Do Plants Feel Pain?

[georgexu94]

Plants do detect touch. The presence of "skin" is irrelevant - as long as something has the sensors, it can detect the feeling.

 

(Being consciously aware of said feeling is another matter.)

Stupid me. I forgot about that. Haha.

[freezerpup]

All living things including plants have sensitivity so yes, they can feel pain....

[georgexu94]

But may I ask again, why plants need to emit gas to communicate with other plants? Especially of they can't do anything about it?

[Kestra15]

Define pain.

[CanYouSeeTheseMoves]

Define pain.

It's a really bad feeling that someone gets when they experience injury or something like that.

 

In reply to the topic: I don't think so. Pain 'travels' through nerves and is detected by the brain. As far as I know, plants do not have nerves or brains.

[Shienvien]

It's a really bad feeling.

...Define "bad" and "feeling"?

 

 

 

As to why plants would want to communicate the fact that they were injured: some plants are capable of altering their chemical consistency so that they, while normally edible, actually become inedible. Everyone in the region becoming temporarily inedible benefits the local flora as a whole.

 

At other times, the chemicals plants emit actually lure in certain predators. And well, naturally it is beneficial for a plant that is being chewed on by caterpillars of species X to lure in wasps of species Z that just happens to lay their eggs in caterpillars of species X. It's symbiosis: the plants will get rid of the caterpillars chewing on them and the wasps will get to reproduce.

[grimace]

No.

Well, sort of.

Most plants can detect when something is damaging them, but they don't have any of the functions of feeling pain or being able to actually THINK about any of it.

Plants feel pain in the same way a smoke detector knows your house is burning down.

 

Theres no reason for plants (or immobile animals) to even develop a sense of pain in he first place. The whole point of it is to stop you from doing things that harm your body, and if you are a plant, or coral, or whatever theres nothing you can do to yourself anyway, and nothing you can do about something harming you, therefore no need for pain.

[Shienvien]

Theres no reason for plants (or immobile animals) to even develop a sense of pain in he first place. The whole point of it is to stop you from doing things that harm your body, and if you are a plant, or coral, or whatever theres nothing you can do to yourself anyway, and nothing you can do about something harming you, therefore no need for pain.

As stated in my post above, some plants can take action when they are damaged, be it through luring in someone who would eat whoever is damaging them in turn or by becoming poisonous/starting to taste disgusting.

[grimace]

As stated in my post above, some plants can take action when they are damaged, be it through luring in someone who would eat whoever is damaging them in turn or by becoming poisonous/starting to taste disgusting.

Yeah, theres plants that do all kinds of stuff like that. My favorite are the ones that summon wasps.

 

I meant theres no reason a plant or etc would ever develop pain in the sense that most animals have, because it would be a massive negative function that would be entirely useless.

[Shienvien]

I meant theres no reason a plant or etc would ever develop pain in the sense that most animals have, because it would be a massive negative function that would be entirely useless.

Pain malfunctions in animals quite often, too. If someone is curled up in pain instead of running away when being chased by predators, then said someone will get eaten... Some pain is completely disproportionate for its cause, too. A tiny hole in the flat of a fingernail can be a lot more painful than a sizeable hole through the hand itself. And quite often, animals are driven mad by pain and injure themselves further instead of being more careful.

[sparkle10184]

But pain is also very helpful^^ otherwise you wouldn't know anything was wrong sometimes and that could be very bad

[Bresn]

They are alive but I don't think they can feel

[na82008]

Fact: plants cannot feel pain.

here are 2 of many reasons

 

reason one: they don't have nerves or nerve receptors, so they cannot feel anything, they cannot take in anything based on physical body

 

reason two: they don't have a brain or nerve system, so even if they could take in the feeling, they wouldn't be able to process it, so would not react, witch means it doesn't feel bad.

[georgexu94]

...Define "bad" and "feeling"?

 

 

 

As to why plants would want to communicate the fact that they were injured: some plants are capable of altering their chemical consistency so that they, while normally edible, actually become inedible. Everyone in the region becoming temporarily inedible benefits the local flora as a whole.

 

At other times, the chemicals plants emit actually lure in certain predators. And well, naturally it is beneficial for a plant that is being chewed on by caterpillars of species X to lure in wasps of species Z that just happens to lay their eggs in caterpillars of species X. It's symbiosis: the plants will get rid of the caterpillars chewing on them and the wasps will get to reproduce.

Thanks!

[DigitalGarden]

Ah... Let's see plants don't have skin or sense of touch

Mimose would like to disagree with you.

*boop boop poke* I love doing that; however I don't think it's "pain", it's more like "eww stop touching my PRECIOUS leaves :C". Super cute.

