Planten hebben bewustzijn
Groundbreaking experiments suggest they might be living, thinking, and even feeling entities. Grover Cleveland Backster Jr., a former CIA interrogation specialist, conducted experiments with plants using polygraph machines. To his surprise, plants seemed to respond to human thoughts and emotions.
Backster’s experiments extended to various plants, like lettuces and bananas, which showed responses to human emotions and actions, even over long distances. In one astonishing test, a plant that had “witnessed” another being destroyed could identify the "killer" from a group of suspects. Plants also displayed stress responses to interspecies violence, such as when eggs were cracked or shrimp boiled nearby. These findings, though published in the International Journal of Parapsychology, remain controversial but continue to spark curiosity about plant perception.
Monica Gagliano, an animal ecologist at the University of Western Australia, took these ideas further by demonstrating plant learning and memory. In her study, Mimosa pudica plants initially curled their leaves when dropped repeatedly from 15 cm, a typical stress response. Over time, however, they stopped reacting, recognizing the drops posed no real harm. Remarkably, a month later, the plants still “remembered” the drops were harmless, retaining their learned behavior.
These studies challenge the assumption that brains and neurons are essential for consciousness. If plants can learn, remember, and respond intelligently to their environment, what defines consciousness? Why do we assume it requires a brain? These findings invite us to reconsider our understanding of life, intelligence, and awareness, expanding our perspective on what it means to be conscious.
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