Hey guys, I was just eating a cucumber, when my husband said he read somewhere that cukes have feelings??
I started laughing, but he was serious.. So I looked it up online, and found various articles about this. What do you think - is it true??? I do feel really bad now - eating the cucumber :(
IT'S enough to put those sensitive veggies off their dinner. If they could listen to their greens, they would hear them screaming according to new research.
Scientists in Germany say vegetables let out screams when they are cut, fruits squeal and flowers cry. The researchers have developed a way to hear plant sounds which are normally inaudible to humans.
When a leaf or stem is sliced, the plant signals pain by releasing the gas ethylene over its entire surface. Bombarding the gas molecules with laser beams produces a sound wave, which is picked up by laser microphones.
Dr Frank Kuhnemann, of Bonn University, said: "The more a plant is subjected to stress, the louder the signal we get on our microphone."
The scientists were most surprised by the reaction of a cucumber, which appeared to be in good shape but was yelling in agony.
A closer inspection showed it had developed mildew.
The findings could be valuable to farmers as an early-warning system to detect pests and disease.
"We can detect an infection the day after it has set in," says Ralph Gaebler, one of the researchers.
"Farmers, looking at a plant in the field, have to wait eight or nine days until the mildew spots have visibly broken out before they notice the problem."
THE TOP 5 CRYBABIES
1 Banana
2 Tomato
3 Cucumber
4 Apple
5 Melon
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Best answer
Plants may have "feelings" in the sense that they have consciousness, but why does that mean that they feel pain in the same way that we do? Pain only makes sense in a being that has the ability to move or otherwise retaliate. Think about the evolutionary purpose of pain; it's there to protect a being from injury. Pain cannot help a plant, so why would a plant experience it?
This discussion was specifically in reference to a cucumber Now, the sole purpose of a cucumber, like all fruits, is to house seeds. Seed bearing fruits depend on being eaten in order that their seeds are dispersed. If they simply fell to the ground and rotted away, the seedlings would die in the shade of their parent. This is the reason that fruits are bright colored and sweet: so that frugivores will eat them and carry their seeds to another location.
That's some great feedback Jon. I've learned so much reading these 4 pages! I no longer have any doubt.
My Mr. read the same type of article. He's insistent that we should value plants and animals equally and that eating either of them is equal to the other. He puts up a good argument. I don't want to believe it. What I counter with is that plants treat my body better, so we should still eat them. Anyone else have any advice?
I got this comment the otherday regarding a Banana Raw Food Forest video I made.. I shared in one part of the video how to look after/grow bananas so you end up with healthy fruit, because mostly neglected Banana stands produce an overabundance of plant matter, and fruit quality is poor. Eating the plant matter of Banana trees is not very tasty, trust me!
"As much as I support and love the idea and thinking of Fruitarianism and forest gardening.~ Harming the tree in any way, especially that obvious way of you hacking at it with a machete, seems counterproductive many of the philosophies behind Fruitarianism.~ And before you say, that plants can't feel pain, how about you hack a part of your own body off and tell me if it hurts.~"
I almost chose not to rely, but I could not contain myself lol.. Can people not see/feel the difference between the screams of a lamb having it's front leg torn off and eaten, and a lettuce leaf being torn off and eaten.. Maybe there is good reason we can hear the lamb scream, and not the lettuce, maybe the lettuce is as others have suggested exited by or decision to ingest their magical life giving properties, hoping too that we will love their taste, save their seeds, and spread them around..
I replied with:
"So your a judgmental Breatharian then EnigmaWolf? Do you float over the grass so you don't kill ants and worms, or do you walk on pavement with shoes, the consumer of ecological genocide and entertainment, while you graze the corporate supermarkets for packaged food and chemically laden fruits and vegetables? Appreciation and Gratitude are precious gifts, thankyou for yours."
What's happening is that words are being misused to give the impression that the plants are "screaming." In reality the plant just produces ethylene when it's cut. There is no logical way to show that this is equivalent to "pain."
Hitting the ethylene with a laser beam produces sound, so the sound gets louder or softer depending on how much ethylene there is. The sound isn't produced by the plant at all.
The so-called "screams" are chaotic electromagnetic fluctuations of the plants that are picked up by the lie detector devices in the experiments. It is only a theory that these chaotic fluctuations indicate that the plant being hurt is feeling pain. There is no real way to prove that the chaos equals pain, nor can anyone reasonably conclude that the pain felt by a plant being burned is tantamount to a live animal being burned. We have absolutely no context for understanding how a plant feels discomfort or happiness.
+1
This is the pure logical conclusion of the situation given the data currently available. It is concise and well articulated, nothing else needs to be said, this is honestly the all around best response to the topic.
Bravo Kevin, great demonstration of functional logical faculties, thanks for sharing. (It must be your long hair :P)
Sorry to be a lickspittle, but this is art to me.
LOL
Yep, pure gold! :D
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