Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plants “panic” when it rains

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 92 posts

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#81

Post by tempguy9999 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #77
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time scale isn't enough to prevent us from recognizing intelligence and cognition in trees (I can't speak for the trees recognizing us). Look at their works, their accomplishments, their cooperative social organization. They've had a long, long time to show us that. Oh! They've done nothing! No tribes nor social exchanges - never even mention hospitals and lasers and money and law... No, trees are not sentient, intel…

No grifting, fraud, hoaxes, deceptions, violence, dishonesty -never even mention atom bombs, firethrowers, IEDs ... Clearly not sentient.

Plants can be parasites, practice deceit, produce poisons to kill animals and other competing plants, kill other plants by strangultion as well (and likely other ways). Perhaps that was your point and I missed it.

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#82

Post by tempguy9999 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #77
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time scale isn't enough to prevent us from recognizing intelligence and cognition in trees (I can't speak for the trees recognizing us). Look at their works, their accomplishments, their cooperative social organization. They've had a long, long time to show us that. Oh! They've done nothing! No tribes nor social exchanges - never even mention hospitals and lasers and money and law... No, trees are not sentient, intel…

No grifting, fraud, hoaxes, deceptions, violence, dishonesty -never even mention atom bombs, firethrowers, IEDs ... Clearly not sentient.

In addition, not read this paper but it's high on my to-do list:

"Learning by Association in Plants"

extract of abstract: "the possibility that plants are also able to acquire learned associations to guide their foraging behaviour has never been demonstrated. Here we show that this type of learning occurs in the garden pea, Pisum sativum. By using a Y-maze task, we show that the position of a neutral cue, predicting the location of a light source, affected the direction of plant growth. This learned behaviour prevailed over innate phototropism"

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep38427

Incredible, if validated.

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#84

Post by EdwardDiego »

sigmaprimus wrote: post #58
EdwardDiego wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have plenty of redwoods growing in my country (NZ) that aren't watered by fogs but by just plain ol' rain. While I'm sure that fogs are essential for redwoods in the California climate, it doesn't mean they are inherently coupled - they grow quite happily in the inland Canterbury Plains, bugger all fog, but enough rain to get them watered. Hell, we even named a suburb after one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwo…

Fair enough, interesting fact just as all roosters are chickens but not all chickens are roosters, not all redwoods are sequoias. I actually mixed them up too. http://sequoia.visionbib.com/sequoia-redwood.html

Yep, I've seen both in our botanic gardens :)

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#85

Post by UnFleshedOne »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #56
coldtea wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there times when "panic" is an appropriate response to something? Yes. When something is panic inducing. Note that the bad connotations of panic are for not panic worthy situations (e.g. don't panic when you just lost your wallet, etc). But when chased by a predator, a panic response is a good, and evolutionary created, way, to get from 0-60 mph adrenaline and speed wise... A gazelle doesn't sit still and weigh…

I think "panic" is a segment between realising you're in danger and responding, eg "running". Panic is when you know you need to respond quickly and come to a conclusion as to the best action, but you know you can't wait for your thought process to play through. Once you decide to move, run (if that wasn't an instinctive response), then panic is over and action has ensued. It's the "beachball of doom" bit that happen…

By this definition panic can also be a instinctive (and rational) action -- sometimes just breaking paralysis and doing something is a statistically better than freezing in place. So it serves as an early interruption mechanism when the system doesn't have confidence that new solutions will be forthcoming in time to be useful.

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#86

Post by quixoticelixer- »

sigmaprimus wrote: post #16
quixoticelixer- wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sequoias still see a lot of rainfall where they live

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fog-that-nourishe... https://baynature.org/article/fog-and-redwoods-demystifying-...

That's in summer, they still get a lot of rainfall in winter. Even then not more than half their water in summer comes from fog

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#87

Post by 8bitsrule »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #81
8bitsrule wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No grifting, fraud, hoaxes, deceptions, violence, dishonesty -never even mention atom bombs, firethrowers, IEDs ... Clearly not sentient.

Plants can be parasites, practice deceit, produce poisons to kill animals and other competing plants, kill other plants by strangultion as well (and likely other ways). Perhaps that was your point and I missed it.

"Plants can ...practice deceit"

Sounds almost like intentionality (sentience) there.

Plants sure aren't all sweetness and light. I did suggest that, while sentience leads to inventions, it also leads to (non-feeding) murder, war (largely restricted to humans), and possibly extinction. If we 'have' any advantages on plants, sentience may not be it.

Plants can't move, and can't speak. That may explain why they've been around for oh, 50 times longer than us. And will almost certainly be around LONG after we're not. Smart?

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#88

Post by tempguy9999 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #87
tempguy9999 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants can be parasites, practice deceit, produce poisons to kill animals and other competing plants, kill other plants by strangultion as well (and likely other ways). Perhaps that was your point and I missed it.

"Plants can ...practice deceit" Sounds almost like intentionality (sentience) there. Plants sure aren't all sweetness and light. I did suggest that, while sentience leads to inventions, it also leads to (non-feeding) murder, war (largely restricted to humans), and possibly extinction. If we 'have' any advantages on plants, sentience may not be it. Plants can't move, and can't speak. That may explain why they've been…

Not agreeing or disagreeing, just pinning stuff down here...

> Sounds almost like intentionality (sentience) there

Hmm. Clarification needed - does the concept of deceit mean the deceiver understands what it is doing ie. has theory of mind? If so, I'd guess plants do not deceive but do something similar driven by evolution[0] that we need a different word for as it's not sentience-driven.

I'm open to the idea of evolution itself has some sentience but I'd not waste time on it as I don't see it's a testable hypothesis.

> If we 'have' any advantages on plants, sentience may not be it.

Agreed, but sentience may actually be an advantage. After all it's not the sentience in mankind that genuinely makes me despair but other features such as greed and short-termism. Fix those and maybe our chances of racial survival would be hugely increased. IOW we have many mental aspects and sentience is only one of them.

> around for oh, 50 times longer than us

Plants separated from aninmls ~1.7 billion years ago (figure from memory), humans have been around a few hundred thousand years, by various definitions of 'human'. I guess you dropped a few zeros :)

[0] eg. natural variegation in plants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variegation) seems to make insects attack them less as discoloration makes the plants look to the insects less healthy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variegation#Defensive_masquera...).

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#89

Post by jcranberry »

narag wrote: post #67
nkrisc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we don't really have words to describe plant behavior. I agree, we can't view plants through an animalian lense, but at the same time we have to use the words we have to discuss them. I think it's fair to say plant "panic" is different than animal "panic" but from what I read, panic seems to be the closest analogue.

Panic is not the same as fear. Panic (insert here mythological reference to god Pan) is a kind of fear that causes uncontrolled, irrational and often counterproductive behaviour. Is that the case?

'uncontrolled and irrational' is only a bad thing in the context of human rationality and self control. plants obviously do not have such a thing--all their actions are primal and unmoderated. So panic for a plant would probably mean something like an immediate response to adverse stimuli, with an immediate and short-term goal of self-preservation.

Re: Plants “panic” when it rains

#90

Post by DoctorOetker »

dunstad wrote: post #2

If you liked this one, you might also enjoy reading about the mycorrhizal networks some plants can use to communicate between each other: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden...

I have eaten fruits and nuts, and pissed and defecated in nature, so I have also communicated with plants both ways...
Post reply on HN