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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Very obvious bait post.
Plants are not sentient. Animals are.
All living organisms show basic reaction to external stimuli. Plants follow that. That does not indicate sentience.
Animals have significantly more intelligence than that. They form bonds, form relationships, mourn, and so on.
No living being except probably photosynthesis driven plankton can live entirely without consuming anything alive.
Recent studies actually show the opposite of "no sentience". Plants communicate with each other, even across different species and kingdoms. That means certain animals for example can understand signals from plants better than they understand us.
And that's just communication. The world of life on earth is so much more than the naive human way of thinking. In fact, it's likely we've already encountered multiple different life forms from space already, and we just have no way to know yet.
So please. Jump off the high horse, take off your hat, and acknowledge that the food on your plate has had a very diverse, colorful life. You can still choose not to eat animals. Just like I choose not to eat dogs and cats, some people see them no different to cows, pigs, and plants.
It's all just nutrients. So respect it.
Edit: Here's an example of how much we understand what dogs see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf4k0VgCQjg
Fungi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tjt8WT5mRs
Would've appreciated some links to the recent studies referred here.
And that's very basic level of communication. I'm not sure we can really compare it higher life forms.
Fungi are an entirely different ballgame. They are way too different from both animal and plants.
I'll try to find the papers to reference them proper, but take that with a grain of salt, because I'll probably forget or fail to do so.
And yeah, the ones I've linked so far are very surface level, but it does however prove the existence of something that isn't all too well understood yet, much less known of by a overwhelming majority.
So I try to spread awareness to it. Better if I had the links, I agree, but alas.