Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: paul.fr on 26/10/2007 19:19:58
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sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste. They are the 5 senses, i presume most mammals have them, but what about plants do they have those 5? Or do they have plant specific senses?
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I remember reading about some research a few years back where music was played to some plants and not to others. The plants subjected to the music grew larger. I didn't see the research paper itself so I can't comment on its validity.
(There is no guarantee this would work with Spice Girls records)
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We actually have more than 5 senses. We can detect heat - that is not touch as such. Some animals (it is debatable is maybe, in a restricted sense, most animals) can detect electric fields, and the same is true of the Earth's magnetism.
Taste and smell are intertwined - but if you want to look at them separately, then what about the functioning of the vomeronasal organ, which although is much debated about whether it has any function in humans, is used for detecting pheromones in some other mammals (such as mice).
Clearly, plants do not have a nervous system, nor a brain, so the way they sense and process information about their environment must be different from that which is true for animals. So the comparison, if it is to be made, must be about what plants sense, rather than how they sense. They can sense light (does that mean they can see?), they can sense physical contact (does that mean they have a sense of touch), they can detect chemicals in their environment (does that mean they have a sense of taste or smell?), and possibly they can sense vibration (does that mean they may be able to hear?).
Even bacteria can respond to light, heat, and chemicals (and some, to magnetic or electrical fields) - but again, they have no nervous system, so how do you compare their senses to animal senses?
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And they can catch insects Venus fly trap or should I say venous return fly trap as the trap closes due to a change in internal pressures. I Beleive because the insect stimulates the release of solutes to flow down the stem and in doing so generates the negative tension in the return folw which closes the leaves. I suspect also that this happens with the prayer plant that closes its leaves at night and opens them in the morning. And this also gives us an answer to phototropism and gravitropism which I believe has been mentioned in another thread awaiting an explanation using conventional beliefs in fluid transport, to which I await a reply with interest.
Andrew