Hi all,
Here`s something I found and thought of often;
Plant perception
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photo of BasilPlant perception, or biocommunication in plant cells, is a belief that plants feel emotions such as fear and affection, respond to stimuli, and have the ability to communicate with other forms of life. While plants can communicate through airborne signals, and certainly have complex responses to stimuli, the belief in cognitive abilities receives almost no support amongst the scientific community.
The notion that plants are capable of feeling emotions was first recorded in 1848, when Dr. Gustav Theodor Fechner, a German professor, suggested the idea in his book Nanna. He believed that plants are capable of emotions, just like humans or animals, and that one could promote healthy growth by showering plants with talk, attention, and affection.[1]
One of the first to research the concept was the Indian scientist Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, who began to conduct experiments on plants in the year 1900. He found that every plant and every part of a plant appeared to have a sensitive nervous system and responded to shock by a spasm just as an animal muscle does. One visitor to his laboratory, the vegetarian playwright George Bernard Shaw, was intensely disturbed upon witnessing a demonstration in which a cabbage had violent convulsions as it boiled to death. Bose found that the effect of manures, drugs, and poisons could be determined within minutes, providing plant control with a new precision. Bose repeated his tests on metals, administering poisons to tin, zinc, and platinum, and obtained astonishing responses which, when plotted on a graph, appeared precisely like those of poisoned animals and plants. In addition, Bose found that plants grew more quickly amidst pleasant music and more slowly amidst loud noise or harsh sounds. He also claimed that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc.," from the analysis of the nature of variation of the cell membrane potential of plants, under different circumstances. According to him, a plant treated with care and affection gives out a different vibration compared to a plant subjected to torture. In conclusion, he said: "Do not these records tell us of some property of matter common and persistent? That there is no abrupt break, but a uniform and continuous march of law?" [2]
Bose in his laboratoryBose's experiments stopped at this conclusion, but Cleve Backster, an American scientist, conducted research that led him to believe that plants can communicate with other lifeforms. Backster's interest in the subject began in February 1966, when Backster wondered if he could measure the rate at which water rises from a philodendron's root area into its leaves. Because a polygraph or 'lie detector' can measure electrical resistance, and water would alter the resistance of the leaf, he decided that this was the correct instrument to use. After attaching a polygraph to one of the plant's leaves, Backster claimed that, to his immense surprise, "the tracing began to show a pattern typical of the response you get when you subject a human to emotional stimulation of short duration".
Led by curiosity, Backster went in search of other reactions, and decided to burn a leaf of the plant. Apparently, while he was musing upon this, there was a dramatic upward sweep in the tracing pattern. He had not moved or even touched the plant. Backster was certain that he had somehow inspired fear in the plant with his decision to burn it. He came to the resolution that, if he was correct, plants can not only feel things, but can also, in effect, read people's minds.
In the United Kingdom, the Bognor Regis Electronic Development Corporation of Sussex conducted a similar experiment. The Corporation found that their secretaries were much too busy to care for their plants, and, following the death of several of the plants through lack of water, they attached some electrodes to the plant. They reportedly discovered that the plants emitted sounds that came out through loudspeakers as mournful cries when they were in need of watering.
[edit] Support and skepticism
Backster and Bose are not entirely alone among scientists in their view. Among the supporters of the theory are Robert B. Stone, Ph.D., a member of Mensa, and the author of The Secret Life of Your Cells, and the renowned botanist, Luther Burbank, who, in his book Training of the Human Plant, wrote that plants cannot understand the spoken word, but that they may be capable of telepathically understanding the meaning of speech. These claims have been viewed with extreme skepticism.[3] Many people hold the belief that talking to their plants and showering them with attention will make them grow more speedily.
In the scientific community as a whole, the biocommunication notion has been subjected to much criticism, and is largely regarded as a pseudoscience. Overall, there is little concrete, universally verified evidence suggesting that there is any truth to the theory, and it is therefore apt to receive a great deal of contempt among scientific circles, often disdainfully called 'the Backster Effect'. Skeptics typically criticize the fact that many experiments into 'plant perception' are not taken in controlled conditions and that therefore their results are not verifiable evidence of its existence. Many skeptics of the theory also state that, since plants lack nervous or sensory systems, they are not capable having feelings, or perceiving human emotions or intentions, which, they say, would require a complex nervous system. [4]
Though not supporting or dismissing the theory, English author Roald Dahl wrote a short story entitled 'The Sound Machine' dealing with the theory, in which the protaganist developes a machine that enables him to hear the sound of plants, especially when they are under pain. With the machine he hears the scream of grass being cut, and the moan of a tree when he strikes it with an axe.
"Tomatoes have feelings too" is an infamous graffiti on the wall of the former Carlton and United Breweries building in Victoria Parade, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The graffiti, in red paint, appeared in the 1970's and was a Melbourne cultural icon.[citation needed]
Well what do ya think,I heard about this yrs ago and come on plants are living things they `feel`,so the question is what do the vegetarian`s feel about this?
Also,lol when I drink water does it scream while its going down my throat.
