 | What if . . . we evolved to propagate plants? Perhaps gardeners and farmers are actually servants— diligently watering, weeding, and fertilizing plants who have convinced us they are the most edible and desirable. In The Light Eaters, the author says: "We know that some plants are hallucinogenic, some are addictive…in what other ways are they influencing us? A fleet of humans carefully tending a field of crops can certainly start to look like an army of plant symbionts” |
The author continues:
“There are presumably thousands of [chemical] compounds we might inhale or ingest every day, simply existing as plant eaters on a plant-dominated planet.
“There are presumably thousands of [chemical] compounds we might inhale or ingest every day, simply existing as plant eaters on a plant-dominated planet.
 | How might the complex chemicals plants synthesize influence us? “[Consider the] thousands of natural plant chemicals we unwittingly ingest every time we eat a fruit or vegetable. We don’t know what they are doing with our brain. We can never be sure, when we are eating something nice and tasty, that there is not something in this tomato or apple that makes us believe it is the best food.” |
Hot peppers are candidates for a top human-influencing plant.
 | Hot peppers contain a chemical called capsaicin that makes them unpalatable to most insects, and we humans are the only animals who “enjoy” having our mouths set afire from it. As a result of our singular taste for capsaicin, humans have spread pepper plants around the world and even bred them for a higher capsaicin content. From the plant’s perspective, we’ve done their work for them. |
Plants are more intelligent and cunning that we usually give them credit for--and incredibly adaptable per The Light Eaters:
“[S]everal plants, including lima beans and tobacco, can react to an attack of munching insects by summoning those insects’ specific predators to come pick them off.”
“Other plants…secrete a chemical that causes hungry caterpillars to turn away from devouring their leaves to eat each other instead.”
“[S]everal plants, including lima beans and tobacco, can react to an attack of munching insects by summoning those insects’ specific predators to come pick them off.”
“Other plants…secrete a chemical that causes hungry caterpillars to turn away from devouring their leaves to eat each other instead.”
 | “[Plants] grow thorns and spikes and stinging hairs, developed with remarkable precision, to pierce the flesh or exoskeleton of whatever mammal ro bug might be its main threat.” “[Or] secrete sticky sugar to entice and then immobilize their antagonists, whose hungry mouths get stuck shut.” |
“[Plants] form, store, and access memories, sense incredibly subtle changes in their environment, and send highly sophisticated chemical aloft on the air in response. They send signals to different body parts to coordinate defenses.”
“Some plants are able to detect that an insect has placed its eggs somewhere on their body and sabotage the eggs.”
“Plants see each other by the color of the light. Light changes color when it passes through a plant, and the light that passes through different plants is altered each in a different way, far too subtle for us to notice but clearly distinct enough for plants to notice.”
“Some plants are able to detect that an insect has placed its eggs somewhere on their body and sabotage the eggs.”
“Plants see each other by the color of the light. Light changes color when it passes through a plant, and the light that passes through different plants is altered each in a different way, far too subtle for us to notice but clearly distinct enough for plants to notice.”
 | “[C]arnivorous plants…were recently discovered to have evolved to hunt in packs. Collaboration on catching insects allows them to lure larger prey.” A venus flytrap can count: "if two trigger hairs... are touched within 20 seconds... the trap snaps shut. But the flytrap keeps counting. If the hairs [inside the trap] are disturbed five times... it injects digestive juices... and the meal commences." If there's no additional movement, it reopens the trap. |
Plants communicate through chemical signals but they also make clicks.
“Each species of plant seemed to have their own click frequency. A cactus sounded very different from a grape, for example.”
“Perhaps plants are also speaking in movement, in electricity, or even in the flow of fluid in their bodies that clearly produces audible clicks, though all of this has yet to be understood.”
“Each species of plant seemed to have their own click frequency. A cactus sounded very different from a grape, for example.”
“Perhaps plants are also speaking in movement, in electricity, or even in the flow of fluid in their bodies that clearly produces audible clicks, though all of this has yet to be understood.”
Ursula LeGuin predicted this understanding of nonhuman language fifty years ago in her fabulous short story, The Author of Acacia Seeds, that features translations of the language of ants and dolphins among other creatures.
Our world is more bizarre and mind-blowing than any science fiction story!
For more brain-boggling factoids read about whacky weeds, cyclical cicadas, the world of microbes, extremophiles, pathogenesis, cockroaches in space, and plant-animal hybrids.
For more brain-boggling factoids read about whacky weeds, cyclical cicadas, the world of microbes, extremophiles, pathogenesis, cockroaches in space, and plant-animal hybrids.
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