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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. 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: today we're gonna be talking about an interesting and perhaps

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Speaker 1: hidden property of plants. And to start us off, I

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Speaker 1: wanted to read a selection from one of the lesser

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Speaker 1: known works by the English romantic poet Percy Biss Shelley. Uh,

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Speaker 1: this is a poem called the Sensitive Plant. Rob Am,

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Speaker 1: I write that you've never heard of this one before. No,

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Speaker 1: you know, obviously I've I've read a little bit of

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Speaker 1: Shelley here and there, but this this must I'm assuming

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Speaker 1: this is a deeper cut. It is. I think it

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Speaker 1: was one of the final things he wrote before his death,

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Speaker 1: So this would have been I think sometimes in the

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Speaker 1: early eighteen twenties. Um, and it was published I believe

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Speaker 1: as a standalone work at least at some point it was.

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Speaker 1: I was reading through like a book version of it

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Speaker 1: on that have been scanned into Google books, and every

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Speaker 1: other page on it was like washed out on the scan.

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Speaker 1: So so that was beautiful. But um, yeah, this one's

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Speaker 1: kind of weird. It's it's not one of his best poems,

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Speaker 1: but it has some really great lines in it, so

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Speaker 1: I just wanted to read, uh, just a selection from it.

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Speaker 1: It's too long to read in full, but this is

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Speaker 1: an exerpt from the end of part one of The

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Speaker 1: Sensitive Plant by Percy Miss Shelley. For the Sensitive Plant

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Speaker 1: has no bright flower, radiance and odor or not its dour.

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Speaker 1: It loves even like love. Its deep heart is full.

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Speaker 1: It desires what it has not the beautiful, the light winds,

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Speaker 1: which from unsustaining wings shed the music of many murmurings,

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Speaker 1: the beams which dart from many a star of the flowers,

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Speaker 1: whose hues they bear afar, the plumid insects, swift and free,

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Speaker 1: like golden boats on a sunny sea, laden with light

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Speaker 1: and odor, which pass over the gleam of the living grass,

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Speaker 1: The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie like fire,

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Speaker 1: and the flowers till the sun rides high, then wander

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Speaker 1: like spirits among the spheres, each cloud faint with the

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Speaker 1: fragrance it bears. The quivering vapors of dim noontide, which

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Speaker 1: like a sea over the warm earth, glide in which

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Speaker 1: every sound and odor and beam move as reads in

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Speaker 1: a single stream. Each and all like ministering angels, were

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Speaker 1: for the sensitive plant, sweet joy to bear, whilst the

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Speaker 1: lagging hours of the day went by like windless clouds

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Speaker 1: over a tender sky, And when evening descended from heaven above,

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Speaker 1: and the earth was all rest, and the air was

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Speaker 1: all love and delight, though less bright was far more deep,

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Speaker 1: and the day's veil fell from the world of sleep,

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Speaker 1: and the beasts and the birds and the insects were

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Speaker 1: drowned in an ocean of dreams without a sound, whose

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Speaker 1: waves never mark, though they ever impressed the light sand

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Speaker 1: which paves it consciousness only overhead. The sweet Nightingale, ever,

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Speaker 1: sang more sweet as the day might fail, and snatches

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Speaker 1: of its elazy enchant were mixed with the dreams of

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Speaker 1: the sensitive plant. Very nice. Yeah, so I don't think

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Speaker 1: it's one of Percy's best poems. Like I was saying,

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Speaker 1: the rhythm is a little too regular and sing songy.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes some of the rhymes are a little obvious, you know,

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Speaker 1: the rhyming love with above and all that. You could

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Speaker 1: you could imagine like a an eighties rat bait thrown

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Speaker 1: in the background some of those, or this could be

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Speaker 1: a song like every rose has its thorn, you know,

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Speaker 1: monster ballad. But but there are also lines that really

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Speaker 1: love the dew which lies like fire, and the flowers

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Speaker 1: and the nighttime as a as an ocean paved under

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Speaker 1: with the sands of consciousness. But it's aesthetic qualities aside.

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Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting that Percy is suggesting in

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Speaker 1: his unorthodox and emotionally charged for you of the world,

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Speaker 1: that this particular plant, the sensitive plant, which is a

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Speaker 1: species of plant, may somehow have a kind of humanity

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Speaker 1: of its own, like a soul or a mind, or

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Speaker 1: as I believe he implies later in the poem, and afterlife.

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Speaker 1: So you might wonder why would he say that about

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Speaker 1: this species of plant, which he acknowledges is not a

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Speaker 1: particularly beautiful flower. It's it's a mimosa, so it's got

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Speaker 1: a little pink puffball kind of thing. Well, I think

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Speaker 1: the answer is actually tied to some of the biological

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Speaker 1: qualities of the sensitive plant as a species. So the

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Speaker 1: sensitive plant is one of the many names of Mimosa pudica,

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Speaker 1: pudica being Latin for chaste or modest, shamefaced or bashful.

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Speaker 1: And this is a flowering plant in the family Fabasi,

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Speaker 1: which is the pa or legume family, which means, yes,

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Speaker 1: this plant is a cousin of the common being. So

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Speaker 1: we are we are dealing in being can today, we're

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Speaker 1: getting into into supernatural territory then, oh boy. Mimosa pudica

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Speaker 1: is native to South and Central America and the Caribbean,

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Speaker 1: though since transatlantic contact it has spread to all other

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Speaker 1: parts of the world. I think it's pervasive throughout the tropics.

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Speaker 1: And it's also known by by tons of different names.

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Speaker 1: It's called the humble plant, the shame plant, that touch

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Speaker 1: me not, and all of these names connect to the

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Speaker 1: most striking feature of this species, which is that it

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Speaker 1: is a plant that recoils when touched. And this is

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Speaker 1: one of a handful of examples of rapid movement in

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Speaker 1: the plant kingdom, movement on the time scale that we

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Speaker 1: would normally associate only with animals. So, if you want

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Speaker 1: to picture it, the sensitive plant is a spiny little

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Speaker 1: shrub that grows up to about a foot off the ground.

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Speaker 1: It has these pink flower puffs and small forking branches

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Speaker 1: with compound leaves. So to picture the leaves of this plant,

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Speaker 1: they are the ones that kind of like a feather,

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Speaker 1: you know, with a stalk running up the middle, and

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Speaker 1: then lots of tiny, little opinionle leaflets shooting out from

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Speaker 1: that middle stalk, parallel to each other and perpendicular to

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Speaker 1: the stalk like the teeth of a comb, or like

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Speaker 1: the barbs of a feather. And to see the sensitive

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Speaker 1: plant in action, all you need to do is touch

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Speaker 1: a finger on one of these branches and suddenly what

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Speaker 1: happens is the leaflets all fold inward like a closing suitcase.

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Speaker 1: And then sometimes even the branch or the stalk that

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Speaker 1: they're on will droop away from the stimulus, will droop down.

