An interesting specimen of our ecosystem would have to be the plants that exist all about us. They have evolved quite differently then animals have ever since the disappearance of the mighty Dinosaurs which once roamed this planet *If you believe in them, and believe some don't*.

Due to this, we are actually at a lose as to what they truly can be potentially like, for even now people are figuring out how to decipher what they are saying via the low sounds they transmit every so often. Also plants use chemicals to communicate with each other, and also react to their surroundings. Simply put, a plant will actually fight to survive, by pushing it's way to the sunlight, even if that means blocking the sun from reaching another plant. They reproduce constantly, and even some of them have developed in such a way that they can devour insects, which makes some plants carnivores.

So here is something I thought up once but got shot down by people quite quickly, people who couldn't see anything if it was dangled right there in front of their eyes and explained in the simplest terms to them. Could it be possible that plants can also feel pain in some sort of way? That they have some sort of nervous system?

that depends on how u will define feel... personally, im not gonna get all worked up about having a salad unless the carrots start reciting dissertations on the meaning of existence...

Plants get sick if some one mean starts living near them.. or if their owner gets sick.. I've seen it happen..

Plants get healthy if you send positive signals towards them and care for them..

If you cut off large parts of a plant it may die of shock.. if you relocate it.. it also suffers..

its might be true.. but they still survive with no problem if an animal eats its vegies or leaves off..

Feel as in something akin to what we consider pain, or at least some sort of knowledge that a piece of them has become damaged.

great... now this thread is becoming a crazy fruitarian rant...

I see why that Pyrric Dicktory person wrote that this board is filled with idiots, since not even a moderator can tell when something is a rant or when it is not a rant.

No, they can't feel pain (in the physical sense) and here's why:

Plants, while refined and quite complex, are still some of the simplest lifeforms. They do not have a centralized nervous system. Hell, they don't have any kind of nervous system whatsoever. So why's this important? Here's why:

Pain describes "impulses or sensations that are observed by the nervous system of any particular being that alert its hosting being to the existance of damage in order to react." Translation: Pain exists in order to tell the person/animal, "Hey, there's a stabbing in your bum, sit up." Physical pain is a sense indicating that physical reaction is neccesary. If you put your arm up to a sawblade, the pain will force you to move your arm away from the sawblade.

So why don't plants feel pain? Because they can't move, at least not effeciently enough to avoid damage. For a plant, damage is handled at a cellular level. If they're cut they will "bleed" liquids made of cells which will "coagulate" into a hard substance which prevents further damage and disease to the plant (in most cases). In comparison to almost any animal, the plant is very limited in how it can respond to its environment.

Another example to drive the point home: Say you were stuck in the ground like a plant, but that's the only similarity you share with the plant. If someone started tossing rocks at you it'd hurt. However, you're stuck in the ground so you can't take shelter, or go pummel this person into submission. No, you only get to stand there and get hit with rocks. Pain is useless in your case. It's an annoyance and is in no way constructive. After a prolonged period of time you would probably learn to ignore the pain, and your children (who would also be stuck in the ground) would be less prone to pain and so on and so forth so that the end result is a person stuck in the ground with no nervous system because they can't respond to stimulii of their environment and therefore they are a plant.

I'll give a small scrap of credibility to your question though. It's argued that plants have an entire range of emotions on another plane. This is, indeed, possible and they may even have a decentralized nervous system on this other plane. The subject doesn't interest me so I don't study it but if you'd like to go into the issue further I'd reccomend posting in the religious forum, or finding those pagans on the usenet group that talk to trees.

I hope I don't sound too cocky and remember that this is only my opinion on the issue but I can gaurantee that most biologists will concur with my opinion.

Actually that was an intelligent response, unlike what has occured almost consistently in the past. I have one question though, how does a plant know when to start to release certain chemicals into the air so that other plants will know that that someone is eating/damaging plants, therefore they can create poisons and all of the other things they do to deal with those beings.

Did I contribute to the fruitiness of this thread?

At the moment I have yet to truly do any form of "character assassination" *please learn how to spell, or at least use the mighty spell check* against you yet... when that does indeed occur you shall of course quickly notice it.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Anti-Think.

whats with errant? threatened to close like 4 threads today.. thoust art a tyranical mod

Again, all things occur at a cellular level. On the cellular level I would argue that plants are much more refined than humans. It's very debatable and I'd probably lose such a debate but I digress.

Poisons/Thorns/Colors have evolved over time. Throughout the evolutionary process small discrepancies are favored. Millions of years ago when a plant grew some small semi-sharp notches it was favored by evolution because birds couldn't land on it as easily and were therefore less likely to damage the plant. With this, the plant became dominant, and was able to better reproduce. Of course that plant "gave birth" to a series of other plants with semi-sharp notches. The longer and sharper they were the more effective they were at swaying their enemies away from themselves, thus they had an even better chance at procreation.

