Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Screams of Death From a Field of Broccoli?


Researchers from the University of Missouri
have found that plants hear, and react, to the sound of eating caterpillars but ignore the sound of wind.

What's that mean?  It means that plants are sentient.  They feel fear, which means they feel pain.

And guess what?

Plants actually "scream," of a sort, when attacked.

Researchers at the Institute for Applied Physics at the University of Bonn in Germany, found that plants give off ethylene gas when the sound of attack from bugs and other destructive invaders is played. When super-sensitive laser probes were placed on the plants, and ethylene gas production was registered as a sound, plant "noises" were heard to rise to a piercing screech.  And it did not take a lot of destruction to illicit a cry of pain from a plant -- even a tiny insect bite could generate increased ethylene gas production and a sound effect.

"The more a plant is subjected to stress, the louder the signal," said Dr Frank Kühnemann.

What does this mean for vegetarians who gobble down a head of lettuce and who proclaim that a rat is a pig is a dog is a child -- or that the death of a common marmot is the same as the death of an endangered elephant?

It's going to be a problem!

PeTA's own Ingrid Newkirk starts off her post proclaiming "a rat is a pig, is a dog, is a boy," by quoting Mark Twain:
“It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.”
But if plants can be said to react to the sound of destruction by signaling distress, how can Ms. Newkirk continue to eat?


If we are to blur the lines
between rats and children, why is this same blurring not appropriate for the difference between a carrot, a bit of broccoli, or a field of wheat and a rat?

Under her own logic, a carrot is a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy.

And of course, we have not even started with bacteria, fungus, nematodes, and worms.  All of these living animals can actually be trained to perform.  These are not just reactive animals that scream every bit as much a clump of broccoli -- they can actually plan as Charles Darwin himself showed.

They are all living and very sentient things.


And yet the simple act of plowing a field for a vegan diet approved by PeTA kills hundreds, if not thousands. This is direct murder at the hand of man.

If all plants and all animals are equal, is it not better to shoot the largest wild animal one can find once or twice a year, rather than kill millions of animals and plants a season in order to fill the pot?


3 comments:

Garnet said...

I can't tell if you're serious, but the fact that plants produce ethylene gas in response to the presence of caterpillars does not mean they actually feel the subjective sensations of pain or fear.

A lot of single-celled microbes exhibit responses to various stimuli (light, noxious chemicals, gravity, etc) and it doesn't imply that they are sentient.

PBurns said...

Actually Garner, plants ARE sentient. That's the point.

They are reacting to mere SOUND and putting up a defense.

They are not reacting to just ANY sound, but to a SPECIFIC sound of caterpillars eating.

That is the very definition of sentient.

Ditto for worms. If an animal can reason to the point it understands that the pointiest part is the easiest part to pull into a tube that means it is not only sentient, but reasoning and planning (a whole order higher).

The fact that something it sentient, of course, has NEVER meant that it does not die, and is not killed, and is not (even) eaten. That has been true since the dawn of time. The idea that sentient things are not eaten is simply flawed thinking. The hawk plucks the sparrow while it is still screaming. It is the way of things. What man brings to the table is the ability to prevent disease, reduce pain, and kill swiftly.

5string said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDRx_F4XtFA