DO PLANTS FEEL PAIN? AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION. Actually it is rather simplistic to infer that plants can feel pain just by confirming that they are capable of reacting to external stimuli. Arguably, all living organisms are capable of doing this but at this stage there is no conclusive scientific evidence that plants can feel pain, or indeed, feel anything at all. This is bcause, although plants are living organisms and can respond to changes in their environment, biochemistry, and physiology, plants lack any mechanism that is even remotely similar to a central nervous system, a brain, and nerves: systems which have largely dictated how we have come to understand and define pain over the years. Even within the study of animal species, the understanding of the sensation of pain and whether or not it affects all animals universally and in the same way is largely debatable. For example, although the predominant stance in conventional wisdom is that all vertebrates are capable of registering, and therefore feeling the sensation of pain as we humans have come to experience, define, and understand it, the question of whether or not other species of animals like cold blooded vertebrates or invertebrates feel pain in the same way is still a subject of much debate and scrutiny. Some current criteria used to indicate that other species may feel pain (or at the very least have the potential to feel pain) are as follows: 1. the presence of nervous system, sensory receptors, and opioid receptors 2. Nociception, or the display of involuntary motor reaction, or reflex responses that move the animal away from the source of traumatic stimuli. and the last, most tricky component: 3. the internal, or emotional interpretation of the nociceptive experience itself. Which means that even among human species, pain cannot be directly measured in finite amounts. In other words, though an animal may feel pain as evinced by the presence of the above two categories, it is impossible to form a direct correlation or comparison to how it feels this pain in comparison to another animal or even another member of its species. Because of this, many proponents of pain studies also infer that nociception alone is insufficient to offer conclusive evidence of experiencing pain. in order to acutely register the sensation of pain and therefore feel it in a way that goes beyond simple reflex action or genetic pre-programming, it is scientifically argued that an organism also needs to possess a relatively high cognitive ability and/or sentience (something which usually goes hand in hand with the possession of a brain, or brain-like organ). As such the study of pain is at present one of the most complicated and debated in the biological sciences. Certain vertebrates, such as the naked mole rat may possess a complete nervous system but then lack other fundamental compounds such as pain related neuropeptides. Invertebrates on the other hand may exhibit nociception but are in turn capable of undergoing autotomy (self amputation) as a response to traumatic stimuli. Similarly, some insects such as the larvae of the common fruit fly (drosophila) and in a recent study, that of a hawk moth, have been shown to exhibit learning behavior and can be trained with the sequential presence of bad smells or electric shocks. Is this evidence enough to support that even insects can understand and therefore feel such stimuli as what we come to define as pain? Even without its emotional component, pain, or more accurately nociception is an evolutionary trait that animals developed to elicit an immediate and dramatic avoidance to traumatic stimuli, thus preventing further damage from befalling the organism. Arguably, this trait could only evolve because of their ability to move quickly and therefore provide an immediate physical reaction to said stimuli. Plants, on the other hand, move very slowly and are unable to avoid traumatic stimuli in such an effective manner. Based on our current understanding of the evolution of plants and animals, it would therefore seem highly unlikely that plants managed to evolve anything even remotely similar to nociception or the ability of feeling pain because it would ultimately serve no purpose. Certainly many plants are capable of reacting to damage by making changes in their biochemistry to produce toxins to defend themselves, or to shed parts of their body when environmental conditions are harsh, but as romantic as it is to equate this with pain, the fact is that based on our current understanding of the world through science, it simply isnt so. The video offers us many postulations and subjects for discussion, but it offers no conclusions because to be frank, there are none. This, of course, isnt to rule ultimately rule out that plants can feel pain, but as Carl Sagan once offered extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. https://facebook/video.php?v=10153059756828357
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 10:00:32 +0000
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