Tuesday, September 23, 2014

“Smarty Plants” & the Roots of Plant Intelligence


“We think the Sagebrush are basically eavesdropping on one another.”
~Rick Karban, U.C. Davis Ecologist
Source: The New Yorker – The Intelligent Plant

A few weeks ago, PeapodLife posted a blog entitled Do Plants Hold the Secrets to Consciousness? . Today, we offer a good deal more dramatic evidence that plants not only behave, it is quite possible they have complex behaviour and even intelligence.

Genesis Eco Fund also wrote on the topic of plant communication as it relates to ecosystems back in July: Do Trees Communicate? Ecosystems & the Communication of Plants.

Mainstream materialist science has no choice but to accept plants are not the passive organisms it assumed them to be. And while many still dismiss the notion of plant intelligence, others are embracing a different view.

Probably the most well-known of these is Stefano Mancuso, Plant Neurobiologist. Here is his TED Talk from 2010:

Video: TED Talk - Stefano Mancuso: The roots of plant intelligence 

Listening to the passion of his presentation, one can easily comprehend why Mancuso is the Co-Founder of LINV - International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.

Plant Neurobiology? Plant Neurobiologist? But plants don’t have a brain. “If you are a plant, having a brain is not an advantage,” Mancuso says. And yet, he has dedicated his life to the pursuit of plant intelligence. Source: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant

There is certainly much more which could be said on this topic.

For starters, the conversation must invariably and inevitably move from the question of individual plant intelligence, or indeed, plant and animal intelligence, to one of ecosystem intelligence. That is, the ability for the superorganism to exhibit behaviours which show intelligence.

And certainly, in the view of Genesis, the conversation must (and will) eventually migrate from the question of intelligence, to the issue of consciousness and the discussion of what these two terms describe and how they differ from one another.

But today, we think we’ll just share some more videos demonstrating that something is indeed going on with plants, and it’s a secret world that we’re only just beginning to explore in any meaningful way.

Video Link: Mind of Plants: Documentary on The Intelligence of Plants, produced by Gédéon Programmes, K Production, ARTE

Video Link: Nature: What Plants Talk About – Documentary


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