[HN Gopher] Tomato fruits send electrical warnings to the rest o...
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Tomato fruits send electrical warnings to the rest of the plant
when attacked
Author : rustoo
Score : 196 points
Date : 2021-07-25 13:07 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.frontiersin.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.frontiersin.org)
| pjdkoch wrote:
| So, pain.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Avatar
| ourmandave wrote:
| I'm wondering what the rest of the plant supposed to do with that
| warning?
|
| Remain perfectly still like Drax so it doesn't see us?
|
| Try to taste bad?
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Plants can do amazing things. Think about how our own bodies
| respond to extreme temperature or to shock. We withdraw vital
| fluids to the core, or bring certain resources to the site of
| irritation. Plants certainly do things like this.
|
| The research paper's abstract says this:
|
| >The results show with 90% of accuracy that the electrome
| registered in the fruit's peduncle before herbivory is
| different from the electrome during predation on the fruits.
| Interestingly, there was also a sharp difference in the
| electrome of the green and ripe fruits' peduncles before, but
| not during, the herbivory, which demonstrates that the signals
| generated by the herbivory stand over the others. _Biochemical
| analysis showed that herbivory in the fruit triggered an
| oxidative response in other parts of the plant._
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2021.6574...
|
| e: side note, this is the software they used for the
| computation, including Machine Learning.
|
| >The code libraries used were: Numpy and Pandas for data
| manipulation; Scipy, Obspy and Math for mathematical
| calculations; Matplotlib for creating graphics; Sklearn and
| Statsmodels for machine learning.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| > oxidative response
|
| does that mean it makes itself more cancerous?
| grawprog wrote:
| I'm not sure if this paper is talking about the same thing
| but it discusses the effect of reactive oxides and
| antioxident balances in plants and their effects.
|
| https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijfs/2020/8817778/
| 988747 wrote:
| Probably the latter: Taste bad, and possibly become more
| poisonous for catepilars. It is quite possible to use that
| electric signal to trigger some chemical reaction that would
| accomplish this.
| vages wrote:
| Perhaps it's just a side effect of some other system in the
| plant, like an electrical pulse to communicate "the way this
| branch is growing has little/much sunlight".
| wyldfire wrote:
| That's a 'phototropism' IIRC and it's not caused by
| electrical signals but instead by growth hormones called
| auxins. This is what little I recall from high school
| biology, anyways. IIRC the auxins inhibit cell division and
| different ones cause different tropism phenomena.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Plants have all sorts of defense mechanisms, toxins etc, that
| they've evolved (since they're sitting ducks). Its a reasonable
| hypothesis that some energetically intensive to produce toxin
| could have its production induced, for example (the plant
| wouldn't want to waste energy on producing the toxins when not
| needed). I believe there are also plants that have been shown
| to release compounds that attract parasitic wasps to kill the
| pest. That could also be triggered here, another reasonable
| hypothesis.
| dmix wrote:
| The article mentions releasing hydrogen peroxide. Not just in
| the one fruit being attacked but the other fruit on the plant
| also released more chemicals.
| hirundo wrote:
| > In addition, the authors measured the biochemical responses,
| such as defensive chemicals like hydrogen peroxide, across
| other parts of the plant. This showed that these defenses were
| triggered even in parts of the plant that were far away from
| the damage caused by the caterpillars.
| aszantu wrote:
| Anti nutrients :(
| SMAAART wrote:
| Sentient tomatoes? PeTA, where are you?
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| There hasn't been any evidence of sentience presented.
| ruffrey wrote:
| My father grew up on a farm that was mostly for subsistence. He
| said to pinch off the first few green tomatoes to improve yields.
| I occasionally do this but have not tried to measure any yield
| differences.
| h2odragon wrote:
| That's simple pruning; the plant can be encouraged to grow more
| foliage before it turns its attention to making fruits; thus
| making more plant mass available to do the fruit growing.
|
| In my experience that tends to encourage more, smaller fruit;
| which is good cuz it reduces loss to insects etc (they ruin a
| whole fruit at a time). If you want a single tomato the size of
| a child's head, tho; let it keep the first few it sets and then
| pinch flowers before they open after that.
| shakna wrote:
| This process is called "thinning" [0] (as distinct from
| pruning), and is employed by farmers the world over. And has
| been done for several hundred years.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinning#In_agriculture
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Does it mean that tomatoes feel pain?
|
| Electrical signals in response to an attack that trigger a
| defensive response look a lot like pain.
| staticman2 wrote:
| They don't have brains or central nervous systems so it seems
| unlikely they feel pain.
| mellavora wrote:
| why do you assume the need for brains or even central nervous
| systems for a pain sense to exist?
|
| All the neurotransmitters that are used for our CNS were
| originally evolved from plants.
|
| some plants scream when cut https://www.sciencetimes.com/arti
| cles/24473/20191218/a-group...
