The question caught my eye when I was reading through the VICE archives.

So, do they?

It’s not really a “yes or no” kind of answer. As intelligent life, no. However, they can sense and react to the surrounding world. Plants may not be defined as intelligent life, but they show signs of “intelligent behavior.” Clifford Slayman stated in an interview with The New Yorker that “We do not know what constitutes intelligence, only what we can observe and judge as intelligent behavior.” Thus sharing this definition of intelligent life, plants do not have nerve cells like us, however, they can send electrical signals and produce neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters are similar to that of a human’s, sending chemicals like the humans brain sends chemicals as signals.

In addiction to senses, plants have a form of memory. “They store and recall information, but they won’t go talk to their psychiatrist about it. The clearest example would be a venus flytrap. The way a venus flytrap closes is that it has these huge hairs—filaments—along its big open lobe. It looks like two leaves, but it’s one leaf. And when a bug comes along and catches two of those hairs, it’ll close. If it only touches one, it won’t. It touches one, keeps crawling, touches the second. If it touches it within 20 seconds, it’ll close. If it’s within 20 seconds, it’s a big bug, and it’s worth the energy to close. If it’s a longer time, maybe it’s two little things, and it’s not worth the energy to close. It only wants to eat something that’s big” (Daniel Chamovitz, VICE). That’s pretty crazy to me. Not only can plants sense things like gravity, the presence of water, hearing, and taste, but they can store figurative files in their brain. So by combining these senses and their “brain,” plants are able to respond to their environment. Their processing system in response to so many variables such as ;water, light, nutrients, temperature, etc., allows them to create a processing system to combine these senses as date with behavioral responses.

In answer to the blog post’s enticing title, however, the answer is no. I know I’ve been talking about an abundance of sensory receptors in plants, but the truth is just that plants don’t have pain receptors. Pain receptors are different than pressure receptors, and that’s something that plants most definitely have, and most definitely use. Think about all the water pressure they must feel when you forget to water them twice a week.