learning is an 0:41:14.800 --> 0:41:18.960 adaptive response that is only utilized during daylight hours when 0:41:18.960 --> 0:41:23.279 it is most useful vin internal circadian clock, which is 0:41:23.280 --> 0:41:26.640 interesting because that also invokes a sort of second order 0:41:26.680 --> 0:41:28.799 type of thing that some people would have called a 0:41:28.840 --> 0:41:32.320 type of plant intelligence, which is its ability to measure 0:41:32.360 --> 0:41:35.360 spans of time. Anyway, in the end, the authors of 0:41:35.400 --> 0:41:38.160 this study, they say, quote, our results show that associative 0:41:38.239 --> 0:41:42.040 learning is an essential component of plant behavior. We conclude 0:41:42.080 --> 0:41:46.680 the associative learning represents a universal adaptive mechanism shared by 0:41:46.680 --> 0:41:51.240 both plants, animals and plants. Now, this was in twenty sixteen, 0:41:51.920 --> 0:41:54.200 and I did find a study following up on this 0:41:54.320 --> 0:41:59.719 and attempting a replication and failing. So the attempted replication 0:42:00.320 --> 0:42:04.520 was by Casey Marcole published in ELFE called lack of 0:42:04.560 --> 0:42:07.160 Evidence for associate of Learning in p Plants. The year 0:42:07.280 --> 0:42:11.040 was twenty twenty. Pretty straightforward. The author tried to repeat 0:42:11.080 --> 0:42:14.880 the twenty sixteen experiment. They repeated the protocol described in 0:42:14.920 --> 0:42:18.000 the first experiment, and they write quote, However, a replication 0:42:18.080 --> 0:42:21.640 of the protocol failed to demonstrate the same result, calling 0:42:21.640 --> 0:42:25.920 for further verification and study before mainstream acceptance of this 0:42:26.000 --> 0:42:30.360 paradigm shifting phenomenon. This replication attempt used a larger sample 0:42:30.400 --> 0:42:34.920 size and fully blinded analysis, and of course both of 0:42:34.920 --> 0:42:37.400 those things are always good. Larger samples are good, blinded 0:42:37.440 --> 0:42:40.600 analysis is always good. I wasn't one hundred percent sure 0:42:40.680 --> 0:42:42.560 exactly what that meant in this case, but I think 0:42:42.560 --> 0:42:45.720 it would mean that whoever compiled and analyzed the results 0:42:45.719 --> 0:42:48.800 of the experiment had no way of knowing which groups 0:42:48.840 --> 0:42:52.799 the subjects were in, which would help prevent any possible contamination, 0:42:52.920 --> 0:42:57.880 intentional or unintentional by experiment or bias. So we're in 0:42:57.960 --> 0:43:00.640 the middle ground here. One study gets a positive result, 0:43:00.680 --> 0:43:03.000 a follow up attempt does not, So how do we 0:43:03.040 --> 0:43:05.640 sort it out? Well? Actually, the authors of the original 0:43:05.640 --> 0:43:08.880 study replied, publishing a follow up comment in the same journal. 0:43:09.920 --> 0:43:12.880 They essentially to summarize their argument. They essentially say that 0:43:12.920 --> 0:43:16.040 the experiment may not have worked in the replication attempt 0:43:16.640 --> 0:43:20.960 because of some crucial differences in methodology, mainly that the 0:43:21.080 --> 0:43:25.719 unconditioned stimulus in this case light was not tightly controlled enough, 0:43:25.800 --> 0:43:29.839 and that they criticize some things about the plants had 0:43:29.880 --> 0:43:32.960 been mounted inside their growth case, and the idea that 0:43:33.120 --> 0:43:36.400 light from one tube may have been penetrating into other tubes, 0:43:36.680 --> 0:43:39.319 making a kind of light noisy environment. That there were 0:43:39.320 --> 0:43:42.960 too many light sources and this would introduce randomness into 0:43:43.000 --> 0:43:45.279 the results. So to put it in terms of the 0:43:45.320 --> 0:43:48.759 Pavlov's dog example, this might be a kind of rough comparison, 0:43:48.800 --> 0:43:52.760 But the unconditioned stimulus in Pavlov's