Guess riddle. It communicates, screams when attacked and can undergo the effects of anesthesia. It could be any animal, including a human being, but it is not an animal, although it is a living being. It is practically any plant. When thinking about the plant characteristics, certainly those are not the first ones that come to mind. However, in recent years, studies have been published that bring to light the most curious qualities of the plant world, due to its fascinating resemblance to animals.
Before moving forward, it is important to make something clear. 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. Because plants do not have a nervous system and, therefore, they don’t suffer like an animal.
Therefore, these characteristics of plants are interesting and curious facts, but not the reason to compare them with animals. Obviously, you also have to take care of them. Cutting down trees without rhyme or reason, as they do in some large cities in Spain, makes no sense. It is not good for the vegetation, but not for us either, since it is still the same as removing some of the city’s lungs. This riddle, after all, is a call to curiosity and common sense. Nothing more, nothing less.
Characteristics of plants that look human
If we look for the word “plant” in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, we will see that it is defined as “autotrophic and photosynthetic living being, whose cells have a wall composed mainly of cellulose and lack locomotor capacity.”
Therefore, those could be considered the most common plant characteristics. And they are all true, of course. But many more are known, some of them most curious. 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 have been discovered in much more recent times. It is the case of the communication between plants.
In the 1980sit was discovered that many plants have the ability to release chemicals in response to injury by the pest attack. These seemed to have two functions. The first and clearest was precisely to scare away said predators. But it seemed that there was another: alert nearby plants so that they would also emit defensive substances and be ready for the attack.
This made sense, but how exactly it happens has not been proven until now. A team of Japanese scientists has managed to capture recently the right moment when the plants they talk among them, thus describing what mechanisms they use.
They have achieved this after carrying out an experiment with plants of the species Arabidopsis thaliana and caterpillars of Spodoptera litura. They placed the caterpillars on the leaves of a plant and, next to it, they placed another completely healthy one. Previously, plants had been genetically modified so that their cells fluoresced in response to the release of calcium ions. This decision was made because this is a normal reaction in communication between animal cells. But we are talking about cells within the same animal.
The damaged plants were placed in a bottle that allowed the substances released from the wounded leaves to be measured and, in turn, bombarded outside. Thus, it was seen that, as the caterpillars deteriorated the leaves, more and more chemical compounds were emitted, which immediately triggered the release of calcium ions in the cells of the healthy plant. These compounds were mainly two: Z-3-HAL and E-2-HAL.
They also scream, even if you don’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 subjected to stress or are in danger of death.
It was the conclusion of a study also carried out a few months ago. As with the previous investigation, this is something that was already intuited. In previous years, it had been proven that, by placing vibrometers next to the plants, they detected waves in response to stress. But were they acoustic waves?
To verify this, a team of scientists from the Tel Aviv University placed a series of plants in acoustic boxes linked to ultrasonic microphones, capable of detecting sounds at frequencies ranging from 20 to 250 kilohertz. A third of the plants were cared for normally, while the stems of the second third were cut and the other third were left unwatered for too long.
When checking the microphone recordings, something exciting was discovered. All the plants emitted some kind of clicks inaudible to the human ear. However, while those that had been cared for normally made less than one click per hour, the damaged and dehydrated ones made dozens of clicks in the same time. Therefore, they seemed like warning cries that something was not right.
All this is interesting enough in itself, but there is more. And it could be said that the plants they speak languages, since the clicks were characteristic of each species. Without a doubt, we did not expect these characteristics of plants, but that is what makes them so exciting.
They succumb to anesthesia just like animals
We might think that susceptibility to anesthesia is only a thing for animals. However, any living being, whatever it may be, can succumb to this set of chemicals. From bacteria to plants. They all fall into the embrace of Morpheus, in one way or another, when they are anesthetized.
In the case of plants, one of the first people to prove it was the French physiologist Claude Bernard. He did it in 1878, after subjecting the plant Mimosa pudica for the purposes of ether. This plant is sensitive to touch. However, when put in contact with this anesthetic substance, it closed its leaves and did not respond to tactile stimuli as it normally does.
Such is the effect of anesthesia on plants that they have been used to better understand how anesthetics act on humans. As models for this, the venus flytrap. This carnivorous plant also responds to touch, but through the release of electrical impulses that are very similar to those of the human nervous system. In fact, this does not mean that plants have a nervous system and suffer like animals. But you can see how certain compounds, such as ether, affect these impulses.
Ultimately, plants are not animals, of course. However, there are certain characteristics of plants that almost make us confuse them with them. Are there more that have not been discovered yet?