They donāt have a brain really and kinda just float there. Do they even feel pain?
plants are not ācreaturesā, neither are animals.<br> both are indeed living evolutures ;)
They told me Lemmy would be more leftist, why am I still seeing 0 IQ vegan jokes
Thatās lemmy.ml. I think most of us just want this to be a place with less politics and extremism on either side because itās exhausting.
If you want to minimize plant death, going vegan is still the right move.
Most of the crops we grow go to feeding animals that people eat.
Plants also react to being harmed, so itās arguable they donāt feel pain.
I remember reading that some species of plants release a specific chemical or audio frequency (I canāt remember which) in response to being cut down, and this chemical is detected by other nearby plants that cause them to become stiffer or something along those lines. Whether that meana the plants feel pain or not, there isnāt anything conclusive. I think it would be pretty hard to feel pain without a nervous system, but its possible that what constitutes pain doesnāt need a nervous system or pain receptors at all. Im not a scientific expert, I just tried to be funny.
We may be able to tell if they are stressed, which could be related to pain, depending on your viewpoint.
Here is a recent study of audible reactions plant can have to stress: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00262-3
Do plants react to stress and harmful situations like infestation? Absolutely. Do they actually feel pain as we understand it? Probably not since they lack a nervous system.
This boils down to the question: What is pain?
That is kinda what I was hinting at. If we define pain as something that causes a defensive (or similar) reaction, then sure: Plants react to āpainā in their own way. I have never seen a jellyfish react to āpainā though.
When my chinchilla starts barking, itās easy to assume that he is in pain or otherwise uncomfortable, but to say that he is truly in pain is impossible. However, when animals hurt their foot and start limping, itās a good theory that they are reacting to pain. My examples only include mammals though, to your point.
Excuse my rambling. I am not disagreeing with you, but just thinking out loud.
There is no evidence that they do.
You say this, but do you know anything about the research and science in this regard?
Hereās one intro clip from Wikipedia, there are also many thousands of scientific studies related to learning about how different organisms feel things if you want to learn:
Crustaceans fulfill several criteria proposed as indicating that non-human animals may experience pain. These fulfilled criteria include a suitable nervous system and sensory receptors; opioid receptors and reduced responses to noxious stimuli when given analgesics and local anaesthetics; physiological changes to noxious stimuli; displaying protective motor reactions; exhibiting avoidance learning; and making trade-offs between noxious stimulus avoidance and other motivational requirements.
It is impossible to know anything for sure. You can just go with what is the most plausible within our current knowledge. Jellyfish posses a very simple nervous system, even less complex than that of insects. Personally I donāt think itās possible for them to suffer but since there is no reason to be cruel to them why should I endorse it?
