Surprising Discovery Reveals Plants Are Capable Of Making Complex Decisions

MessageToEagle.com – Are plants more intelligent than we assumed? This recent study shows that plants possess surprising abilities.

Plants are also able to make complex decisions, say scientists from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Göttingen.

Based on their investigations on Barberry (Berberis vulgaris), which is able to abort its own seeds to prevent parasite infestation, researchers deliver now the first ecological evidence of complex behavior in plants.
The Barberry (Berberis vulgaris species has a structural memory, is able to differentiate between inner and outer conditions as well as anticipate future risks, according to the study.

When scientists examined the seeds of the Barberry more closely, they made a surprising discovery.

“The seeds of the infested fruits are not always aborted, but rather it depends on how many seeds there are in the berries”, explains Dr. Katrin M. Meyer, who analysed the data at the UFZ and currently works at the University of Goettingen.

If the infested fruit contains two seeds, then in 75 per cent of cases, the plants will abort the infested seeds, in order to save the second intact seed.

If however the infested fruit only contains one seed, then the plant will only abort the infested seed in 5 per cent of cases.”If the Barberry aborts a fruit with only one infested seed, then the entire fruit would be lost. Instead it appears to ‘speculate’ that the larva could die naturally, which is a possibility. Slight chances are better than none at all”, explains Dr. Hans-Hermann Thulke from the UFZ.

“This anticipative behaviour, whereby anticipated losses and outer conditions are weighed up, very much surprised us. The message of our study is therefore that plant intelligence is entering the realms of ecological possibility.”
But how does the Barberry know what is in store for it after the tephritid fruit fly has punctured a berry? It is still unclear as to how the plant processes information and how this complex behaviour was able to develop over the course of evolution.

We have previously seen that plants are much more alive than most people think.

Not only do they dislike human noise but they also posses the capacity to learn and communicate.

Perhaps even more astonishing is that plants can also make incredible music.

MessageToEagle.com