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Scientist suggests that plant is self-aware
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Sagebrush (Artemisa tridentate)
Almost a year ago, scientists from Goethe University in Frankfurt showed that magpies are self-aware (check out the video below), that one knows the creature it sees in the mirror is itself, not another bird. That discovery was big news, as self-awareness was thought to be a special trait found only in higher-order primates. But now there is even bigger—and stranger—news: self-aware plants.
That is the claim of Richard Karban, professor in the Entomology department at UC-Davis (UCD). He states that, “Plants engage in self-recognition and can communicate danger to their “clones” or genetically identical cuttings planted nearby.” [UCD] The research, published in Ecology Letters, would be the first suggestion of this kind, that plants are fully aware of themselves and look out for their own kind.
The study showed that plants that are damaged send out some form of signal to neighbors in order to boost protection levels. Studying sagebrush (Artemisa tridentate), scientists clipped branches from 30 plants. The clippings were planted in pots and then placed back in the field near the parent plants or unclipped plants which served as a control. They found that “plants within 60 centimeters of an experimentally clipped neighbor in the field experienced less leaf damage (by grasshoppers or other herbivores) over the season, compared with plants near an unclipped neighbor.” [UCD]
This, Karban believes, is proof that plants are self-aware, that they know they are incurring damage and must protect their own branches that were planted in another pot. Karban thinks this plant behavior shows that the leafy creatures are “capable of more sophisticated behavior than we imagined.” [UCD] The research is in infant stage, with no concrete scientific evidence to explain the results that Karban witnessed. How this communication between a plant and its branches is occurring is only at the point of speculation.
At the moment, Karban believes it involves the secretion of key chemicals, and these chemicals spark a change in plant characteristics that drive away herbivores. Their research showed that after the clippings (which are not unlike the damage that some herbivores would inflict on a plant) “herbivores responded to changes in plant characteristics and were not being repelled directly by airborne cues released by clipped individuals.” [UCD] This means that the plant itself is changing in a way that drives off predators.
And the way these changes occur in both the parent and clipped plants suggest that the sagebrush has some level of self-awareness. If true, and if the experiments can be corroborated in other plant species, then this would prove a groundbreaking study indeed.
The video was first shown on New Scientist.
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