Sunday 7 December 2014

Vegetable Intelligence

It depends on how you define intelligence.  In the way of problem solving, and flexibility of thinking, I would say probably not really, but there are things that plants can do that seem intelligent.  So, there are types of creeper that manage to grab hold of other plants and climb up them, and you use them for support.  That seems quite clever and I've seen time lapse videos of those where you can see the creepers sort of spiralling around and reaching for something to hold on to.

There's also the fact that when you plant a seed, the roots always know to grow downwards and the shoots know to grow upwards, and that’s because of are some chemicals in the plant that tell it which way gravity is, and that allows it to know which way up to grow.  So you don’t have to worry about which way up you're planting your seeds.

Venus flytrap is a very good example

Venus flytraps are very clever.  They’ve got hairs on the inside of the trap part.  What's particularly clever about them is that they don’t get triggered if just one hair is touched and that’s to save energy because it’s quite energetically expensive for them to close.  And if they did it every time a leaf fell on them or a drop of rain or something, that will be a waste.  So they only trigger if two of the hairs are brushed in quick succession because that’s quite a good indication that there's something moving on the inside and it’s a good idea to close and trap it.

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