Plant neurobiology is a growing field of science that investigates the ways in which plants sense their environment and change their morphology and physiology accordingly. There are those who argue that growth in different forms is not similar to cognition or consciousness, but when it comes to unconsciousness, the situation may differ slightly.
Plants do not sleep in the same way as humans, but like humans, they are less active at night. They have their own circadian rhythms, internal clocks, that use environmental and chemical cues to distinguish night from day, and like some animals, they can wake up with the Sun.
Awakening plants have even been seen from space, thanks to NASA’s Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer on the Space Station (ECOSTRESS), a device installed on the International Space Station (ISS). ECOSTRESS can monitor the health of vegetation on Earth by measuring its temperature and tracking processes such as evapotranspiration, where plants effectively “sweat out” excess water to cool.
Images taken from space in 2019 showed how plant activity increased as plants near Lake Superior in the US “wake up” throughout the morning. Scientists aboard the ISS found that plants closest to the water’s edge were early risers, showing signs of activity earlier than plants further away.
If plants are sleeping, can they be put to sleep somehow?
If plants have the ability to “wake up,” it would make sense that it would also be possible for them to be “put to sleep” in some way. That’s why botanist Stefano Mancuso is researching this issue at the International Plant Neurobiology Laboratory.
The interesting observation that fueled Mancuso’s search for evidence of plant intelligence was a root growing around an obstacle. Filming the movement found that the plant did not need to touch the obstacle before it began to determine a better growth direction. So, the plant had to know to change direction before encountering the obstacle.
Plant movements may seem strange, but they are much more common than most people realize. Unfortunately, it happens at a pace that makes watching boring unless you’re looking at the tips of delicate plants and Venus fly traps. David Attenborough’s Green Planet footage manages to show something most of us have never seen; It showed how plants fight for sunlight, sometimes using tactics humans would find unethical to eliminate competition.
Although it is difficult to prove or disprove without a clear definition of what consciousness means, it was observations like these that led Mancuso to ask questions about the possibility of plant consciousness. “It’s incredibly difficult to talk about consciousness, because even in our case we don’t actually know what consciousness is,” he told The Guardian. “But there’s an approach to talking about it as an actual biological feature: consciousness, when we’re sleeping very deeply or It’s something we all have, except when we’re under anesthesia. My approach to studying consciousness in plants was similar. I started by researching whether they were sensitive to anesthetics and found that you could anesthetize whole plants using the same anesthetics that work in humans. This is extremely fascinating. “We thought consciousness was a brain thing, but I think both consciousness and intelligence are more embodied, related to the whole body.”
Mancuso’s team believes they can achieve success in putting the plants into full “sleep” by the end of 2023.
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