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Speaker 1: From what I can tell, there is not yet a

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Speaker 1: full consensus on the main function of the shrinking behavior

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Speaker 1: in the wild, like why does it do that? But

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Speaker 1: botanists have long suspected that it's some kind of defensive

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Speaker 1: action by the plant to protect its leaves from grazing

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Speaker 1: herbivores or insects. And this can actually work in multiple ways.

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Speaker 1: So one of them is that maybe it works by

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Speaker 1: physically moving the leaves away from a grazer. You know,

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Speaker 1: something comes bides it's munching the leaves, and this causes

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Speaker 1: the leaves to kind of pull away from the mouth

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Speaker 1: or it could work by hiding the leaves so you know,

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Speaker 1: it is disturbed something is around, it might be trying

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Speaker 1: to eat the plant, and by closing up it makes

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Speaker 1: it less obvious where the leaves are. Yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: guess one can imagine this working within the context of,

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Speaker 1: you know, of an enormous grazing animal that is eating

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Speaker 1: a lot of plants and it's maybe not gonna stop

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Speaker 1: to really get particular about this one, if this one

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Speaker 1: has made itself uh smaller, you know, retreated into you know,

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Speaker 1: amidst other plants, etcetera. Like, it's just gonna keep eating

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Speaker 1: whatever is readily available to eat, Right, But I think

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Speaker 1: there's also a focus on insects. Maybe insects are also

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Speaker 1: the reason it does this, And it could also work

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Speaker 1: maybe by startling a predator like an insect or grazing

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Speaker 1: her before. Because of course plants don't usually move rapidly

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Speaker 1: like animals do, so you know, if you're an insect

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Speaker 1: or whatever that's grazing and then suddenly there is movement

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Speaker 1: on the time scale of animal movement in your in

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Speaker 1: your vicinity that might startle you and send you on

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Speaker 1: the run. Yeah, on the time scale of animal movement.

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Speaker 1: That's that's key because of course, the other main plant

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Speaker 1: we think of in terms of this is the venus

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Speaker 1: fly plant, which you know, well we'll come back to

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Speaker 1: uh that you know, that is a plant that is

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Speaker 1: acting aggressively on the timescale of of of animals um

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Speaker 1: in an attempt to capture a set animal. But but

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Speaker 1: here we see the reverse. Here we see something that

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Speaker 1: is uh that is acting you know, defensively, that is

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Speaker 1: moving away from us, that is not saying I want

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Speaker 1: to touch you and envelop you, but I would rather

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Speaker 1: not touch you at all. Yes, I would rather not.

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Speaker 1: I would prefer not to. Yeah. Uh. So usually after

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Speaker 1: a sensitive plant closes up its leaflets and droops away,

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Speaker 1: it will reopen within some short time period, maybe only

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Speaker 1: a few seconds, uh sometimes a few minutes, but it

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Speaker 1: doesn't take long. It'll it'll open back up, get those

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Speaker 1: leaves out there again, and and and start all over.

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Speaker 1: And the sensitive plant also has a circadian rhythm to

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Speaker 1: its closure, because it will close its leaves in the

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Speaker 1: darkness and then reopen them in the daylight. Now, I

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Speaker 1: found a wonderful post on j Store Daily by Rebecca

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Speaker 1: Friedel about the history of mimosa putica, and also a

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Speaker 1: similar Old World plant called Biophytem sensitivum, which is actually

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Speaker 1: not a close relative of the sensitive plant, but does

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Speaker 1: almost exactly the same thing with its leaves. So it

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Speaker 1: looks like this would be a case of convergent evolution.

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Speaker 1: But this article points to the work of a sixteenth

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Speaker 1: century Portuguese naturalist living in India named Cristo baal Acosta,

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Speaker 1: who authored a book in fifteen seventy eight called Tractado

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Speaker 1: de las Drogas e Metaicinas de las Indias Orientales or

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Speaker 1: treat Us on the Drugs and Medicines of the East

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Speaker 1: and East Indies. I really wanted to find an English

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Speaker 1: translation of this so I could quote it directly, because

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Speaker 1: it sounds like it's a hoot, But I could not,

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Speaker 1: so I'm gonna have to rely on a couple of

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Speaker 1: secondhand summaries, including a Friedel's article here. But anyway, in

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Speaker 1: this book by Christo ball Acosta in the sixteenth century,

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Speaker 1: he describes a plant among the medicinal herbs of India

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Speaker 1: called the Yerba della more or the herb the herb

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Speaker 1: of love. Do you do you ever say herb with

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Speaker 1: the H pronounced sometimes I'm afraid I'm gonna keep doing that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: sometimes it slips out. I don't know why. I try

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Speaker 1: to fix this in my brain by like saying the

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Speaker 1: name herb without the H pronounced so like I I go,

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Speaker 1: I I said herb Herbert Hoover, Herbert Hoover. That that'll

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Speaker 1: fix it. Well, yeah, I mean it's easy to fall

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Speaker 1: into because herbivore, herbivoret. Anyway, why the herb of love?

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Speaker 1: Why would it be called the herb of love? Well,

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Speaker 1: Acosta says that, according to an Indian physician he talked to,

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Speaker 1: the herb of Love was a potent seduction drug with

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Speaker 1: a one percent success rate never fails. And after this passage,

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Speaker 1: Acosta has an aside to assure readers of this medicinal

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Speaker 1: catalog that he definitely never personally tried to use the

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Speaker 1: sex herb, never, not once. Probably a good thing, considering

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Speaker 1: that other more well known sex aerbs, if you will,

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Speaker 1: are you know, essentially poisons right, But aside from the

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Speaker 1: dubious allegations about cupids ero type powers, this plant, the

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Speaker 1: herb of Love is remarkable for its ability to close

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Speaker 1: its leaves rapidly, moving at the speed of an animal

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Speaker 1: recoiling from a needle prick, and uh, I was looking

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Speaker 1: at another source which mentions Acosta. This is by JF.

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Speaker 1: Veld Camp called Notes on biophytem of the Old World,

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Speaker 1: polished in tax On in ninety nine. I cite this

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Speaker 1: just because veld Camp tells the story that Acosta claimed

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Speaker 1: he knew of a philosopher in Malabar, so region along

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Speaker 1: the southwest coast of India. A philosopher who lived in

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Speaker 1: Malabar who was so tortured by the mystery of the

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Speaker 1: of Love's rapid movement that he literally lost his mind

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Speaker 1: trying to study it. He was like, how does it move?

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Speaker 1: And and that was that was it for him. No

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Speaker 1: word on whether that guy ever used it for cupid

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Speaker 1: zero type purposes. Yeah. Because again, and this will be

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Speaker 1: something that we'll just we'll discuss later as well. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's it's acting in a way that other plants do

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Speaker 1: not act. It seems unnatural, right. I mean if I

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Speaker 1: had never seen a rapidly moving plant before and I

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Speaker 1: just like stumbled across one of these in the wild,

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Speaker 1: saw it folding up like that, I would be freaked out.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what to think of this. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine because I grew up with venus

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Speaker 1: fly traps, you know, Like I remember when I was

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Speaker 1: a kid, and uh, I would have like one of

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Speaker 1: those really boring weekend days where my mom wanted to

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Speaker 1: go to the plant nursery and get some plants around

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Speaker 1: the house. And I think my consolation there was that

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Speaker 1: a couple of times I got a little pott of

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Speaker 1: venus fly trap. Yeah, they're they're pretty fun little plants.

