Do Plants Feel Pain?

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Plants may not be so much unlike animals or humans after all.

That's one conclusion scientists have reached from a recent study where they tested anesthetics on a variety of different plants.

A team of researchers from the University of Florence and Germany's University of Bonn found that plants respond to anesthetics the same way that humans and animals do.

The scientists exposed Venus flytraps, Mimosa leaves (also referred to as the 'shy plant'), pea tendrils and sundew plants to ether, a common anesthetic.

Scientists placed pea plants in a glass chamber and exposed them to ether. Once exposed, the pea tendrils curled up and stopped moving, showing the effects of anesthesia

In other cases, they soaked the roots of some plants with lidocaine.

The goal was to try out different methods of anesthesia with no structural similarities to demonstrate that the plants' reactions weren't coincidental or circumstantial.

More importantly, they wanted to prove that plants react to anesthesia in the same way that humans and animals do.

'The fact that plant cells responded to these compounds in a similar manner to animals and humans is intriguing,' the scientists wrote in the study.

To document this, the scientists used a single-lens reflex camera to follow organ movements in plants before, during and after recover from exposure to different anesthetics, the scientists said.

Each of the plants seemed to react in a similar fashion, by becoming immobile or not responding to touch in their typical manner.

For example, the Venus flytrap is famous for closing its jaw-like leaves when it senses an insect or prey nearby.

But when it was doused with an anesthetic, an interesting phenomenon occurred.

The scientists measured the electrical activity of a flytrap's cells and found that it had lost its 'action potentials,' meaning that the spiky trap, or its 'trigger hairs,' didn't close when poked.

Action potentials are 'necessary' to close the plant's trap and to initiate the digestive process, according to the study.

After the ether was gradually removed, it took about 900 seconds for the Venus flytrap to return to its normal state.

The flytrap demonstrated for 'the first time ever' that to immobilize plants, you have to inhibit their action potentials.

'In other words, as in animals and humans, bioelectricity and action potentials animate not only humans and animals but also plants,' the scientists said.

A similar effect was produced when the scientists exposed the Mimosa pudica, or 'shy plant,' to ether.

After about an hour of exposure, the plant 'completely lost the response to touch stimuli,' the scientists said.

Unlike the flytrap, however, it took the mimosa plant seven hours before it was able to regain consciousness.

Scientists have largely been unable to determine how anesthetics are able to render humans, animals and plants unconscious.

The study revealed that the common effect may be due to the drugs impacting our cell membranes, causing them to become more flexible, according to the New York Times.

Frantisek Baluska, a co-author of the study, told the Times that it's unclear what is altering the membrane function in plants.

What is clear is that the membrane function controls the transferring of messages via electricity from one cell to another, which is what causes plants to move.

The scientists say the study has helped shed light on how plants react to anesthesia in a similar way to animals and humans.

'Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices,' Baluska told the Times.

'They're living organisms which have their own problems, maybe something like with humans feeling pain or joy'

'In order to navigate this complex life, they must have some compass,' Baluska added.

The study could also show how plants could one day replace animals as objects for testing anesthesia.

Scientists have discovered in the past that testing anesthesia on animals can produce ineffective results, while testing the drugs on plants might prove to produce more reliable data.

If you could live as any plant which plant would you choose to be?

Such claims came out in the late 1960s. Some quack used a lie detector to make claims that plants could exhibit emotions. What a load of hogwash!

Plants don't have brains. They don't have neurons. While something might elicit a response, that does not mean that they fell anything.

Plants do not have neurons but operate transmembrane ion channels and can get electrical excited by physical and chemical clues. Among them the Venus flytrap is characterized by its peculiar hapto-electric signaling.

When insects collide with trigger hairs emerging the trap inner surface, the mechanical stimulus within the mechanosensory organ is translated into a calcium signal and an action potential (AP). Here we asked how the Ca2+ wave and AP is initiated in the trigger hair and how it is feed into systemic trap calcium-electrical networks. When Dionaea muscipula trigger hairs matures and develop hapto-electric excitability the mechanosensitive anion channel DmMSL10/FLYC1 and voltage dependent SKOR type Shaker K+ channel are expressed in the sheering stress sensitive podium. The podium of the trigger hair is interface to the flytrap’s prey capture and processing networks. In the excitable state touch stimulation of the trigger hair evokes a rise in the podium Ca2+ first and before the calcium signal together with an action potential travel all over the trap surface. In search for podium ion channels and pumps mediating touch induced Ca2+ transients, we, in mature trigger hairs firing fast Ca2+ signals and APs, found OSCA1.7 and GLR3.6 type Ca2+ channels and ACA2/10 Ca2+ pumps specifically expressed in the podium. Like trigger hair stimulation, glutamate application to the trap directly evoked a propagating Ca2+ and electrical event. Given that anesthetics affect K+ channels and glutamate receptors in the animal system we exposed flytraps to an ether atmosphere. As result propagation of touch and glutamate induced Ca2+ and AP long-distance signaling got suppressed, while the trap completely recovered excitability when ether was replaced by fresh air. In line with ether targeting a calcium channel addressing a Ca2+ activated anion channel the AP amplitude declined before the electrical signal ceased completely. Ether in the mechanosensory organ did neither prevent the touch induction of a calcium signal nor this post stimulus decay. This finding indicates that ether prevents the touch activated, glr3.6 expressing base of the trigger hair to excite the capture organ.

The electrical gradient inside neurons is governed by the movement of Ca2+ (calcium ions), which works together with magnesium and ATP, the “energy molecule.” When calcium floods into the neuron, it increases the electrical potential of the cell, which causes the stored neurotransmitters to move to the neuron’s membrane and be expelled across the synapse. The electrical potential gradient generated with calcium and ATP moves across to the next neuron to open up neurotransmitter receptors and is continuous to form nerve transmission. Neurotransmitters that are not absorbed by the next neuron as a result of closed receptors (each of which are specific to the molecule in question) are either recycled or degraded.It has long since been acknowledged that certain levels of neurotransmitters in the brain are linked to inducing certain emotions. Neurotransmitters appear to be associated with maintaining states of perception, cognition, awareness and a number of bodily processes, having complex functions over and above that of emotion and behavior. It is the combination of neurotransmitters that get broadcast, as well as their levels relative to one another, that contributes to our experiential state, emotion included[1].

I have read that plants, trees and mushrooms communicate and send electrical signals to each other through their root systems.

If you could live as any plant which plant would you choose to be?

The next time I go out to cut down a tree, I'll ask it before I cut if it objects. If it doesn't object, then I will cut it down.

Being vocal doesn't equal having a developed nervous system. Octopus has 9 brains yet you will never see it scream, yell or participate in a singing competition.

So how many brains do you think that a tree has?

Such claims came out in the late 1960s. Some quack used a lie detector to make claims that plants could exhibit emotions.

Plants might have complex electrical and chemical signalling reactions to damage, and those reactions might bear some superficial resemblance to animal damage-response systems, but that's not really evidence of pain as such.