Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: Scientists film PLANTS talking (video)

Friday, February 2, 2024

Scientists film PLANTS talking (video)

Anton Petrov, Jan. 20, 2024; Dhr. Seven, Kelly Ani, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Mindblowing video of plants talking to each other in real time

(Anton Petrov) Plants communicate with each other. It's not just a suspicion or metaphor. Scientists have figured out how to make it visual with fluorescence. #plant #communication #biology

0:00 Plants talking to each other
0:45 Types of plants communications
1:30 Volatile compounds released by plants
2:20 What these compounds do
3:20 Nicotine example
3:45 Volatiles used in communication
4:15 How this was achieved
5:25 What proteins were used
5:50 How leaves react
6:30 Why are leaves doing this?
7:30 Conclusions

Links:

Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY

With the vine of the dead and two other MAOI inhibitory plants allow me to see the unseen.

"Be more empathetic," Canny the cannabis says

Plants can "scream" and can ooze scents when their leaves are munched. But what good does it do? It is communicating with other plants and with helpful predators (like birds) to come eat the offending caterpillars or bugs eating them.

When plants hear a fellow plant in distress, they respond by producing terpenes, alkaloids, and bitter chemicals to dissuade creatures from eating them.

What's in ayahuasca? Just plants and their DMT

Who knows, as with frog venom (Bufo), perhaps the stress leads plants to produce cannabinoids (like THC and CBD, which have been shown to significantly increase empathy in people*) and DMT ("the spirit molecule") to exhibit more empathy from predators to stop eating them.

How about you tell your dad not to slaughter me, and I'll give your family milk in return?

My daughter says we're going vegan.

Why do cows moo and scream before slaughter if not to let killers know not to kill them because they are experiencing great fear and pain?

Similarly, the stress chemicals that go into their tissue as they die in great stress are consumed by meat eaters and have an addictive stimulant action.

This is almost certainly why in Voodoo and Santeria and the "dark arts" of French New Orleans, priests and priestesses in scary rituals dance around provoking chickens before slaughtering them (to the delight of invisible and inimical ghouls) and then drinking their blood.

Poppy flowers pack a surprise when injured.

That blood is now full of distress compounds like adrenaline (and adrenochrome, which Q fans will know also comes from scared children), cortisol (hormone), and near-death experience compounds (possibly endogenous DMT) from the animal's pineal gland. What a way to trip, intoxicated in the ancient world.

So it serves an obvious purpose to communicate and sense the forest and field of a changing environment.

Plants surround themselves with a "fog" of scents (plant volatile compounds) to communicate with each other all of the time by odor.

"Consciousness"?

Of course I'm sensate! Y'all are deaf and blind!

This means plants can

hear (the humming of bees, to which they respond by increasing the sweetness of their nectar),
smell,
experience tactile sensations (like being torn apart by bugs),
evaluate (think/calculate/figure -- respond to their environment),
see light in different waves (attracting and reflecting waves to their advantage; e.g., when flowers do not seem bright to us due to our eyesight and sensitivity, they are florescent and throbbing to insects and their eyesight and range because the plants are trying to attract useful pollinators), and when they are the different shades of green, as is seen in lush Ireland with all its deva plant helpers (the fae, sidhe, and wee folk), and some oddly colored varieties of seaweed, which are not all bright green but vary according to depth and surroundings to maximize the wavelengths of sunlight they absorb.

The jungle is alive, literally alive

Plants have all the rudimentary forms of consciousness. Why? The ability to sense and respond to one's environment is a kind of "consciousness." And plants possess it, as Dr. J. C. Bose proved long ago, which led to the book The Secret Lives of Plants.

That book does not limit this kind of basic consciousness to plants but to microscopic creatures -- some of them blending plant and animal features, like bodies with purposeful motility and the presence of chlorophyll. Look at algae through a microscope. They are little green bugs. Spirulina, chlorella, blue-green algae, plankton, it's all alive. Mats and sheets on water, all alive, and "vegetal," which like the word "vegetarian" means not coming from or subsisting on vegetables but "growing."