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Speaker 1: They always have a huge container off them out at

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Speaker 1: the UH at the Botanical Garden in Atlanta for the

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Speaker 1: kids to interact with an inevitably stick a little sticks

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Speaker 1: into their into their their their mouths, if you will. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: we we know about that one. But if you're previously

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Speaker 1: unfamiliar with the plant like that, or or one of

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Speaker 1: these leaf closing plants like Mimosa putica or biophytum uh,

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Speaker 1: I imagine it would be shocking. Yeah. I mean we're

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Speaker 1: hardwired really to to expect that sudden movement in the

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Speaker 1: grass might be something dangerous. It might be a snake,

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Speaker 1: for example, Like that's the first place my mind goes

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Speaker 1: if I'm on a walk and there's some sort of

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Speaker 1: rustling in the bushes. It might it might be a snake,

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Speaker 1: or or it's something like you know, chipmunk or squirrel.

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Speaker 1: Probably not a squirrel because they're a bit bolder. But

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Speaker 1: but certainly the snake is never far from one's mind.

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Speaker 1: Very true. So anyway, for several centuries there was confusion

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Speaker 1: about how to taxonomize this plant that Christo Baul Acosta

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Speaker 1: was talking about, the herb of love and free Dell

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Speaker 1: points to an i've volume of the Botanical Register which says, hey,

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Speaker 1: we know about this plant from South America called the

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Speaker 1: Mimosa putica. It does that leaf shutting things. So maybe

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Speaker 1: this herb of love that Acosta is talking about in

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Speaker 1: India and the sixteenth century is actually the same plant.

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Speaker 1: After all, it does seem that pretty quickly after transatlantic

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Speaker 1: contact the mimosa spread all around the globe. But now

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Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to be the case. Botanists are pretty

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Speaker 1: clear that the herb of love was actually this other

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Speaker 1: species I mentioned a minute ago, Biophytum sins ativum and

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Speaker 1: freedl rights. This was funny quote. Perhaps the erotic claims

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Speaker 1: Acosta made so enthralled some that they failed to turn

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Speaker 1: the page to the next entry on Erba mimosa, a

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Speaker 1: likely description of the actual mimosa putica. Do your homework, guys,

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Speaker 1: come on. But anyway, I was thinking about this mechanism.

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Speaker 1: So immediately when I see a plant with rapid movement

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Speaker 1: like this, the leaf closing behavior, I wonder, how on

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Speaker 1: earth does it do that? Because, of course we can

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Speaker 1: move rapidly, but we can only do that because we

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Speaker 1: have a nervous system and a muscular skeletal system muscles.

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Speaker 1: Plants don't have either one. There are no muscles and

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Speaker 1: a plant. So what mechanism could a plant used to

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Speaker 1: contract on the order of seconds. Well, scientists have actually

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Speaker 1: figured out the answer to this one. The types of

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Speaker 1: movement on display in the sensitive plant and other rapid

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Speaker 1: moving plants like the venus fly trap are known as

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Speaker 1: seismo nastic movements, and these are an example of a

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Speaker 1: bigger category of nastic movements, which can be defined by

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Speaker 1: their difference from another type of plant movement called tropisms. Now,

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Speaker 1: tropisms I think we've all seen in action. You know

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Speaker 1: what this is if you've ever had house plants. A

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Speaker 1: tropism is growth in a specific direction based on an

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Speaker 1: external stimulus. So plants will grow toward a light source.

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Speaker 1: In fact, right in front of me, right out. I

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Speaker 1: have a potted plant here on my desk, and over time,

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Speaker 1: it's leaves all start reaching out for the lamp next

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Speaker 1: to it, until I turned the pot around, and then

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Speaker 1: gradually they all start to hook back in the opposite direction.

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Speaker 1: And uh, it just now struck me for the first time.

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Speaker 1: That might sound kind of cruel, like I'm toying with it,

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Speaker 1: but I really don't think the plant's feelings are hurt.

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Speaker 1: Another example this would be trees seeing to grow around

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Speaker 1: power lines. Sure. Yeah, So plants can grow in different directions,

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Speaker 1: responding to objects or or stimuli in their environments. Nastic movements,

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Speaker 1: in contrast to tropisms, are not oriented in the direction

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Speaker 1: of a stimulus, but rather are fixed reflexes that are

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Speaker 1: determined by the plant's anatomy. So, for example, a venus

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Speaker 1: fly trap shows a nastic response. It doesn't go off

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Speaker 1: in a particular direction to catch a fly, but rather

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Speaker 1: when it since his movement in its trap area, the

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Speaker 1: hinge clothses, so it has a predetermined, a directionally predetermined

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Speaker 1: movement that is in keeping with the plant's anatomy, not

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Speaker 1: in an adaptable direction, and the sensitive plant is another

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Speaker 1: example of a nastic response. And I think it's interesting

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Speaker 1: to note that the stimulus direction dependent movements of plants

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Speaker 1: tend to be very slow, very very slow, and based

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Speaker 1: on growth, while the few plants that are able to

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Speaker 1: move rapidly in all cases that I'm aware of, certainly

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Speaker 1: in most cases their movement is constrained to these directionally

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Speaker 1: fixed reflexes. Now, of course, we animals have the best

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Speaker 1: of both worlds, right. We can move rapidly and we

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Speaker 1: have the flexibility to respond in whatever direction makes sense

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Speaker 1: given the stimulus. But you know that's because we're different

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Speaker 1: types of creatures, different anatomy, different energy requirements and so forth.

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Speaker 1: But okay, that's now stick movements now seised monastic movements

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Speaker 1: are nastic movements that are triggered by touch or by vibration.

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Speaker 1: Now again, um, without muscles, how it all this work?

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Speaker 1: How does the nastic movement actually happen? Well, here we

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Speaker 1: come to a really excellent new word I learned. The

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Speaker 1: word is turger spelled t u r g o r uh.

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Speaker 1: It's a good like a leather diaper, Barbarian name. But

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Speaker 1: it also it is a name for something that happens

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Speaker 1: within plants. It's related to the word turgid or turgidity. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so within plants there is a principle called turger pressure.

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Speaker 1: And one simple way to think about turger pressure is

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Speaker 1: that it is like water pressure inside a plant. So

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Speaker 1: you think about the difference between a wilted flower baking

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Speaker 1: dry in the sun. You know it's parched, and you

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Speaker 1: see it drooping over, and then you think about what

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Speaker 1: that flower does after you water it. If things go well.

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Speaker 1: Usually you give a wilted plant water and its leaves

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Speaker 1: and stems stops sagging and they become rigid again. It

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Speaker 1: stands straight up the you know, the it's it's almost

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Speaker 1: like it's inflated like a balloon. Yeah, And in some

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Speaker 1: plants it's it's it's amazing the difference just a quick

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Speaker 1: watering can can have. Uh. We have a linen bomb, uh.