dogs would be food. 0:43:53.280 --> 0:43:56.080 So if you were to have a poor control of 0:43:56.120 --> 0:43:58.200 the unconditioned stimulus in that case, it would be kind 0:43:58.200 --> 0:44:02.040 of like imagining that the dogs had constant ambient access 0:44:02.080 --> 0:44:05.000 to food. They were just food bowls constantly full throughout 0:44:05.040 --> 0:44:08.640 the room they're in. In that case, would they salivate 0:44:08.680 --> 0:44:10.960 when they saw an assistant coming in to put some 0:44:11.000 --> 0:44:13.760 more food in one of the bowls, Well, if they've 0:44:13.800 --> 0:44:16.600 just always got food anyway, probably not right. I don't know. 0:44:16.640 --> 0:44:18.840 I don't know enough about dogs. Sometimes I feel like 0:44:18.880 --> 0:44:20.879 sometimes my cat can be kind of like that, where 0:44:20.920 --> 0:44:23.200 it's like, really that you have food, and here's more food. 0:44:23.239 --> 0:44:25.400 Now you're excited for this. How about the food you 0:44:25.400 --> 0:44:27.719 already have? I trust the research or something. Right, Well, 0:44:27.719 --> 0:44:30.200 if they've just got food anytime they want it, right, 0:44:30.239 --> 0:44:33.960 then they wouldn't associate the assistant coming in to fill 0:44:34.000 --> 0:44:36.960 the food bowls with them getting the food. It would 0:44:37.000 --> 0:44:39.280 just you know, they would just get the food whenever 0:44:39.280 --> 0:44:42.239 they want. True. True. So that's what the authors of 0:44:42.280 --> 0:44:44.600 the original study argued. But then there was a response 0:44:44.640 --> 0:44:47.400 to the response in the same journal again where Markel 0:44:47.520 --> 0:44:50.360 came back and argued, for a number of technical reasons 0:44:50.400 --> 0:44:53.520 that the differences they highlighted are unlikely to explain the 0:44:53.520 --> 0:44:57.680 different outcomes. Quote. Despite considerable effort to match the experimental 0:44:57.760 --> 0:45:01.000 details of the twenty sixteen experiment, the application attempt did 0:45:01.000 --> 0:45:03.600 not find evidence for associate of learning in PEP plants. 0:45:03.840 --> 0:45:06.080 Of course, this does not rule out the existence of 0:45:06.120 --> 0:45:09.440 such learning, and I sincerely hope that future research demonstrates 0:45:09.480 --> 0:45:13.120 the phenomenon to be reproducible. So I feel like we're 0:45:13.200 --> 0:45:15.359 kind of in a middle ground here. Personally, I don't 0:45:15.360 --> 0:45:18.759 have the expertise or judgment to reach a conclusion on 0:45:19.640 --> 0:45:22.640 the technical points they're arguing about in the experiment here, 0:45:23.040 --> 0:45:24.960 So I guess I would just say I'd have to 0:45:24.960 --> 0:45:28.960 consider the twenty sixteen results very interesting, but heavily caveated 0:45:29.400 --> 0:45:33.839 until we see successful replication. Yeah. Now, I will say 0:45:33.880 --> 0:45:39.960 that the lead author on this paper, Monica Gagliano, I've 0:45:39.960 --> 0:45:44.120 seen her. She was part of a panel discussion at 0:45:44.120 --> 0:45:46.760 the World Science Festival back in twenty nineteen, I Believe 0:45:46.800 --> 0:45:51.480 Intelligence Without Brains. That also featured ants scientist Mark Moffatt, 0:45:51.640 --> 0:45:55.760 whose work we've discussed in the show before. Oh yeah yeah. 0:45:55.760 --> 0:46:00.759 Monica Gagliano's research Associate professor in Evolutionary ecology the Biological 0:46:01.000 --> 0:46:04.960 Intelligence Lab at Southern Cross University in Australia. Her primary 0:46:04.960 --> 0:46:08.680 areas of research or marine ecology and plant cognitive ecology. 