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| Reacting to a stimulus doesn't necessitate the need to feel
| pain. A computer doesn't feel pain when I plug in a USB
| drive, but it certainly sends an electrical signal to let
| other parts of the computer know something happened.
|
| This research doesn't suggest that plants suffer or are
| somehow sentient, just that they react to stimuli in a way
| that's advantageous to survival.
| nicoburns wrote:
| There's also no evidence that plants (or computers) don't
| feel pain. We really have very little knowledge of what
| does or does not cause conscious experience.
| [deleted]
| Glavnokoman wrote:
| I guess "feel" might not be the exactly right word here but
| the "pain" is.
| jfoster wrote:
| Not sure whether it's centralised, but the finding of the
| study in the article sounds like it's essentially that plants
| (or at least this type of tomato plant) do have some form of
| nervous system or equivalent, isn't it?
| prvnsmpth wrote:
| If you assume the human-centric definition of the word
| "pain", perhaps. But I don't think that paints a complete
| picture - organisms experience and react to negative stimuli
| in so many different ways.
|
| IMO, what we're seeing here could absolutely be considered
| "pain" in the plant kingdom, without altering or stretching
| the definition of the word even in the slightest.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Why would you use a human term like pain for the plant?
|
| Here's a biologist saying not all humans experience pain,
| if it's not even a universal human experience I don't know
| why you'd apply it to plants instead of a more technical
| term:
|
| "Interviewer: Right, and isn't sensing damage, even without
| a neural system, essentially pain?
|
| Daniel Chamovitz: The idea that damage has to be pain is
| mistaken. We feel pain because we have specific types of
| receptors called nociceptors which are programmed to
| respond to pain, not to touch. People can have genetic
| malfunctions where they feel pressure but never feel pain
| because they don't have pain receptors."
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/xd
| 7..."
|
| A different article on the subject on plant pain has a
| biologist suggesting not to use human terms or animal
| terms:
|
| ""Plants can detect light, but I don't think you can say
| plants can 'see.'" The same goes for hearing, tasting,
| feeling, smelling. The terms we use to describe our own
| interface with the world don't seem transferable to plants.
| They describe the contours of a human-centric reality, made
| possible by our animal anatomy.""
|
| https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/can-plants-
| fee...
| calibas wrote:
| "We feel pain because we have specific types of receptors
| called nociceptors which are programmed to respond to
| pain, not to touch."
|
| I assume he meant we feel pain as a response to damage.
| Saying we feel pain because of a response to pain makes
| no sense.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| This is interesting.
|
| I do a veg garden, with tomatoes of course. When I water them at
| the end of the day I also spray the tops because I want the
| leaves to tell the roots...get ready, rain is coming.
|
| I have no idea if this happens or not. But from a survival
| perspective it makes sense that it would.
| ineedasername wrote:
| There was a series of documentaries made about a tomato strain
| that developed more active measures against attacks [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_of_the_Killer_Tomatoe...
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The plant world is "smarter" than we give it credit. Some plants
| count, keep time, and communicate with their environment. This
| research is in a similar vein to this TED talk showing some of
| the neat things plant do that we would attribute as features of
| the animal kingdom.
|
| https://youtu.be/pvBlSFVmoaw
| xor99 wrote:
| Cellulose has a small piezoelectric effect so I wonder if that
| has something to do with it. Same with bone.
| giardini wrote:
| There were 4 tomato plants in the experimental group and 1 in the
| control group (so 5 in all).
|
| I don't think we can declare that plants think or even have
| communication among their parts based on this small amount of
| data. Too many other possibilities.
| pvelagal wrote:
| I am not sure how this is perceived as attack ? Sending
| electrical signals doesn't have to mean attack by default.
| Pollination happens via bees.. then the fruit grows to attract
| birds or animals who eat them and spread the seeds through
| excretions or else the fruit will fall off and rot...
| database_lost wrote:
| Hmm, interesting, this reminds me of recent research where they
| used electrical currents and magnetic fields to enhance tomato
| plants, I wonder how the two findings are linked. (here's the
| article I saw:
| http://horticulturejournal.usamv.ro/index.php/scientific-pap... )
| lpasselin wrote:
| Does anyone have papers like this to recommend?