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Speaker 1: And I always find that that one among our plants

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Speaker 1: is the first to just immediately seem to give up

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Speaker 1: the ghost and start wilting away. But then you know,

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Speaker 1: you give it enough water and it's just back just

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Speaker 1: you know, bushy and full of life as ever totally.

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Speaker 1: In fact, you might have even observed this not with

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Speaker 1: a live plants, but uh, giving some veggies in the

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Speaker 1: kitchen a soak or even just a wash. This is

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Speaker 1: a good trick for resurrecting what appeared to be wilted

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Speaker 1: salad greens that are past their prime. You might think

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Speaker 1: they're no good, you know, you gotta toss them. You

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Speaker 1: would be surprised how salvageable some greens are after a

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Speaker 1: soak in cold water. Really like like spinach, this verst

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Speaker 1: of spinach. I don't know if I ever tried it

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Speaker 1: on spinach, but I've tried it on other types of

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Speaker 1: greens like you know, arugula and things like that that

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Speaker 1: are uh, you know, they're starting not like if they're

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Speaker 1: gonna slimy, you know, but if they're just like they're

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Speaker 1: clearly they're getting desiccated and wilted. It looks like, oh,

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Speaker 1: these are going to be no good, So come in

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Speaker 1: some cold water. They might come back to life and

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Speaker 1: be crisp again. I didn't know about this trick, but

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Speaker 1: now I I will have to try this sometime. But anyway, so,

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Speaker 1: turger pressure is when a plant's cells are swollen with

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Speaker 1: water so that in the inside of the cells within

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Speaker 1: the plasma membrane. Uh, the water pressure is actually pushing

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Speaker 1: out against the cell wall, and so when turger pressure

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Speaker 1: is high, the plant is said to be turgid. And

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Speaker 1: so to come back to the sensitive plant, when the

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Speaker 1: leaves are touched or disturbed and electrochemical chain reaction is

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Speaker 1: set off, you know, that's sensed by cells in the leaves,

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Speaker 1: and then it sets off this electrochemical chain reaction that

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Speaker 1: eventually ends in water gushing out from so called motor

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Speaker 1: cells at the base of the leaflets that were previously turgid.

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Speaker 1: So the sudden loss of turger pressure the cells purging

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Speaker 1: their water contents causes the leaflet to move, basically to collapse.

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Speaker 1: That it's hinge, and this is known as turger movement.

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Speaker 1: So in in in a strange way, you can think

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Speaker 1: about it like the plant moving by causing itself to

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Speaker 1: very selectively and rapidly wilt like a parched plant. Then

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Speaker 1: over the course of the following minutes, turger pressure can

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Speaker 1: be restored and the leaves go ridgid again and they

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Speaker 1: go back to their extended state. But to come to

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Speaker 1: the next thing, UH, even more astonishing than the plant's

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Speaker 1: ability to behave physically in ways that seem more at

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Speaker 1: home in animals with muscles. Is potential evidence that the

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Speaker 1: Mimosa putica may also, in a qualified sense, behave mentally

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Speaker 1: in ways that seem more at home in animals with brains. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: there has been research arguing that this plant, an organism

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Speaker 1: entirely without a brain or without a nervous system, actually

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Speaker 1: has its own rudimentary form of memory. And uh, we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about one of the studies allegedly showing this in

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Speaker 1: a minute, But first I thought it might be good

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Speaker 1: to spend a few minutes disentangling concepts about the alleged

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Speaker 1: mental or cognitive properties of plants, because I think once

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Speaker 1: you get into this area, you run a whole gamut

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Speaker 1: of different types of claims of extremely variable evidential backing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you also get into into areas of confusion over

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Speaker 1: like what constitutes uh, you know, animal intelligence and human

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Speaker 1: intelligence and so so I thought it might be helpful

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Speaker 1: to sort through some sort of general ideas regarding the

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Speaker 1: nature of plants in Western thought fourth century b c. E.

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Speaker 1: Thinker Aristotle, of course, casts along shadow, and he wrote

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Speaker 1: that plants have a vegetative soul or to threapticon, which

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Speaker 1: I believe just means the vegetable soul, not to be

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Speaker 1: confused with two megathereon, which means the great beast in

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Speaker 1: Greek and is of course a uh a Celtic frost

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Speaker 1: album um. But I couldn't help but think of that

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Speaker 1: when I was reading about twopon. Yeah, a lot of these. Well,

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Speaker 1: so there were people in like the nineteenth century and

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Speaker 1: stuff who were very interested in the sensitive plant, and

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of them made references back to

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Speaker 1: Aristotle and like, is this is what Aristotle was talking about?

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Speaker 1: Plants have a soul, they can feel right. But but

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Speaker 1: of course yes and no right, because they are two

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Speaker 1: important things to keep in mind about all of it.

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Speaker 1: First of all, he attributes nourishment and reproduction to the

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Speaker 1: plant soul. And we have to remember that the Greek

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Speaker 1: notion of a soul or suka is rather different than

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Speaker 1: modern or even early Christian notions of a soul. We're

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Speaker 1: not talking about like an inner ghost person that moves

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Speaker 1: on and has an afterlife, that sort of thing. This

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Speaker 1: would be more like the concept of a mind or

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Speaker 1: like or would it be like the idea of an

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Speaker 1: animating breath? There are a lot of different ideas of

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Speaker 1: things that get translated into English as soul from the

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Speaker 1: ancient world. Yeah. I was reading about this in an

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Speaker 1: excellent paper that I will probably continue to refer to

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Speaker 1: in this series by Michael Martyr from in Plant Signal

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Speaker 1: Behavior titled Plant Intentionality and the Phenomenological Framework of Plant Intelligence,

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Speaker 1: And in this he writes that the soul in this context,

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Speaker 1: in Aristotle's context, is quote a set of active capacities

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Speaker 1: of an organism, not an invisible entity connected to the divine. Okay,

426
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 1: that makes sense. So the soul is sort of like

427
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:33,119
Speaker 1: the essence of the organism. It's like what the form

428
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:37,159
Speaker 1: of the organism apart from its physical body. Right. And

429
00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:41,200
Speaker 1: while the vegetative soul here is defined by nourishment and reproduction,

430
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:45,920
Speaker 1: animals and humans additionally have capacities of sensation and rational

431
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:50,280
Speaker 1: thought added atop these baser soul characteristics. Now, I think

432
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 1: an interesting division there is that, uh so it's attributing

433
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:57,840
Speaker 1: animals and humans with sensation and rational thought. I think

434
00:24:57,840 --> 00:24:59,639
Speaker 1: a lot of people have made some what seemed to

435
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:04,639
Speaker 1: me to be pretty um spurious claims about evidence for

436
00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: rational thought in plants. But I would say it's completely

437
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: uncontroversial that plants experience a form of sensation, they can

438
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 1: gather information about their environment, and they do constantly. Yeah,

439
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 1: but in Aristotle's hierarchy, you have basically have animals and

440
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:23,520
Speaker 1: then you have plants in the minerals. Uh. And there's

441
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 1: also this added caveat that aspects of the vegetative soul

442
00:25:26,560 --> 00:25:30,359
Speaker 1: continue on into forms that follow um, which which might

443
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,160
Speaker 1: not be all that helpful in what we're thinking about here,

444
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:37,200
Speaker 1: but perhaps bears mentioning. Now, aristotle shadow again is long,

445
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:39,840
Speaker 1: and we see his ideas carried on into medieval Europe.

