Do plants have feelings?

The history of the search for plant consciousness actually tells us a lot about ourselves

Many traditional religions believe plants posses souls.
(Image credit: ThinkStock/Polka Dot)

A CARROT IS strapped to an examining table. After the experimenter wires it up to a galvanometer, he pinches the vegetable with forceps. The machine registers "infinitesimal twitches, starts, and tremors," according to one report. The year is 1914, the scientist is named Jagadish Chandra Bose, and a journalist in the room writes, apparently without irony: "Thus can science reveal the feelings of even so stolid a vegetable as the carrot."

Today, that conclusion — and the experiment — seems absurd. Whatever is happening inside a carrot, it's not a "feeling" in any sense we'd understand. For that, a carrot would need a brain, or at least a central nervous system, which it most certainly does not have. The scientific consensus is clear: Plants do not experience the world the way we do.

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