|
| I am really interested in building custom systems to experiment
| with plants. My problem is that I don't know what to test.
| gillytech wrote:
| This isn't entirely new. L. Ron Hubbard ran experiments like this
| in the 60's and came to similar conclusions. He found that
| "tomatoes scream when sliced." Check this article a bit over
| halfway down the piece:
| https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/06/16/meet-your-veget...
| hirundo wrote:
| Imagine rigging your plants with sensors and gardening by
| sentiment analysis. "The zucchini are worried today, give them
| some extra TLC."
| codetrotter wrote:
| Create a global network of Tomato sensors. Correlate Tomato
| sentiment with Bitcoin price. Buy and sell Bitcoin based on the
| feelings of the Tomatoes.
| lsh123 wrote:
| You forgot to insert AI somewhere
| ftio wrote:
| And perhaps a fellow Italian will invent the first non-
| fungible, blockchain-powered pasta sauce, Moneronara, or even
| its Roman cousin, Carbitnara.
| armenarmen wrote:
| I'm working on getting my mining rig to run off of clean
| renewable tortured tomato power already
| ezekg wrote:
| Lol this made me chuckle
| techbio wrote:
| Profit by selling shovels.
| stoat_meniscus wrote:
| That's a fun idea. Although over time this might select for
| plants that complain more. You could end up with an entire
| garden screaming for attention all the time.
| derefr wrote:
| Or you'd just be evolving the plants toward communicating
| more clearly, ala cat meows (which don't exist in adult cats
| for any other reason than to allow communication with
| humans.)
| Siira wrote:
| References on the cat evopsy claim? It's interesting.
| david-gpu wrote:
| I've heard adult cats meowing to each other, whether to
| display aggression or to indicate they are in heat.
|
| Now, it is possible that certain other types of meows are
| only used to elicit human behavior.
| derefr wrote:
| I believe the hypothesis is that they evolved as a "thing
| domestic cats _can_ do " for communication with humans,
| but adult cats that know how to meow, don't _just_ use
| their meows to communicate with humans. They see it as a
| general communication tool, and will also try to use it
| with other cats.
|
| The supporting evidence for this hypothesis, I believe,
| is that meowing has been observed to be a _learned_
| communication technique gained _only_ if a cat interacts
| with humans during development; adult feral cats, living
| only around other cats during their development, never
| learn this technique or its social meaning, and so don 't
| understand the social signal being communicated by
| domestic cats when the domestic cat meows at them, nor do
| they try to use it in response.
|
| (Same goes with the domestic cat's social signal of
| keeping their tail raised when standing to express trust.
| Feral cats don't develop _that_ habit, either.)
| __s wrote:
| Scientologists already figured this out over half a century ago
| with their E-meters
| treeman79 wrote:
| Good old e-meters and all the hippies that gave speeches at
| school about how plants have feelings and it was scientifically
| proven
| f6v wrote:
| What are we supposed to eat?
| vnchr wrote:
| Impossible Carrots and Beyond Broccoli
| cf499 wrote:
| The only morally sound answer to that question is "anything
| or nothing" because any other choice implies that you have
| to justify why one organism is more worthy of life than
| another. Am I wrong or just not fun at parties? :D
| awb wrote:
| There are many moral ways to eat I can think of:
|
| 1) Eat anything your body can consume safely
|
| 2) Only eat things without brains
|
| 3) Only eat things you hunt/harvest/prepare yourself
|
| 4) Only eat animals that are already dead
|
| 5) Only eat plants and animals that are invasive or over
| populated
|
| And the list goes on. Some are easier than others, but I
| don't see the moral dilemma in maintaining a certain diet
| outside of "anything or nothing".
| cf499 wrote:
| My point was that there is no list that anyone can make
| that lets you sidestep the unpleasant fact that you have
| to kill something to eat (each of your 5 points involve
| taking the life of something else. Even eating roadkill
| implies killing bacteria and parasites). On top of that,
| you'll never know if the thing you killed felt pain so
| any choice you make is ultimately arbitrary. I'm not
| saying I feel good about this bleak conclusion but I'd
| rather be honest about it. My dinner deserves to know
| that it wasn't an easy choice!