446
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:44,400
Speaker 1: Thirteenth century CE thinker Thomas Aquinas wrote in Puma Theology

447
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 1: that quote, the very fact that the acts of the

448
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 1: vegetative soul do not obey reason shows that they rank lowest, lowest,

449
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:56,119
Speaker 1: lower than minerals. Or was he not lower than minerals?

450
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: That I think it would say in reference to animals

451
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:01,920
Speaker 1: and of course humans. Now, one thing that that martyr

452
00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: points out is that while the aristotle view here, uh,

453
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of used plants as baser and

454
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:12,639
Speaker 1: that they're only carrying out nourishment and reproduction. But he

455
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: writes that that's that's actually it's actually quite impressive within

456
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:20,920
Speaker 1: the modern context of certainly planned intelligence research, because these

457
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 1: impulses nourishment and reproduction quote entail complex decisions related to

458
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 1: the availability of resources. Now that's interesting because that could be,

459
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: on one on one hand, very true, but also could

460
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: easily be misinterpreted to to lead people to unjustified conclusions.

461
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 1: And I want to get into a little more disentangling

462
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:42,120
Speaker 1: on concepts in a minute here, but yeah, flag that. Yes,

463
00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:47,879
Speaker 1: Martyr also adds quote Additionally, plants express almost all known neurotransmitters,

464
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 1: confirming the extension of two threpticon well beyond the activities

465
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:56,159
Speaker 1: Aristotle and his followers allotted to them. Hence, the lines

466
00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 1: of demarcation between the higher and the lower capacities, between

467
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 1: consciousness and non consciousness, and by implication, between biological regna

468
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:09,439
Speaker 1: are not as rigid as classical thinkers believed, and there

469
00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 1: are a few other strains of more modern thought that

470
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 1: Martyr shares. He points out that, according to late eighteenth

471
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:20,040
Speaker 1: and early nineteenth century German philosopher Hegel, plants are passive,

472
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 1: they have negative selfhood, and they lack quote an organismic whole. Okay,

473
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:28,480
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means. But that's hegel yeah,

474
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 1: not a not a plant fan. Nineteenth century English naturalist

475
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,119
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin, on the other hand, this I believe was

476
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 1: like a later um thing that he wrote about. But

477
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 1: he had the root brain hypothesis that held that the

478
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 1: root apex of a plant served as a brain like

479
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 1: oregon that was both sensitive and capable of navigating soil

480
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,359
Speaker 1: in search of resources. Now, I think it might be

481
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: going a little overboard to call it brain like, but

482
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,640
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin was clearly enthralled by plants like the venus

483
00:27:57,680 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 1: fly trapp Like he got really excited about what this means.

484
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:04,119
Speaker 1: And uh, maybe we can come back to Darwin in

485
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 1: in in part two of this, because I think some

486
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 1: of his ideas might connect more to to some of

487
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:10,480
Speaker 1: the research we're going to talk about later on. Yeah,

488
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 1: it's my understanding. And uh, and I believe the author

489
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: mentions this that some of these ideas that Charles Charles

490
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: Darwin had regarding this root brain hypothesis, like they've people

491
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 1: have come back to them, uh in modern plant intelligence

492
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:25,959
Speaker 1: research and and said, well, yeah, and then there's more

493
00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 1: to this than than people of of Darwin's day thought.

494
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:32,600
Speaker 1: Then there's also a nineteenth century German philosopher, Frederick Niici,

495
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:35,639
Speaker 1: who is very much I believe inspired by Darwin. In

496
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 1: this wrote that a plant's nourishment and growth are expressions

497
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: of its will to power, or the wills who mocked,

498
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: which he identifies as the core driving force behind human beings.

499
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 1: Oh my god, So this this plot, this potted plant

500
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 1: in front of me, when it reaches for the lamp,

501
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: and then I turn it around, I am thwarting its

502
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 1: will to power. But I I am like the naysaying

503
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:02,360
Speaker 1: crowd that it must rebel against and and show its might. Yeah.

504
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 1: And every day you don't kill it, you make it stronger,

505
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 1: right now. Um. In Eastern thought, there of course strong

506
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 1: traditions of all of this, as discussed in, among other

507
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: many sources, uh In Richard Nesbits The Geography of Thought.

508
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 1: China's Taoism and japan Japan's Shinto is Um both emphasize

509
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 1: the spirits of animals, plants, natural objects, and artifacts. Uh

510
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: And And for my part, I've been reading a little

511
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 1: bit about this um earlier when I was looking for

512
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: things to cover for Artifact and Monster Fact episodes. But um,

513
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to steal any thunder from

514
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 1: some possible potential episodes long or short form about these.

515
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 1: But you know, we have strong folkloric, legendary and mythological

516
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: um concepts of plant animal hybrids, which, of course, with

517
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: all hybrids, they certainly perform various functions and symbolic um

518
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 1: uh you know, metaphoric and per natural thought. But they

519
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 1: also raised the question inevitably of animal nous and plants

520
00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 1: and plant nous in animals. You know, like you you

521
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: can't think of something like say a screaming man dreak,

522
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 1: or say the vegetable lamb of Targari. You know this

523
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:19,800
Speaker 1: this sheeplike thing that is growing out of the ground

524
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,560
Speaker 1: that is a plant but also seems like an animal,

525
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:25,080
Speaker 1: Like you can't. I don't think you can really have

526
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: a concept like that without its sort of by blurring

527
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: the lines, by invoking the hybrid, making you think about

528
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: the characteristics of the opposite side that are present in

529
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:39,600
Speaker 1: this side. Yeah, yeah uh. In fact, I think several

530
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: years back we did a an October episode called something

531
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 1: like the Killer Tree that was legends of of trees

532
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: that would eat people. It's a surprisingly common recurring motif,

533
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:54,240
Speaker 1: though apparently has no basis in in real biology. No,

534
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: but I mean certainly not at the not not on

535
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: the the animal time scale of things, but I guess

536
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: on the plant time scale of things. Yeah, you can

537
00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: get into more nuanced discussions of plants eating people, plants

538
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 1: eating human corpses and that sort of thing, right, but

539
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 1: not not the active predation like in that Oh that

540
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: is like a William Friedkin movie about the killer tree

541
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 1: that gobbles people up. Oh my gosh, I don't remember

542
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: this one. Okay, yeah, well we'll have to revisit. But there, Yeah,

543
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 1: there are clearly a lot of killer trees. And I

544
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:27,960
Speaker 1: mean you have things like the ants, right, uh, trees

545
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: walking around like humans. And yeah, all these concepts they

546
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: they they're they're performing a number of different functions. But

547
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 1: I think one of them is that it inevitably makes

548
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 1: you think about about plants and animals, what do they

549
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: have in common when and what ways do they differ in? Indeed, yeah,

550
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 1: in what ways might they be more alike than we

551
00:31:47,040 --> 00:31:57,400
Speaker 1: often realize. Another thing is that as we're going forward

552
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 1: talking about research potentially indicating something like a plant basis

553
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:05,600
Speaker 1: for memory or learning, I think we also have to

554
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: be very careful because the whole the realm of plant

555
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 1: uh so called plant cognition research, I think, has a

556
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: history that is filled with stuff that is not so great.