0:46:09.280 --> 0:46:11.400 She also has a book out which I was not 0:46:11.440 --> 0:46:14.080 aware of until I was looking back into her work here, 0:46:14.120 --> 0:46:16.880 but the book is thus Spoke the Plant. Yeah. She 0:46:16.920 --> 0:46:18.759 seems to be one of the leading figures in the 0:46:18.840 --> 0:46:22.759 plant cognition domain these days. She wrote another article in 0:46:22.840 --> 0:46:26.160 twenty eighteen summing up some of this recent stuff in 0:46:26.320 --> 0:46:29.719 ecologia called Plants Learn and Remember, Let's get used to it. 0:46:30.520 --> 0:46:32.920 Actually sorry, that had three authors. She was the first 0:46:32.920 --> 0:46:34.920 listed author. Well, I will say she did seem to 0:46:34.920 --> 0:46:37.799 have a good sense of humor about about herself and 0:46:37.840 --> 0:46:41.640 about her area of research when I saw her gift 0:46:41.640 --> 0:46:42.920 that talk. And by the way, if you want to 0:46:43.280 --> 0:46:46.480 see that talk for yourself, you can find it at 0:46:46.680 --> 0:46:50.000 the World Science Festival's website. Just look for Intelligence Without brains. 0:46:50.000 --> 0:46:52.560 They have the full talk up there now. I guess 0:46:52.600 --> 0:46:54.719 we've already covered this a good bit earlier on, so 0:46:54.760 --> 0:46:56.800 I won't get into too much detail. I did have 0:46:56.880 --> 0:46:59.360 a few notes about some other articles I was reading, 0:46:59.400 --> 0:47:01.960 for example, by one author you already cited who came 0:47:02.040 --> 0:47:07.279 up in Pollen's New Yorker piece, Lincoln Tiez, who has 0:47:07.320 --> 0:47:11.720 been a critic of so called plant cognition or plant neurobiology, 0:47:12.880 --> 0:47:17.120 and comments by researchers from this camp, though a lot 0:47:17.160 --> 0:47:18.960 of this seemed aimed at the kind of thing you 0:47:19.000 --> 0:47:25.239 were talking about, where they're objecting to certain extrapolations or characterizations, 0:47:25.600 --> 0:47:29.160 extrapolations from or characterizations of this research, rather than the 0:47:29.200 --> 0:47:33.640 research itself, like rejecting the idea of plant consciousness and 0:47:33.680 --> 0:47:36.800 so forth, And of course that opens its own cannon worms, 0:47:36.840 --> 0:47:40.920 because of course, you know, there's no actual test for consciousness, 0:47:41.000 --> 0:47:44.560 even in humans. Consciousness can only be experienced directly in 0:47:44.600 --> 0:47:47.960 the self and then inferred to exist by analogy and 0:47:48.000 --> 0:47:51.759 other humans, and possibly in non human animals. But they've 0:47:51.760 --> 0:47:55.239 got a number of arguments based on the the just 0:47:55.760 --> 0:47:59.200 physical anatomical qualities of plants that say, you know, it's 0:47:59.360 --> 0:48:03.960 very unlikely they would have the whatever kind of computational 0:48:04.000 --> 0:48:07.080 complexity the I don't know, calcium channels or anything like that, 0:48:07.160 --> 0:48:10.360 and plants might possess it would be unlikely to possess 0:48:10.400 --> 0:48:13.160 the level of complexity that we see in animal brains 0:48:13.160 --> 0:48:16.680 and that we assume to be the necessary basis for consciousness. 0:48:16.960 --> 0:48:19.040 But anyway, I mean, so, I think where we're left 0:48:19.120 --> 0:48:20.719 right now, at least from my point of view, is 0:48:20.760 --> 0:48:23.400 that we're still in the middle of a research program. 0:48:23.480 --> 0:48:26.200 There's still like a you know, a lot of basic 0:48:26.320 --> 0:48:29.879 research in plant cognition going on that maybe in five 0:48:29.960 --> 0:48:32.360 or ten more years we will have a better idea 0:48:32.960 --> 0:48:37.200 of what the direct evidence is about what plants can 0:48:37.280 --> 0:48:40.319 actually do, and then it might we might be more 0:48:40.400 --> 0:48:44.279 well equipped to argue about whether it actually counts as X, 0:48:44.440 --> 0:48:46.279 y or z that we you know, words we use 0:48:46.320 --> 0:48:49.439 to associate with the mental phenomena of humans. Yeah, yeah, 0:48:49.600 --> 0:48:52.160 or I don't know, maybe we'll have different terminology