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Valid question only for a person who is vegan for 'ethical'
| reasons, who believes that some how plants are exempt from
| pain and suffering.
| pell wrote:
| Plants don't have a central nervous system or a brain.
| What science generally understands under pain and
| suffering plants simply don't have.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >Plants don't have a central nervous system or a brain.
|
| So? does that automatically imply that it does not feel
| pain?
|
| >What science generally understands under pain and
| suffering plants simply don't have.
|
| Listen, I don't buy the science say this and science say
| that kind of arguments. ANY living being ( assuming we
| can settle for what can be called 'alive') will have a
| mechanism for self preservation, pain is one of them. The
| onus is on 'science' or people to prove otherwise.
| henearkr wrote:
| The tomato needs to be eaten to disseminate its seeds in
| feces.
|
| (Maybe not by insects though.)
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Ah, I replied to another comment along similar lines, so
| you are correct. Plucking a ripe tomato will most likely
| set of a little 'orgasm' in the plant, while eating a
| tomato will most likely set of a thundering earth
| shattering 'orgasm' in the tomato :)
| OlleTO wrote:
| If we think about the function of pain from an
| evolutionary perspective its basically to encourage,
| well, not doing whatever is causing you pain (e.g.
| touching sharp objects, standing close to a fire) or
| provide motivation to fight or flee (e.g. if I am being
| attacked by a bobcat).
|
| Neither of these are applicable to plants, so there
| doesn't seem to be any evolutionary reason to evolve pain
| receptors.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Assuming that I did not misunderstand you, while fight or
| flee does not exist in plants in the same sense as
| animals they do react by producing chemicals/sap etc.
| that works as a defense. So it's more 'fight', but a
| chemical warfare at that.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Pain is a subjective experience. It requires a self to
| feel it.
|
| No central nervous system does imply no mind to feel
| pain.
|
| If you were to scoop my brain out of my body and keep my
| lower body alive below the neck the nervous system would
| not feel pain as there is no mind to feel it.
| nicoburns wrote:
| How do you know that? Science has no idea how the brain
| produces consciousness (and therefore strong basis to
| claim that other entities don't). There might be all
| sorts of selves that you simply can't observe.
| staticman2 wrote:
| We don't know how the brain produces consciousness but we
| have a good idea from observing people suffering brain
| damage from accidents how a functional brain is directly
| linked to consciousness.
|
| Science can't prove the world is not the dream of a giant
| turtle- so technically I can't "know" anything- so asking
| "how can you know that?" Is kind of a boring line of
| questioning. It has no answer other than "Well I guess
| technically I can't know that, or anything," But that
| doesn't mean turtle dreams are going to get equal weight
| with our empirical models of the world.
| shakna wrote:
| > Plants don't have a central nervous system or a brain.
| What science generally understands under pain and
| suffering plants simply don't have.
|
| Quite a number actually do have nervous systems [0],
| using neurotransmitters that have actually been found in
| mammals. They respond to wounding, both with efforts to
| repair it, and with chemical deterrents to the cause.
|
| Now, that isn't to say that they necessarily have pain
| and suffering, but it wouldn't be surprising to learn
| that some plants possess that capability.
|
| [0] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6407/1068
| ben_w wrote:
| Central nervous system is a particular type of nervous
| system:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_nervous_system
|
| Jellyfish have a nervous system but not a CNS.
|
| I have no idea where the ethical line _ought_ to be here,
| but if plants have meaningful capacity to suffer then
| it's also likely that PETA should be campaigning to limit
| the mistreatment of even the tiny AI we make while doing
| MOOCs on the basics of machine learning.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Science generally _doesn 't_ understand pain or any other
| conscious experience.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Typically this is where fruitarians would come in, but if
| the _fruit_ feels pain we 're all out of options.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Breatharians will triumph at last.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Until they learn that the nano-consciousness exists in
| the air molecules...
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Breatharians
|
| Is that another word for plants?
| [deleted]
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Unlikely, unless the fruit is raw. Some ripe fruits are
| most likely meant to be eaten because that's the
| mechanism that plants have evolved to disperse seeds, so
| it would actually be "rewarding" for the plant. Perhaps
| it would be similar to a little orgasm. Now a raw fruit
| will most likely feel pain.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| "A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes
| disapprovingly at Arthur.
|
| "Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't
| have green salad?"
|
| "Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are
| very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually
| decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed
| an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable
| of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am."
|
| - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Someone needs to poll them about Plantasia.
| vnchr wrote:
| I think you're conflating this phenomenon with the condiment
| research of L. Ron Mustard.
| [deleted]
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