557
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: Like there are a number of different concepts regarding the

558
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: hidden complexity of plants that people seem to get confused

559
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: with each other. And this is unfortunate because these topics

560
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:30,760
Speaker 1: range from what appears to me to be maybe controversial

561
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 1: but at least potentially evidence backed biology, and that would

562
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 1: be things like, you know, some of the memory research

563
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about, all the way over to pure

564
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: pseudoscience and paranormal stuff. And uh, just to give some

565
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 1: quick flavor of the latter end of that spectrum, I'm

566
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 1: reminded of something we talked about briefly in an episode

567
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 1: that we did a long time ago. Rob, You remember

568
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: when we did the Science of Stranger Things that New

569
00:32:53,800 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: York Comic con. Yes, I do remember this. So it

570
00:32:57,280 --> 00:32:59,720
Speaker 1: was in the context of that episode we were talking

571
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: about government research into psychic and paranormal phenomena during the

572
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:07,320
Speaker 1: Cold War, which absolutely did happen, and the extent of

573
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 1: it is hilarious. But I read a couple of whole

574
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 1: books about this. One, uh, of course, one if you

575
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 1: want a quick read that's very funny is The Men

576
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 1: Who Stare It Goes by John Ronson. But also there

577
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 1: was a book by Annie Jacobson that was a big, complete,

578
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 1: sort of history of the Stanford Research Institute and all

579
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 1: of these paranormal government research projects that were fueled by

580
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 1: Cold War paranoia, but looked into that. They looked into

581
00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: things like remote viewing and UH and and UH telekinesis

582
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And unfortunately, I think a lot

583
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: of that was just was just tricks and poorly designed experiments.

584
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:50,000
Speaker 1: But but but one brief episode from this, one of

585
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: the people we talked about in that episode was a

586
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 1: CIA interrogation expert named Cleave Baxter, who specialized apparently in

587
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:02,560
Speaker 1: narcotic and hypnotism based interrogation techniques and then later in

588
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 1: the polygraph And according to a New York Times article

589
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: I was reading about Baxter by Josh Eels, Baxter developed

590
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 1: a method for conducting polygraph sessions called the Baxter zone

591
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:18,359
Speaker 1: comparison technique, which, according to this article, is still used

592
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 1: in polygraph test today. So cool. Anyway, later in his career,

593
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 1: Baxter quite famously became obsessed with the idea that plants

594
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:30,440
Speaker 1: could read our minds, and he claimed to show it

595
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: with experiments. So the discovery of this the story goes

596
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 1: like this. One night in nineteen sixty six, Baxter stayed

597
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 1: up all night. He was drinking coffee, and he got

598
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: an amazing idea. He would hook a potted plant up

599
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 1: to a polygraph machine. I guess I don't know if

600
00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 1: he was going to see if it was telling lies

601
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:52,400
Speaker 1: or maybe you just I don't know. Uh. So, allegedly

602
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:57,319
Speaker 1: this plant was a quote corn plant or dressina fragrance, which,

603
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:00,480
Speaker 1: in a confusing twist, is completely different for the plant

604
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:03,800
Speaker 1: z maze, which is the grain plant that produces maize

605
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 1: or corn, the food. So this is called a corn plant,

606
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:08,600
Speaker 1: but it's not the corn that would be planted in

607
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 1: a as a crop. The corn plant had been a

608
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 1: gift from his secretary, intended to brighten up his office,

609
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:16,279
Speaker 1: which I have not seen pictures of. I don't know

610
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 1: what was in there, but I'm imagining a kind of

611
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:21,279
Speaker 1: dungeon full of chairs with leather straps on them and

612
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 1: needles full of quack truth serums. So, yeah, you can

613
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:26,840
Speaker 1: imagine some plants would be nice. Yeah, you want to

614
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 1: get some corn down there? Uh, so from here, I

615
00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: just want to quote from the article by Eels summarizing this, uh,

616
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: this this experiment quote. In human subjects, a polygraph measures

617
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:42,360
Speaker 1: three things pulse, respiration rate, and galvanic skin response otherwise

618
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 1: known as perspiration. If you're worried about being caught in

619
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:49,240
Speaker 1: a lie, your levels will spike or dip. Baxter wanted

620
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 1: to induce a similar anxiety in the plant, so he

621
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 1: decided to set one of its leaves on fire. But

622
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 1: before he could even get a match, the polygraph registered

623
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:03,240
Speaker 1: and intense reaction on the part of the Dressina. To Baxter,

624
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: the implication was as indisputable as it was unbelievable. Not

625
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:11,799
Speaker 1: only had the plant demonstrated fear, it had also read

626
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 1: his mind. Uh. So Baxter became convinced that plants had

627
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 1: psychic powers, consisting of a sensibility that he called primary perception,

628
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: which they could use to read our minds and emotions

629
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 1: from afar. And upon this discovery, he did what any

630
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:30,359
Speaker 1: responsible seeker of the truth would do. He went straight

631
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: to the popular media. Uh. And there was a book

632
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:36,680
Speaker 1: based on his claims, and apparently uh he did a

633
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: TV spot, multiple TV spots. But I like Johnny Carson

634
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: and stuff. But one of them I wanted to note was,

635
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: apparently with Leonard Nimoy, was this in search of. I

636
00:36:45,120 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 1: don't know if the time frames right for that. I

637
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: don't know if the time frames right either, but anseling

638
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 1: makes me think of in search of And unfortunately skeptical

639
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 1: scientists were unable to reproduce his results. They tried to

640
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: do the same thing and got nothing. But if you

641
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:03,120
Speaker 1: poke round about this on the internet, you will find

642
00:37:03,239 --> 00:37:08,480
Speaker 1: many believers even today still overflowing with faith in Baxter's claims.

643
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:11,480
Speaker 1: It's one of those ideas that lots of people just

644
00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: seem to like. It feels really true and wholesome and

645
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:20,240
Speaker 1: good to believe. Yes, plants can think, they can feel,

646
00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 1: they can know what we're thinking if we tell them,

647
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:24,640
Speaker 1: or maybe even if we don't tell them, if we

648
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 1: just think it really hard, they can detect it somehow.

649
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:31,960
Speaker 1: But obviously there are there are major problems if you're

650
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:36,080
Speaker 1: trying to put together a coherent, scientifically informed worldview. First

651
00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:38,399
Speaker 1: of all, I would say the theoretical basis is weak.

