This Should Make The Vegans Cry

From Popular Mechanics: "We May Be Surrounded by Trillions of Conscious Beings, Research Suggests—And They Aren’t Human." The article is talking about plants and fungi, of course. An excerpt:

    But what if consciousness isn’t a feature limited solely to humans—and what if we’re actually wildly outnumbered by a planet full of other conscious beings? As it turns out, a handful of studies suggest that might just be the case.

    For starters, plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, PhD, notes that plants respond to anesthesia the same way humans do—they become nonresponsive. Humans tend to think of plants as nonresponsive anyway, because they don’t generally move in human timescales. But when scientists have administered anesthesia to plants that do operate “quickly” by human measures, such as the Venus Flytrap, the plant stops responding when flies land on it. And while you won’t see a plant fleeing danger the way we do, some have been found to be gradually migrating north as the planet warms, just as animals are changing their migratory patterns.

    To test the spatial awareness and intentionality of plants, Mancuso did an experiment, placing a potted bean plant in his lab about a meter from a metal rod. In a time-lapse video, he showed that the bean plant—having reached the top of its support pole—sent out a long, hooked shoot that repeatedly swung out and back, trying to hook the metal pole and eventually catching hold of it. In short: the bean plant “knew” where the pole was. Mancuso also conducted research demonstrating that, when two bean plants reach a support, one recognizes the other plant got there first and begins to look for a different support.

    “What is interesting is the behavior of the loser: it immediately sensed the other plant had reached the pole and started to find an alternative,” he wrote in the study. “This was astonishing and it demonstrates the plants were aware of their physical environment and the behavior of the other plant. In animals we call this consciousness.”

    His colleague, Monica Gagliano, PhD, did a series of experiments with mimosas—a genus often called the “sensitive plant” because its leaves fold up quickly when touched. She placed the mimosa in a basket and dropped it several inches, causing the mimosa to close its leaves. But after she had repeated this many times, the mimosa seemed to “get used to” the experience and stopped responding when the drop came. She tried the experiment again a few weeks later, and the mimosas still didn’t react to the drop, suggesting that plants can remember.

    In 2025, Mancuso worked on a paper led by Tomonori Kawano, PhD. In the article, researchers explored the idea that plants, like people, have Two Minds—or an unconscious mind that makes quick decisions and a conscious one that makes slower decisions, like humans have. In the case of Gagliano’s mimosas, for example, the more unconscious “thinking” would be to close its leaves when it’s jarred. But by remembering the experience and making a different choice, the mimosa demonstrates a more conscious and deliberate level of “thinking.”

For some reason, it reminded me of the following from Jack Handy: 

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? 

We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

    Anyway, be sure to share the article with all your vegan relatives (at least the ones you don't care for).