Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious ? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/science/plants-consciousness-anesthesia.html
“Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices,” said Frantisek Baluska, a plant cell biologist at the University of Bonn in Germany and co-author of the study. “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.”
Plants sometimes use that compass to deal with stress, competition or development. They take in information from their environment and produce their own anesthetics like menthol, ethanol and cocaine, similar to how humans release chemicals that dull pain during trauma. These may act within the plant itself or float off in the air to affect neighboring plants.
Our anesthetics work on plants too, the study confirmed, although what exactly they’re working on is unclear.
La question de la complexité des plantes est suffisamment intéressante sans qu’il soit besoin d’y mêler des termes comme « conscience » et de pratiquer l’anthropomorphisme.