alt Hacker NewsSome variety of learnings over the last several years. Many of them are sensationalized; but my simple statement was "plants feel"; and many of these values imply some level of "feeling":
Plants scream when harmed:
[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-lou...
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-c...
Plants release VOCs when harmed:
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/...
(OP's main comment has several sources)
Plants respond to audio stimuli (hearing, sorta):
[3] https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&s...
[4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/
A quick search reveals several other incidences of other "huh"-worthy thoughts; but my goal was "plants feel" and I would argue these are close enough to shorthand to "feel"
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Science if finally catching up to Werner Herzog
>Of course there's a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain.
But seriously, the articles you posted are inappropriately repurposing words normally associated with conscious experience, in order to get attention.
There is lots of evidence plants react to stimuli. There is no evidence they feel.
I think this is a huge error which collapses the most urgently important distinction at the heart of the entire issue. Plants do complex, interesting things, and we borrow from an already existing vocabulary to make analogies. So people will say plants "feel" or "communicate" or "see".
But those are automatic biological reflexes, and using words with connotations to conscious awareness to describe them makes people think they're the same thing. But a plant "feeling pain" is repurposing words about consciousness to mean new and different things. And I think people are seduced by it because it feels like being open-minded to new possibilities.