That's how most unique characteristics of plants came to be. Now let's take a look at how they respond (semi-quickly) to local stimulii of their environment.

I'm not sure if other plants will respond to chemicals released by an attacked plant, however we can safely bet that the only way the chemicals are released into the air is through the damage of the plant itself. If you or I were to go raviging through a patch of particularly dusty flowers, then we'd stir up the dust. Perhaps that dust lands on other plants, and those cells interact with certain cells on these other plants and those cells respond by spawning cells with a higher toxicity level. I wouldn't know, as I've said, I don't study plants much. On this subject matter I'm not so confident about other people backing up my claims, due to my lack of study. But I'm fairly confident this is how things work.

I'm sorry about sounding wierd when I said that when you send positive thoughts towards a plant it grows..

but... this might prove interesting

Psychic Plants

What in the hell is it with you and plants...... ok... noone at any time has been able to find any sort of a brain in any sort of plants... which argues against any sort of self awareness.... also we have lived off of plants for millions of years.... thousands if you believe historians at all.... you would think that if they are self aware they would have presented a defense against being consumed by us by now.... they have not... perhaps they can have rudimentary sorts of feeling.... that I do not doubt.... yet that feeling is akin to conditioned reflex rather than any sort of aware decision making.... and besides... what the hell would we eat if plants were indeed self aware???? If they were I am sure we would know it..... yes they have developed simple defenses against creatures without prehensile appendages.... thorns, poison secretions and what not.... well... so... a question... would you stop consuming plants if you were aware that they were aware.???? and if so what would you eat????

I personally think that plants enjoy to be consumed by humans... and animals.... there is a proper food chain here on Earth.... Mankind is the X-factor...... a hidden variable.... we have a very tenuous relationship with everything on the Earth.... however we came to be.... we began to cultivate certain crops.... we would grow them to full maturity and than harvest them.... without us those plants would not have existed and may have faded from the food chain.....
I do agree with you that plants can feel.... though I very much doubt that they have any sort of cognizance or self awareness... feeling does not mean that it (a plant) is aware of anything more than those feelings..... following warmth across a sky is because they are capturing ultra-violet light from the sun which in turn they use photosynthesis to conserve and relay it to other neccesary functions.... do you maybe think that fungus can feel???
heheh.....

I'll help
...to me plants have an essence, you kill the plant, the plant is just a dead plant, but the "spirit" of that plant carries on, and it is that entity that feels the pain. When someone eats a salad or chops down a tree, then it is swift and the "spirit" can move on...but if it is in a situation where it is being tortured, yet can not leave, it is in pain...if you pick a flower, it's roots are still there, if you rip it out of the ground, the "spirit" loses it's home and dissipitates...and yes I do believe in little people:p

I don't like your argument that "since we eat it, it isn't self-aware." I personally see no difference in eating humans as opposed to other animals. Humans are animals and are made of meat.

Also, a fruitarian is one who eats only fruits for sustenance, not whatever was implied earlier.

And finally, if I could chemically produce (efficiently) all of the nutrients my body must possess to live sufficiently healthily, I would. I would be responsible for no death, animals or plants.

For the record I chose the scientific response as apposed to the metaphysical response because I do enough research in psionics with humans alone that I hardly have time to pay attention to theories on the plants role in the scheme. But I'll give you a quick taste of the theories my group has put forward:

Plants, have just as much a soul as the rest of us. The plants with the strongest souls are trees. Plants might be capable of communication with humans. Our rough theory states, however, that plants have a strange identity. It is a matrix of thought just as plants become a matrix of presence in the physical universe. In theory plants can and do hold a unique experience. This experience, however, is not stored directly with its ethereal presence. Rather, it is stored in the earth, along with the experience of every other plants on earth. It works sort of like a centralized processing computer with multiple terminals (if you have an understanding of computers this will bring things into full clarity). Basicly the terminal (plant) can interact with its user (life) store information unique to itself, and acquire data. However if you were to ask the terminal a question, it would be directed to the central processor (earth, sum of all plant life) for the answer. So if you asked a plant "Do you like being planted near the road" you would be answered with a consensus amongst all plants, and other earth oriented spirits in general. This is, however, wholly in theory and has not been independently verified, or verified in mass. The group I belong to is too busy working on attacks/defenses in psionics to worry about the nature of plants and their impact on the nature of psionics. They are, in fact, quite neutral.

Psionics???
Okies..... can you see when the guys in white suits are coming for you before they actually come???