Next, plants with tendrils rely on touch to wrap around objects and cling to surfaces. I've tried it myself with my Thicket Creeper (Parthenocissus vitacea/P. inserta). After a while, it wrapped its tendril around my finger. You would never expect an actual hug from a plant, huh?<3

Also, how do you think flytraps hunt? A prey has to touch it. d:

 

Of course, their touch sense doesn't work the same as ours, but it still counts. It's called thigmotropism or thigmonasty. Many other examples included.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Light Concorde

[Nephels]

I myself this question many a time and I don't necessarily believe that all of it is true. When most people say that "plants can feel pain" or that "you're hurting it" may normally come from the fact that what you're doing to the plant may be causing it to die. I apologize if I may sound a little untruthful, I just haven't looked into this topic very well.

[ViperSwan]

I've found this video and this

very helpful. These have been tested and proven!

[DangerDragon]

I think they feel pain.

[DustyBelle]

I don't believe so. It is a religious based feeling as I won't believe in a god who inflicts pain on some of his creations by making them necessary to survival by others. Plants are needed for mankinds survival. Animals and fish and birds all feel pain. Mankind would not be healthy on a straight milk, water fruit type diet.

 

Those of you who believe the plants feel pain; do you believe when a fruit is picked or a corn is plucked from the plant it would feel pain? What if it wasn't quite ripe?

 

Just too much for me. God is love and merciful in my book and He just wouldn't do that to plants who can't get away from humans and animals.

[Shienvien]

Those of you who believe the plants feel pain; do you believe when a fruit is picked or a corn is plucked from the plant it would feel pain? What if it wasn't quite ripe?

It is not a matter of belief for me; it is a proven fact that plants nigh-instantly react to being damaged in ways that are unrelated to the plants' ability to heal and repair the damage. Even more bizarrely, the chemical consistency of the surrounding plants often changes, too, but only if they are the kinds of plants that 'get along'. They literally become socially stressed.

 

As for whether they feel pain when plucked too soon? Yes. If a fruit is ripe, then in most cases the stalk will dry or auto-separate from the branch. If you want to know whether the plant felt any pain in a specific instance, you'll just have to measure the changes in it and see whether there was the reaction that corresponds to pain.

 

[JavaTigress]

Plants do detect touch. The presence of "skin" is irrelevant - as long as something has the sensors, it can detect the feeling.

 

(Being consciously aware of said feeling is another matter.)

This is my question on it.

 

Maybe it causes changes in the plant. I can believe that. HOWEVER... is the plant necessarily AWARE or conscious of that the way a human or an animal would be? That I am not so sure I believe. The two aren't EXACTLY the same thing after all. At least, I am not sure that they are.

 

The plant may be damaged, and therefore react to stress to its system, but does it really experience pain as we think of it?

Edited August 9, 2014 by Silverswift

[Shienvien]

The plant may be damaged, and therefore react to stress to its system, but does it really experience pain as we think of it?

There are some things that seem to indicate it, including the social behaviour and instances of plants not only realizing that they are being harmed, but reacting differently to a knife cutting in and a caterpillar chewing on them. To date, people do not know how the distinction is made, but it is, as the reaction is completely different.

[JavaTigress]

There are some things that seem to indicate it, including the social behaviour and instances of plants not only realizing that they are being harmed, but reacting differently to a knife cutting in and a caterpillar chewing on them. To date, people do not know how the distinction is made, but it is, as the reaction is completely different. 

That is... very odd. And fascinating.

 

I guess plants are more complex than most people, myself included, tend to give them credit for.

 

I would be interested in learning HOW it is that the plant can tell the difference, given that they do not have a brain, at least not as we would think of it, to process the stimulus and determine that one is different from the other, and not ONLY that, to respond differently in accordance with that information.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Silverswift

[grimace]

Plants absolutely can tell when they are being damaged.

It doesn't -hurt- though. Mostly because they don't have the capacity for something like that, and also because a huge negative feeling like that would be entirely useless since the whole point of pain is to get to to get away from something, or to stop doing something. WHich plants obviously can do neither.

[zaverxi]

To feel pain, they must have some sort of pain receptors. Which means some sort of nerve system in place to detect pain. A thigmotropic reaction, as mentioned previously, such as some plants have that move leaves after you touch them, or venus fly trap closing on a bug, is different from reacting to pain.

 

The feeling of 'pain' comes from your brain itself, the nerves transmit the signals to the brain, which interprets it as pain and sends the signal back, which causes the reaction to pain. It's involuntary and instinctual.

 

It also, apparently, requires some sort of brain that can translate these signals. Most if not all animals have it, but plants do not have a nervous system, they only have a circulatory system of sorts. There's nothing there to send signals.