652
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,440
Speaker 1: Like you know, we could always discover something new, but

653
00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:44,280
Speaker 1: it is not clear that there's any kind of physical

654
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: mechanism that could allow something like that. And then the

655
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: second part is just the empirical basis, like the controlled

656
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:54,759
Speaker 1: experiments by skeptics don't find the same thing. So yeah,

657
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: this appears to be nonsense. I can't help but wonder

658
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:01,600
Speaker 1: if okay, this experiment was sixty six. Uh, Frank Herbert's

659
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:04,479
Speaker 1: Dune was first published in sixty five, and of course

660
00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:07,160
Speaker 1: has the you know, very early on in the novel

661
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: has the scene where we have the Benegesta test of

662
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: the box and the com jabbar the box, which of

663
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 1: course makes you feel like your hand is burning and

664
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: on fire. And here in this test behalf that part

665
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: of the plant is actually caught on fire. Wow, that's interesting.

666
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:27,799
Speaker 1: Yeah uh yeah. And the box is supposedly a kind

667
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: of polygraph of its own. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And

668
00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 1: of course you have the Benegestate yeah, you know, truthsayers

669
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: and so forth. Though, I think in our episode on

670
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: that did we both come to the conclusion that we

671
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: think that the real power is the box actually does

672
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 1: nothing and it's just all in. It's all the reverend

673
00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:46,560
Speaker 1: mother like she's the real test. Yeah. I think it's

674
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 1: ultimately unknown, but we did. I think we we both

675
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:51,120
Speaker 1: liked that idea the most. Yeah, it felt the most

676
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: herbert E of the ideas. It's just a prop But anyway,

677
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:57,839
Speaker 1: So to come back to all this, so we're gonna

678
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:00,200
Speaker 1: be talking about plant memory research. But I think I

679
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: want to be clear that if you say that a

680
00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 1: plant could have such a thing as a memory or

681
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: an ability to learn, that is truly surprising and fascinating.

682
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 1: But it is not the same thing as saying or

683
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: showing that plants can quote think, that plants are conscious,

684
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 1: that plants have emotions, or that they get upset when

685
00:39:22,040 --> 00:39:24,719
Speaker 1: you say or do negative things around them, all of

686
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:26,680
Speaker 1: which are claims that people have tried to make over

687
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: the years, but which seemed to me to be lacking

688
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: an evidential basis, with with the possible exception of quote

689
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 1: thinking under some very broad or inclusive definitions of what

690
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 1: counts as thought. Yeah. Like another area related to this

691
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 1: is the relationship doing plants and sound. So can plants

692
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: respond to sound, Yes they can, But can do plants

693
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:54,759
Speaker 1: then benefit from listening to music? There's no evidence for that.

694
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:56,600
Speaker 1: But I mean, this was an idea that was very

695
00:39:56,719 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: much in tho zeitgeist, especially in the UH That's where

696
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: we there was actually a wonderful album that came out,

697
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 1: an early electronic music album by Mort Garson, who is

698
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 1: a you know, early synth wizard who did a lot

699
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 1: of a number of different projects under different names, but

700
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:17,279
Speaker 1: he put out this uh. This album titled UH Mother

701
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:21,840
Speaker 1: Earth's plant Asia, and it is supposed to be music

702
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: that you play for your house plants, and your house

703
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:28,239
Speaker 1: plants then benefit from it. Um. I don't think, you know,

704
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:30,720
Speaker 1: house plants actually get nothing out of listening to this album.

705
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 1: But it's a wonderful ambient, experimental electronic album for for humans.

706
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: I love this. I would say I'm all for playing

707
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 1: music for your plants. I don't think it does anything

708
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,440
Speaker 1: for the plants, but playing music for your plants might

709
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 1: do something nice for you. Yeah, yeah, just like the plant.

710
00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 1: The presence of the plants certainly can have a very

711
00:40:48,719 --> 00:40:52,840
Speaker 1: pleasant effect on the human psyche, so can UH ambient music.

712
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:58,040
Speaker 1: So double up, have them both and benefit. But anyway,

713
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:00,239
Speaker 1: before we end part one of this series, I did

714
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: want to look at at least one of the studies

715
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 1: that claims to find evidence for what you might call

716
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: memory learning or habituation in plants. And in the next episode,

717
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:14,360
Speaker 1: we'll come back and talk about some reaction, criticism, and

718
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: follow up of these types of ideas. So this is

719
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 1: not without its accompanying controversy, but I thought it would

720
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 1: be at least worthwhile to look at, like, what what

721
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:26,800
Speaker 1: the evidential claims of the recent research are. So earlier

722
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:31,840
Speaker 1: we mentioned that scientists are actually not sure why Mimosa

723
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: putica closes its leaves, though it is generally believed to

724
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:38,360
Speaker 1: be some kind of defensive reaction to prevent the leaves

725
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 1: from being eaten by grazing herbivores or insects. So if

726
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:45,600
Speaker 1: that's the case, you might wonder, well, why don't the

727
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:47,839
Speaker 1: plants just keep their leaves folded up all the time?

728
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:50,080
Speaker 1: Would then they'd be protected always? Why do they have

729
00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 1: to do it rapidly suddenly? Uh? Well, because if they

730
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:56,840
Speaker 1: were to keep their leaves closed all the time, the

731
00:41:56,960 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: plant would be drastically reducing its ability to collect unlight

732
00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:03,799
Speaker 1: and feed through photosynthesis. And this is the classic risk

733
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 1: reward paradigm that we know well with all kinds of animals.

734
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:09,680
Speaker 1: You have a small prey animal that might be much

735
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 1: safer if it stays and it's cozy little burrow all day.

736
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 1: But if it never leaves, it foregoes opportunities to get food.

737
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:18,800
Speaker 1: It needs to go out to do the things that

738
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: it must do to sustain its life cycle and reproduce.

739
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:23,680
Speaker 1: So it's got to find food, it's got to find mates.

740
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 1: And you know you're not going to get that just

741
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:27,239
Speaker 1: sitting in your hole. And you could say the same

742
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:29,800
Speaker 1: is true for this plant. So the evolutionary logic that

743
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,320
Speaker 1: drives the folding behavior of the leaves and the sensitive

744
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:37,800
Speaker 1: plant will reward the folding in scenarios where it actually

745
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 1: protects the leaf from predation, but it will punish unnecessary folding,

746
00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:47,759
Speaker 1: which wastes precious opportunities to harvest the sunlight. And we've

747
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:50,560
Speaker 1: already seen a couple of demonstrations of this balance. One

748
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: is that the leaves tend to fold at night time

749
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:57,239
Speaker 1: when there's no point in being exposed because there's no

750
00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: sunlight to absorb. And another is that once the leaves

751
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,360
Speaker 1: close in response to a seismic stimulus, they reopen again,

752
00:43:04,719 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: usually within a few minutes. They're ready to get back

753
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:09,719
Speaker 1: to the buffet. But to continue the logic of this

754
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: risk reward balance, it would also obviously benefit the plant

755
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 1: if it had a mechanism for discriminating between a potentially

756
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 1: dangerous seismic stimulus and a harmless one. And you can

757
00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:26,360
Speaker 1: imagine scenarios in the wild where plants are repeatedly shaken

758
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: in some way or subjected to physical contact with objects

759
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 1: in the environment, maybe by wind or something uh in

760
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 1: a way that is not actually a threat to the plant.

