Guess a riddle. It communicates, screams when attacked, and can be subject to anesthesia. It could be any animal, including a person, but it is not an animal, although it is a living creature. It’s practically any plant. When you think about plant characteristicsOf course, these are not the first ones that come to mind. However, in recent years, studies have been published that reveal the most curious features of the plant world, due to its striking similarity to animals.
Before we move forward, it’s important to clarify something. This is not an attempt to equate plants with animals or to attack the vegetarian diet. The latter continues to be the most sustainable and healthy option and at the same time the only one that does not entail suffering. Since plants do not have a nervous system and therefore they don’t suffer like animals.
Therefore, these characteristics of plants are interesting and curious facts, but not a reason to compare them with animals. Of course, you will have to take care of them too. It makes no sense to cut down trees without reason or reason, as is done in some large cities in Spain. It’s not good for the vegetation, but it’s not good for us either, since it’s like removing part of the city’s lungs. Ultimately, this mystery is a call to curiosity and common sense. No more, no less.
Characteristics of human-like plants
If we look up the word “plant” in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, we see that it is defined as “an autotrophic and photosynthetic living creature whose cell walls are composed mainly of cellulose and lack the ability to move.”
Thus, they can be considered the most common characteristics of plants. And all of them, of course, are true. But much more is known, some of them are very interesting. So much so that they seem almost human. Without becoming one, of course.
Plants can communicate
Many of these plant characteristics have been known for decades, although new details were discovered much later. This is the case connection between plants.
V 1980sMany plants have been found to have the ability to release chemicals in response to damage. pest attack. They seemed to have two functions. The first and most obvious thing was to scare away the mentioned predators. But it seems there was something else: to warn nearby plants so that they, too, would secrete protective substances and be ready to attack.
This made sense, but exactly how this happens has not yet been proven. A group of Japanese scientists recently managed to capture the exact moment when plants they say among them, thus describing what mechanisms they use.
They achieved this after conducting an experiment with plants of the species Arabidopsis Taliana And caterpillars Spodoptera litura. The caterpillars were placed on the leaves of a plant, and another completely healthy one was placed next to it. Previously, plants were genetically modified so that their cells fluoresced in response to the release calcium ions. This decision was made because this is a normal reaction of communication between animal cells. But we’re talking about cells inside a single animal.
The damaged plants were placed in a bottle, which allowed the substances released from the wounded leaves to be measured, and were in turn bombarded outward. Thus, it was seen that as the caterpillars deteriorated the leaves, more and more chemical compounds were released, which immediately caused the release of calcium ions in the cells of the healthy plant. There were basically two of these connections: Z-3-HAL and E-2-HAL.
They also scream, even if you can’t hear them.
We have already seen that among the characteristics of plants is their ability to communicate. But they don’t just communicate by releasing volatile chemicals. They may also scream when exposed stress or are at risk of death.
This is the conclusion of a study also conducted a few months ago. As in the previous investigation, this was already intuitive. In previous years, it has been proven that by placing vibrometers near plants they detect waves. in response to stress. But were they acoustic waves?
To verify this, a group of scientists from Tel Aviv University placed a number of plants in acoustic boxes connected to ultrasonic microphones capable of picking up sounds at frequencies in the range from 20 to 250 kilohertz. The third plant was looked after normally, the second third had its stems cut off, and the third was left without watering for too long.
When checking the microphone recordings, something interesting was discovered. All the plants emitted some kind of clicks inaudible to the human ear. However, while those who were usually cared for made less than one click per hour, those who were injured and dehydrated made dozens of clicks at the same time. Therefore, they seemed to be warning screams that something was wrong.
All this is interesting enough in itself, but there is something more. We can say that plants they speak in tongues, since the clicks were characteristic of each species. No doubt we didn’t expect these plant characteristics, but that’s what makes them so interesting.
They are anesthetized like animals.
We might think that susceptibility to anesthesia is unique to animals. However, any living creature, no matter what it is, can be exposed to this range of chemicals. From bacteria to plants. All of them, one way or another, fall into the arms of Morpheus when they are under anesthesia.
In the case of plants, one of the first to demonstrate this was the French physiologist Claude Bernard. He did this in 1878, exposing the plant Mimosa bashful For purposes ether. This plant is sensitive to touch. However, upon contact with this anesthetic, it closed its leaves and did not respond to tactile stimuli as usual.
The effect of anesthesia on plants is so great that they have been used to better understand how anesthetics act in humans. The model used for this is Venus flytrap. This carnivorous plant also responds to touch, but by releasing electrical impulses very similar to those of the human nervous system. This does not actually mean that plants have a nervous system and suffer like animals. But you can see how these impulses are affected by certain compounds, such as ether.
Ultimately, plants are certainly not animals. However, there are certain characteristics of plants that almost make us confuse them with them. Is there anything else that hasn’t been discovered yet?
Source: Hiper Textual
