Venus Flytraps Have Magnetic Fields Like the Human Brain (vice.com) 33
An anonymous reader shares a report from Motherboard (Editor's note: the article was written last week based on findings published in January): [F]or the first time in history, a group of mavericks out of Switzerland have detected a magnetic signal in a plant. Using a highly sensitive magnetometer, an interdisciplinary team of researchers have measured signals from a Venus flytrap of up to .5 picotesla. To make matters even more mind-blowing, this signal is roughly equivalent to the biomagnetic field strength of the human brain. The full report is here.
The Venus flytrap boasts three trigger hairs that serve as mechanosensors. When a prey insect touches a trigger hair, an Action Potential is generated and travels along both trap lobes. If a second touch-induced Action Potential is fired within 30 seconds, the energy stored in the open trap is released and the capture organ closes. This is the plant-insect equivalent of a repeat offender. Imprisonment ensues. Crucial to making these findings was the fact that this electrical activity doesn't carry into the stalk of traps, which allowed the researchers to isolate the lobe by slicing it from the rest of the plant. Biologically intact, it was then placed on to a sensor. [...] The discovery is as huge for biomagnetism in plants as it is for electro-physiology in general. We now have proof of a pathway for long-distance signal propagation between plant cells. "[I]n the future, magnetometry may be used to study long-distance electrical signaling in a variety of plant species, and to develop noninvasive diagnostics of plant stress and disease," the report says. Crops could be scanned for temperature shifts, chemical changes, or pests without having to damage the plants themselves.
The Venus flytrap boasts three trigger hairs that serve as mechanosensors. When a prey insect touches a trigger hair, an Action Potential is generated and travels along both trap lobes. If a second touch-induced Action Potential is fired within 30 seconds, the energy stored in the open trap is released and the capture organ closes. This is the plant-insect equivalent of a repeat offender. Imprisonment ensues. Crucial to making these findings was the fact that this electrical activity doesn't carry into the stalk of traps, which allowed the researchers to isolate the lobe by slicing it from the rest of the plant. Biologically intact, it was then placed on to a sensor. [...] The discovery is as huge for biomagnetism in plants as it is for electro-physiology in general. We now have proof of a pathway for long-distance signal propagation between plant cells. "[I]n the future, magnetometry may be used to study long-distance electrical signaling in a variety of plant species, and to develop noninvasive diagnostics of plant stress and disease," the report says. Crops could be scanned for temperature shifts, chemical changes, or pests without having to damage the plants themselves.
Do you truly understand what this implies? (Score:5, Funny)
Plants are no longer vegan.
Re: Do you truly understand what this implies? (Score:2)
Feed me Seymour!
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Why do you want to eat Seymour? It seems a bit unsafe what with COVID-19 and all! (kidding, proper cooking should take care of COVID, it's variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and other diseases that cooking may not destroy that you want to watch out for).
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There are many plants that can move their leaves apon a mechanical stimulus, for example Melianthus major, the giant honey flower bush.
How dare you disrespect evidence that plants have agency! Lawyers must now be appointed to represent plants as they file for reparations to compensate for millennia of colonialist predation by humans.
Re:Do you truly understand what this implies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Plants have never been vegan - that would imply they eat other plants. And while that's true of a few parasitic species like orchids and mistletoe (who at least "drink the blood" of their host plant), it's very much an exception. Mostly plants are combination chemovore*/photovores, though they're quite happy to feed on animals (or their waste products) for the chemical side of the combination.
* I suppose technically a chemovore extracts energy from inorganic chemicals, but you get the idea.
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OP was implying that since we can now demonstrate plants using electrical signals to communicate between cells that they are no longer vegan approved food. You would be killing a living thing to eat, no different then harvesting a chicken for dinner.
Berries, beans and peas should still be on the list. The list is shrinking though.
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News flash, 100% of plants are living things, and there is (some, limited, no doubt contested) evidence that they possess at least limited awareness of their environment and potential threats. Many species even clearly communicate with each other to warn of threats like burrowing insect infestation so that distant individuals can start producing countermeasures well before the threat arrives.
