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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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OP has provided scientific evidence, feel free to do the same to support your claim - I'd wager this is gonna be hard.
And apologies if there was a /s I missed somewhere, I'm quite sensitive about this topic.
It’s pretty well known that plants don’t just passively endure damage—they communicate chemically with each other through the air or root systems.
Here are two examples:
Acacia Trees
When attacked, the tree releases ethylene gas into the air. Nearby acacia trees detect this gas and respond by increasing tannin production in their leaves, making them bitter and potentially toxic to herbivores. This chemical warning system helps protect not just one tree, but others nearby as well.
Tomato Plants
When attacked by pests like caterpillars, tomato plants release VOCs (such as methyl jasmonate). Nearby tomato plants “smell” this and preemptively activate their own defenses, such as producing chemicals that deter insects or attract predatory wasps.
Almost all people would agree that's not the same thing as the subjective experience of pain, though. By that measure a smoke detector is actually screaming when it's power is interrupted.
Plants don't have organs for movement or information processing, because those are too energy intensive and wouldn't help much. Their other tissues respond to stimuli, but the data rate is orders of magnitude slower than an animal in the same environment.
I'm not sure why these signals would need to reach any significant complexity, but if they did it would be a truly alien mind that expands with the plant's growth about as fast as it thinks. And it's kind of beside the point. Stealing from !Teppichbrand@feddit.org:
Come on, you can do better.
On the wikipedia page you linked, there is exactly zero occurrence of the word "pain".
The only part that could remotely be linked to your previous argument does not indicate pain at all.
This paragraph is a less sensational and more serious reformulation of the source material, an opinion piece stating the following without a single scientific reference
This piece was posted in May 2012 on mentalfloss.com, so not really a scientific study.
Also, nothing in there speaks of the brocoli, which you first referred to.
Edit: spelling, formatting
You're going to have a difficult time cutting through others' cognitive dissonance. Humor, distancing, false-equivalence, and sarcasm... Are all refuge from the discomfort of being indifferent at best, or outright complicit. If people could start accepting it's just sad.
I wish more people were mature enough to look at truth straight in the face.
Nothing in either comment speaks about pain either, just screams. I only posted the wikipedia link because it referenced the numerous articles about this well established phenomenon. I didn't realize I was defending a doctoral thesis here. Y'all are fucking toxic.
Dude doesn’t even look at usernames. 🤡
Ah so stepping on kittens is the same thing as stepping on grass. Great logic…
this isn't what they said