at 0:48:52.239 --> 0:48:57.120 that point that it's yeah, we end up in the 0:48:57.120 --> 0:49:01.960 same situation where we're trying to divorce the study of 0:49:02.120 --> 0:49:07.440 intelligence and content and even potentially consciousness, you know, across 0:49:07.640 --> 0:49:11.960 multiple species and multiple organisms. Despite the fact that we 0:49:12.040 --> 0:49:16.040 have this this this experience of these things, and this 0:49:16.040 --> 0:49:18.680 this concept of these things that's you know, closer than 0:49:18.680 --> 0:49:20.640 our own breath. One thing that's got me thinking about 0:49:20.640 --> 0:49:23.000 again this is this is we're in the speculative realm. Now, 0:49:23.040 --> 0:49:26.200 this is not what's necessarily justified by the existing evidence. 0:49:26.239 --> 0:49:29.280 But if you were to discover, for example, that maybe 0:49:29.280 --> 0:49:33.040 you can't justify the claim that plants can think, but 0:49:33.160 --> 0:49:37.000 you could justify the claim that plants can learn, it 0:49:37.000 --> 0:49:40.600 would be an important reminder to not blur all different 0:49:40.640 --> 0:49:44.839 types of mental phenomenon together into one single substance, Like 0:49:44.920 --> 0:49:49.560 there may be important differences between, for example, remembering and 0:49:49.719 --> 0:49:53.760 reasoning that make one but not the other possible given 0:49:53.840 --> 0:49:57.520 any physical substrates, say like the kinds of I don't know, 0:49:57.640 --> 0:50:02.080 computational chemical pathway that would exist in plant stems and 0:50:02.200 --> 0:50:05.200 roots versus in the neural tissue of a human being 0:50:05.320 --> 0:50:08.480 or an animal. Maybe human brain tissue can do both, 0:50:08.719 --> 0:50:13.080 but plant tissue can only do one. And this has 0:50:13.120 --> 0:50:17.759 interesting implications for speculating about alien intelligence. If there are 0:50:17.760 --> 0:50:21.000 other types of intelligence out there in the galaxy, we 0:50:21.040 --> 0:50:25.600 would tend to assume those intelligences to bundle together all 0:50:25.640 --> 0:50:29.080 the myriad functions performed by our own primate brains, but 0:50:29.120 --> 0:50:31.960 it's important to remember those are like specifically primate brains. 0:50:31.960 --> 0:50:35.200 We've got a very particular type of meat in our heads, 0:50:35.560 --> 0:50:38.319 and the type of intelligence we're familiar with is what 0:50:38.520 --> 0:50:42.960 that meat can do. So what if, like there's another 0:50:43.080 --> 0:50:46.879 physical substrate that's unfamiliar to us and that constitutes what 0:50:46.920 --> 0:50:50.640 we would think of as the alien brain, whatever that is, 0:50:50.800 --> 0:50:53.600 should we be trying to think of it as capable 0:50:53.719 --> 0:50:57.440 of some of the subdivided parts of intelligence what we 0:50:57.520 --> 0:51:00.520 think of as intelligence, but not others. Yeah, that's a 0:51:00.520 --> 0:51:02.879 great point. And uh, you know, I guess I would 0:51:02.920 --> 0:51:06.080 hope that we're at least reaching towards a point where 0:51:06.080 --> 0:51:09.480 we're going to have a more you know, complicated understanding 0:51:09.480 --> 0:51:13.040 of what memory and learning are because we're already having 0:51:13.120 --> 0:51:16.920 to contend not just with human and animal memory and learning, 0:51:16.920 --> 0:51:20.799 but also machine learning and machine memory and you know, 0:51:20.840 --> 0:51:25.920 potentially plant analogs as well, and so yeah, it just 0:51:26.000 --> 0:51:31.200 it kind of hopefully forces to push the human experience 0:51:31.200 --> 0:51:34.520 and the human model a little further aside and realize that, yeah, 0:51:34.560 --> 0:51:37.399 this is this is an example of a broader thing, 0:51:37.520 --> 0:51:40.440 and it is not the thing itself, Like I'm imagining 0:51:40.480 --> 0:51:44.200 a sci