The Secret Life of Plant Perception: Plants Can See, Hear, Smell, Feel, React, and Think
Plant senses don’t work the same as human senses, but generally speaking, plants can see, hear, smell, feel, react, and even think. Below we discuss plant senses and plant perception.
Understanding Plant Senses, Plant Intelligence, and Plant Perception
Plants have a wide range of senses and can react to phenomena like chemicals, gravity, pressure, light, moisture, infections, temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations, parasite infestation, disease, physical disruption, sound, and touch.[1]
Plants use their cells the way we use our eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. They pick up electrochemical signals from the environment (feeling and sensing) and then process that information (thinking), releasing hormones and electrochemical signals, which causes the plant to react.
In other words, plants can sense, feel, think, and react based on sensory input. That process doesn’t work exactly the same as it does with humans, but it is analogous in many ways.
FACT: All organisms have senses, not just plants. Mushrooms and bacteria are also living organisms with sensory perception.
Can plants think?
Examples of Plant Senses
Some plants can use one cell to focus light into another cell, and then process that information and use it to react to the environment (for example to grow toward the sunlight).[2] Is that “seeing”? Speaking loosely, we can argue yes, even though photoreceptors don’t work the same way in humans and plants.
We have the same argument for smells, sounds, and touch.
For example, some plants can sense insects on their leaves and retract their leaves as a defense mechanism.
Likewise, some small flowering plants can “hear” themselves being chewed by sensing vibrations, triggering a chemical defense as a response.[3]
Likewise, fruiting plants can “smell” the chemical pheromone ethylene (a small hydrocarbon gas) produced by rotting fruit and react by ripening its fruits faster, so all fruits ripen at the same time.[4]
Plants can even communicate with other organisms, like the mushroom. For example, trees communicate with each other across distances by passing messages through their roots and along underground webs of fungal growth. So, not only is a plant reacting to its environment via its senses, some are capable of interspecies communication.
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