761
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 1: Were closing the leaflets every time that happened would be

762
00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:44,239
Speaker 1: pointless and harmful to survival. So do these plants have

763
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 1: a mechanism that allows them to discriminate like that? And

764
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:50,880
Speaker 1: according to this following study, it looks like maybe they do. So.

765
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 1: This was a study published in Ecologia in by Monica Gagliano,

766
00:43:56,400 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: Michael Renton, Martial dip Chinsky, and stuff Fauno Mancuso called

767
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 1: experience teaches plants to learn faster and forget slower in

768
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:08,359
Speaker 1: environments where it matters. So the authors write in their

769
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:13,200
Speaker 1: abstract quote, the nervous system of animals serves the acquisition, memorization,

770
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 1: and recollection of information. Like animals, plants also acquire a

771
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:21,360
Speaker 1: huge amount of information from their environment, Yet their capacity

772
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:25,560
Speaker 1: to memorize and organized learned behavioral responses has not been

773
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 1: demonstrated in Mimosa putica, the sensitive plant. The defensive leaf

774
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:35,920
Speaker 1: folding behavior in response to repeated physical disturbance exhibits clear habituation,

775
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 1: suggesting some elementary form of learning. So how do they

776
00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: actually demonstrate this, Well, they did a series of experiments,

777
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:49,000
Speaker 1: but one of their models is they took potted specimens

778
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: of Mimosa putica and they mounted them on this contraption

779
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:56,120
Speaker 1: that would repeatedly drop the potted plant a distance of

780
00:44:56,200 --> 00:45:00,640
Speaker 1: fifteen centimeters onto a padded surface, and the drops were

781
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 1: organized into repeated sessions of multiple exposures. And sure enough,

782
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 1: the plants, after they were repeatedly exposed to the same

783
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:13,840
Speaker 1: fifteen centimeter drop, started reopening their leaves more quickly and

784
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: eventually started ignoring the stimulus more or less entirely, just

785
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: keeping their leaves open during a drop. And that's really interesting.

786
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:25,800
Speaker 1: It might seem to indicate that the plant is becoming

787
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:30,360
Speaker 1: habituated to this particular thing. It's like, Okay, being dropped

788
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:33,320
Speaker 1: fifteen centimeters is just something that happens. Now, This is

789
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:35,120
Speaker 1: just how things are. I know what it feels like.

790
00:45:35,239 --> 00:45:37,600
Speaker 1: It doesn't hurt me. I'm over it. By the way

791
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:40,879
Speaker 1: that I guess I am anthropomorphizing there, so I don't

792
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:43,920
Speaker 1: mean to imply that it is actually reasoning out in

793
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:47,799
Speaker 1: in uh semantic logic like that. But that's to give

794
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:50,919
Speaker 1: you the idea that it's somehow becoming habituated to something

795
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 1: that's happening over and over again without hurting it, and

796
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 1: it's just learning to ignore that thing. Now, there's an

797
00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 1: obvious other explanation if this was all they discovered. What

798
00:46:01,880 --> 00:46:04,800
Speaker 1: if this was just the plant's leaf closing mechanism getting

799
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:07,960
Speaker 1: worn out over time, It's just becoming exhausted and running

800
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 1: out of the juice that it needs to use to

801
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: close its leaves. Well, the researchers they thought about this,

802
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:17,160
Speaker 1: and they controlled for this by introducing a new novel

803
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:21,440
Speaker 1: stimulus after the plant became habituated. This was the shake,

804
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: so different from the drop, but it would also stimulate

805
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:28,840
Speaker 1: the seismonastic closure of the leaflets to shake the potted plant.

806
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: And they found that even when a plant had become

807
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: desensitized to the drop, apparently through habituation, it would still

808
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: close its leaves just like normal when given a shake.

809
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: So this would seem to help rule out the idea

810
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 1: that it's just the plant's leaf closure mechanisms becoming exhausted

811
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:49,320
Speaker 1: by repeated use. Now, there are some more interesting details

812
00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:51,160
Speaker 1: from this and this one that we might get into

813
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:54,400
Speaker 1: in the in the next part of this series. For example,

814
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:57,320
Speaker 1: they found that apparently this uh, this habituation to the

815
00:46:57,360 --> 00:47:00,400
Speaker 1: fifteen centimeter drop was still present weeks later after the

816
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 1: initial sessions, and that it was variable and adaptable depending

817
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: on the hostility of the conditions, like the light conditions

818
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:12,480
Speaker 1: in which it was happening. But maybe if we get

819
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:14,359
Speaker 1: into those, we can do that in part two, because

820
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:16,719
Speaker 1: I think we need to wrap up part one for now,

821
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: but I'm so excited all the things we get to

822
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:21,680
Speaker 1: talk about when we come come back next time. More

823
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 1: research on plants and memory. Uh. If plants do in

824
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:28,879
Speaker 1: fact possess some rudimentary form of memory and learning, how

825
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:31,200
Speaker 1: what is the physical basis of that, given of course

826
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:34,279
Speaker 1: that they don't have brains, uh? And what would that

827
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: mean for our understanding of what intelligence and its subdivided

828
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:41,080
Speaker 1: parts are. Yeah? Yeah, this should continue to be a

829
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 1: fun exploration. And this is this is an exploration that

830
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:46,000
Speaker 1: we've we've been talking about doing for years and I

831
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:48,920
Speaker 1: know we've had some listeners, right in requesting that we

832
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:52,239
Speaker 1: cover this topic. So it's great to finally be able

833
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 1: to dive in. All right, so we're gonna go and

834
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 1: close it out, but we'll be back next time with

835
00:47:57,880 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: more on on this topic. Uh. In the meantime, if

836
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:02,960
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to

837
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:05,360
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, our core episodes come out on Tuesdays

838
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:08,000
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, we have a rerun that comes out of

839
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:11,920
Speaker 1: fault episode. On the weekend, we do listener mail on Monday,

840
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:14,800
Speaker 1: we do a short form artifactor Monster Fact on Wednesday,

841
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: and on Friday we set aside most serious matters and

842
00:48:18,280 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: just discuss a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Huge

843
00:48:21,640 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 1: thanks as always to UH well, actually to our regular

844
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:28,920
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, and thanks to our guest producer

845
00:48:29,040 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 1: today Paul decand uh Paul really appreciate you seven in

846
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:35,279
Speaker 1: for us today. If you would like to get in

847
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

848
00:48:38,719 --> 00:48:40,800
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

849
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:44,320
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff

850
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:54,400
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

851
00:48:54,440 --> 00:48:57,360
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

852
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Speaker 1: for My Heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.