fi concept of story about encountering aliens that maybe, 0:51:44.320 --> 0:51:47.680 if this makes any sense, what if they could do 0:51:47.760 --> 0:51:51.759 something that looks like intelligence because they can learn and adapt, 0:51:51.880 --> 0:51:56.439 but they can't do what we would think of as reasoning. Yeah, 0:51:56.440 --> 0:51:59.520 like they can learn, but they can't think. I don't know, 0:51:59.600 --> 0:52:02.239 I'm not sure that even makes sense. But uh, I 0:52:02.280 --> 0:52:05.000 don't know. It gets my gears cranking. All right, we 0:52:05.080 --> 0:52:07.360 just had a brief conversation off Mike. Are we gonna 0:52:07.440 --> 0:52:09.239 Are we gonna cap this series here? Are we going 0:52:09.280 --> 0:52:12.600 to go more with the interesting hidden lives of plants, 0:52:12.640 --> 0:52:17.120 plant cognition, so called plant communication, things like that. Maybe 0:52:17.160 --> 0:52:19.920 we'll just leave it a mystery. You'll be surprised next Tuesday, 0:52:19.960 --> 0:52:23.560 which whether we're onto something else or whether the plants continue. Yeah, 0:52:23.640 --> 0:52:25.560 and in the meantime, you've you've got some hanging out 0:52:25.600 --> 0:52:28.120 to do with your various house plants and plants in 0:52:28.160 --> 0:52:31.239 the yard, maybe plants out in the wild. Um, you know, 0:52:31.320 --> 0:52:33.799 if if they're within your house, maybe maybe play them 0:52:33.840 --> 0:52:37.000 a little Starship, play them a little some prints and 0:52:37.760 --> 0:52:40.400 some of the other musical examples we mentioned these episodes. 0:52:41.080 --> 0:52:42.880 We're not saying it's going to do anything, but it 0:52:42.960 --> 0:52:45.680 might be fun to hang out with your plan and 0:52:45.719 --> 0:52:47.600 listen to Starship. You know, I think of it like 0:52:47.960 --> 0:52:51.239 the the semantic contents of talking to your dog, Like 0:52:51.320 --> 0:52:53.680 if the dog's mostly just going to be responding to 0:52:53.719 --> 0:52:55.640 the tone of your voice. If I tell my dog 0:52:55.800 --> 0:52:58.319 he's a he's a bad boy and a good boy voice, 0:52:58.360 --> 0:53:00.640 he's probably gonna be super happy. But you know, I 0:53:00.680 --> 0:53:02.680 want to say good boy anyway because that makes me 0:53:02.800 --> 0:53:06.080 feel good. All right, Well, we're gonna go and close 0:53:06.120 --> 0:53:09.960 it out here, but as always, you can find episodes 0:53:10.040 --> 0:53:12.160 core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the 0:53:12.160 --> 0:53:16.239 Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed every Thursday and Tuesday. 0:53:17.320 --> 0:53:19.880 You will also find our short form Artifact or Monster 0:53:19.920 --> 0:53:23.600 Fack episodes on Wednesdays, Listenermail on Mondays, and on Friday, 0:53:23.800 --> 0:53:25.759 well we do a little Weirdout Cinema. That's when we 0:53:25.800 --> 0:53:28.520 set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a 0:53:28.520 --> 0:53:30.640 strange film. And then on the weekend we have a 0:53:30.719 --> 0:53:34.719 vault episode that is a rerun from yesteryear. Huge thanks 0:53:34.760 --> 0:53:38.480 as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, 0:53:38.520 --> 0:53:40.640 though he is out this week. So big thanks to 0:53:40.680 --> 0:53:44.279 our excellent guest audio producer Paul deckand huge thanks for 0:53:44.360 --> 0:53:46.840 stepping in this week, Paul. If you would like to 0:53:46.840 --> 0:53:49.400 get in touch with us with feedback on this episode 0:53:49.440 --> 0:53:51.759 or any other, suggest a topic for the future, or 0:53:51.840 --> 0:53:54.759 just to say hello, you can email us at contact 0:53:54.800 --> 0:54:05.600 at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to 0:54:05.640 --> 0:54:08.960 Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. 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