Do plants feel pain: assumptions, theories and scientific facts

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:55

Have you ever wondered if plants feel pain? You can often meet a person who mindlessly breaks the stem of a flower or plunges a sharp ax into a birch tree to get juice from it in return. From birth, people have the idea that plants are inanimate, because they do not move, which means that they have no feelings. Is it so? Let's find out.

What the smell says

Everyone is probably familiar with the smell of freshly cut grass, which is felt after the lawn mower passes over the lawn. However, few people know that this smell is a kind of request for help. Plants sense danger, an impending threat, so they release chemicals into the air that reach our sense of smell. Science knows many such cases. For example, plants are able to release caffeine and stupefy bees, primarily to protect themselves or scare them away.approaching enemy.

The effect of the smell of freshly cut grass on a person

Despite the fact that plants warn of danger with this smell, it affects a person in an extremely unusual way. The chemicals released into the air act on parts of the brain (namely the amygdala and hippocampus, which are responsible for emotions and stress) in a calming way. The person feels balanced and calm. Based on this, it was decided to create a fragrance with this smell.

Do plants feel pain?

In answering this question, opinions differ. Scientists from the Institute of Applied Physics in Germany claim that plants also feel pain. At least they give some hints of it. For example, scientists have found that when plants are harmed (the stems are cut off), they emit gases that are equivalent to human tears. With the help of a laser microphone, it was even possible to catch sound waves that came from a wounded representative of the flora. Human hearing aids can't hear them, so we can't hear the plants' peculiar cries for help when we prepare a seemingly harmless salad.

Scientists at Columbia University have found that plants sense when they are being attacked by caterpillars for a bite to eat and turn on a defense mechanism. They can also sense danger to other plants.

From such considerations, some scientists conclude that, indeed, plants feel pain,and others argue that they cannot do this without a brain that regulates the manifestations of certain feelings and emotions. However, most scientists dwell on the fact that flora does not need to be conscious to do so.

From a scientific point of view

It is believed that plants, in fact, like animals, have an essence that consists of the etheric and astral bodies. This unites them with the person. That is, plants experience pain and fear, only in a different way. First of all, this is due to differences in the structure. Despite the fact that plants do not have such a nervous system that a person possesses and which is known to us from school anatomy, they have their own special individual system, their own nerves, which allow them to respond to environmental stimuli. Therefore, when plucking a leaf and cutting off the stem of a plant, one should remember that they can also experience pain.

Kickbacks

However, plants are not so simple in nature and can even hit back at the offender if he decides to harm them. For example, there are a lot of such representatives of the flora that are covered with spikes or needles, which allow them to protect themselves from the attack of surrounding enemies. There are also plants that release poisonous substances that paralyze, and in the worst case, kill the enemy.

Science Facts

Do plants feel pain? Answer this questiontried the polygraph examiner Cleve Baxter, who began studying plants in 1960. He was one of the first to wonder if plants experience pain. He almost succeeded in proving that plants are capable of sensory knowledge of the objects of the surrounding world. Cleve conducted a series of experiments in which he used a lie detector that reacts to the skin. When the plant was hurt, the polygraph examiner recorded the reactions of the galvanic skin electrodes. The results of the experiment showed that representatives of the flora react to pain in almost the same way as a person. After repeated experiments, the results showed the same changes.

Followed by Baxter's article, in which he argued that plants are able to capture the emotions and thoughts of people, respond to their desires and actions.

The experiments of the polygraph examiner were called unscientific and dubious, since after him no one else was able to repeat them. Later, Clive Baxter's claims were supported by Veniamin Noevich Pushkin, who worked at the Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology.

The Mythbusters television program wanted to repeat Cleave's experiments. To do this, its creators decided to do the same experiments and used a galvanometer, which was supposed to show the reaction of the plant if it experienced pain. Indeed, during the first test, the device showed a response of one third, but the experimenters referred to the fact that vibration from their own movements could be the reason for this. Repeated experiments were unsuccessful and gave them every right to recognize the theory as false.

Despite the fact that plants canturn towards the sun and make movements, this is explained from a biological point of view and has nothing to do with pain.

Also, one should not forget that nature strictly divided the representatives of the animal and plant kingdoms, depriving the former of the content of cellulose in tissues, but providing them with a nervous system. Unlike them, plant cells contain cellulose, but they do not have such a nervous and sensory system. Therefore, they simply do not have pain, fear, emotions and everything that is provided by the activity of the brain.

In the words of scientists

Professor Daniel Chamovitz claims that plants definitely feel mechanical stimulation, that is, they feel touch, gusts of wind. However, in his opinion, the answer to the question whether plants feel pain is negative for the following reasons:

• Plants don't have a brain.
• They don't have a nervous system.
• Plants also lack pain receptors.

In order for the representatives of the flora to experience pain, according to scientists, it is necessary to transmit impulses to the central nervous system, which they do not have. It is known that only organisms whose tissues contain nociceptors - pain receptors, can experience pain from cuts and wounds. Since they do not exist in plants, this allows scientists to say for sure that representatives of the flora do not experience the sensations inherent in humans. Perhaps over time there will be other justifications for whether plants feel pain.