How sentient is your pot plant?
Your house plant salutes the sun, but other than that it's a matter of photosynthesise, make food and live ... isn't it? Well, they do show other signs of intelligent life — under poor soil conditions, the pea seems to be able to assess risk and the Venus flytrap appears to count when insects trigger its trap and a new study in the Annals of Botany suggests that sedation causes plants to lose consciousness and freeze.
The scientists closed pea plants in a glass chamber with ether, and soaked the roots of sensitive garden cress in lidocaine. The electrical activity of a Venus flytrap's cells was also recorded.
An hour after the sedatives were administered, all the plants became unresponsive. When the drugs wore off, the plants appeared to "come alive" again — akin to regaining consciousness.
As with animals and humans, anaesthetics used at appropriate concentrations block action potentials and immobilise organs, but there is no scientific consensus about how they do this. (Source: New York Times)