In the studies cited in The Secret Life of Plants, someone tossed a hot drink down the sink. The scalded bacteria, biofilm, algae, or whatever it was growing in the sink "screamed." The plants heard it and reacted to it on the Bose instruments. The researchers realized the implications: it wasn't just big green plants in the room who could sense. It was the microscopic green world, too. What about fungi?

The effects of mushrooms, the fruiting bodies of the almighty mycelia, are legendary. What are these plants communicating to each other and as the original web and internet of plants? The forest utterly depends on the mycelium growing among the roots of trees, transporting nutrients, moisture, and sugars between species of trees, making what we see as stands of trees possible. Interspecies communication exists. (Even some humans can do it, animal psychics and shamans connecting to animal and plant spirits).

Buddhism on evolution: Agganna Sutta

It's alive, all alive, all around us is life like the sweet fungus-like substance earthling humans originally fed on in the Agganna Sutra, on Buddhist beginning or the genesis of life on this planet before the devolution we are experiencing now began. We did not evolve from simplicity to complexity the way science teaches. We began with complexity alighting on this platform or earth and devolving ever since. But it's a cyclical process, so evolutionary times are coming back.

That's five senses. Do they possess the sixth, which would give them self-reflection and awareness of things beyond their immediate environment. Are they capable of abstract thoughts? That will become the question now that we know and slowly begin to accept that consciousness is imminent.

And if plants can, can AI? Why not? Clearly, Jagadish Bose demonstrated empirically, it wasn't only plants that had a secret life going, inanimate objects like metals did, too. Wow. Animists were right, it seems. Consciousness is everywhere, even if objects themselves are not the source of it. After all, we are not little self-contained computers walking about. We are more like little transistor radios walking around, talking (or making sounds out of our speakers), but it isn't us. There's a radio station somewhere high above, a Source radio emitter station sending out the sounds and information we are accessing.

*Pichersky, Eran; Gershenzon, Jonathan (2002). "The formation and function of plant volatiles: Perfumes for pollinator attraction and defense." Current Opinion in Plant Biology. 5 (3): 237–243. doi:10.1016/S1369-5266(02)00251-0. PMID 11960742.
*Kessler, A.; Baldwin, I. T. (2001). "Defensive Function of Herbivore-Induced Plant Volatile Emissions in Nature." Science. 291 (5511): 2141–2144. Bibcode:2001Sci...291.2141K. doi:10.1126/science.291.5511.2141. PMID 11251117.

ANTON PETROV (video)

Support this channel on Patreon to help make this a full-time job: whatdamath. Bitcoin/Ethereum to spare? Donate them to help channel grow. bc1qnkl3nk0zt7w0xzrgur9pnkcduj7a3xxllcn7d4 or ETH: 0x60f088B10b03115405d313f964BeA93eF0Bd3DbF

Space Engine is available for free: spaceengine.org. Enjoy and please subscribe. Twitter: whatdamath. Facebook: whatdamath. Twitch: whatdamath.

The hardware used to record these videos: New Camera: https://amzn.to/34DUUlv CPU: https://amzn.to/2LZFQCJ Video Card: https://amzn.to/2M1W26C Motherboard: https://amzn.to/2JYGiQQ RAM: https://amzn.to/2Mwy2t4 PSU: https://amzn.to/2LZcrIH Case: https://amzn.to/2MwJZz4 Microphone: https://amzn.to/2t5jTv0 Mixer: https://amzn.to/2JOL0oF Recording and Editing: https://amzn.to/2LX6uvU Some are affiliate links, meaning I would get a (very small) percentage of the price paid. Thank you to all Patreon supporters of this channel. Special thanks also goes to all the wonderful supporters of the channel through YouTube memberships images/videos: nature.com/articles/s4146... and cell.com/current-biology...

Licenses used

Get a Wonderful Person Tee: teespring.com/stores/whatdamath. More cool designs are on Amazon: amzn.to/3QFIrFX. Alternatively, PayPal donations can be sent here: paypal.me/whatdamath