On the plus side, modern farming practices aside, there's no need to kill a plant to eat parts of it, and only very
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Berries, beans and peas should still be on the list. The list is shrinking though
No they would most certainly not be ok. Just as vegans don't consume dairy products because it's produced by cows and goats, or honey because it's the product of the labor of the bees, fruits, nuts and berries would all be taboo because eating them would be reaping the rewards of plant slavery. All vegans can eat now is dirt, bacteria and their own feces
Re:Do you truly understand what this implies? (Score:5, Informative)
Carnivorous plants also exist, like TFS's venus flytraps.
There are actually quite a few carnivorous plants. Venus flytraps are common because they physically trap their prey, but others often rely on prey falling in and being unable to get out.
And then there are fig trees, which rely on trapping a wasp in order to fertilize the fruit. Which is why every fig fruit contains a dead wasp. Not quite carnivorous in that the fig tree doesn't rely on digesting the wasp for nutrition, but the wasp does get digested a bit. Basically as the wasp goes about its business flying from plant to tree to plant it picks up pollen. Then it enters the fig bloom through what turns out to be a one way door. The pollen collected fertilizes the bloom and a fruit forms around the trapped wasp. Said wasp dies of natural causes.
Plants can be pretty brutal.
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Yeah, but a lot of those wasps can only reproduce INSIDE the fig anyway, and at the very least, many wasps eggs are laid inside figs for the wasps to hatch into. The pollinating wasps have an obligate mutualistic relationship with those fig trees; those figs are just as dependent on the wasps as the other way around!
Really, every time you're biting into a fig, you're eating a wasp nursery. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
Re: Do you truly understand what this implies? (Score:2)
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They're murdering the plants.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Choose Violence (Score:2)
Re: Choose Violence (Score:1)
Re:Choose Violence (Score:5, Informative)
> I like that the Venus Flytrap could just get what it needs from sunlight, dirt, and water,
Uh, no. Nitrogen is what it can't get because it lives in soils that are very poor in nitrogen. Molecular nitrogen is incredibly hard to "fix", i.e, reduce to ammonia to be biologically available.
That's why it eats insects, for the nitrogen in their protein.
Re:Choose Violence (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the reason why most carnivorous plants are found in bogs and swamps, the ability to get nitrogen from animals makes up for the extra effort in creating the trap.
Carnivorous fungi are everywhere there are nematodes, though. (Which means essentially everywhere there's dirt.)
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Be careful what you wish for.
The Inca wiped out theft, corruption, rape, murder, and fraud by the simple expedient of immediate execution. When the Spanish arrived their culture was unprepared for people who would tell bald faced lies, renege on promises, take bribes, rape and murder at will, and steal. It took two generations for them to adapt, and by that time 70% of their population was dead and their civilization was in ruins.
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Oh man, you just blew my mind. I've been lamenting how the lack of critical thinking skills gives rise to the spread of fake news online, to the detriment of innocent people and even our political process. I have been wishing that we could somehow just "de-stupid" these people, or boot them off the Internet until they earn the right via demonstrated competence at fact checking, fallacy-recognizing, and good-faith argumentation.
But now I think: we need these people, as an enduring problem, in order to ensu
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https://college.cengage.com/hi... [cengage.com]
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/ar... [mnsu.edu]
Don Mancio Serra de Leguisamo, last of the Peruvian conquistadores, sought divine redemption by confessing the sins of his people in the preamble of his will:
"[W]e found these kingdoms in such good order, and the said Incas governed them in such wise that throughout them there was not a thief, nor a vicious man, nor an adulteress, nor was a bad woman admitted among them, nor were there immoral people. The men had honest and useful occ
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Never mind the second link, hadn't noticed that I pasted it.
But why Venus? (Score:2)
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You got me... I did some wiki searching and think I know why now. I won't tell the kids, heh.
I have noticed (Score:1)
And... (Score:2)
And in many cases, Venus Flytraps are smarter than some humans.
Does the North Pole have a brain too? (Score:1)