Pleasure is a feeling associated with happiness and excitement. But nowhere in the definition does it say that it is restricted to humans. Cats purr, dogs wag their tails. Animals can feel happiness, too. In fact, I heard that the federal government is spending thousands of our tax dollars to see whether frogs are happier with teeth! But what about plants? Does anyone wonder if they can feel emotions? Apparently some people have considered it. Some people who keep plants around the house sing to them to help them grow. They say that if you say bad things to a plant, it will die. It sounds silly, but according to some studies, these things are true. Scientists have proposed that plants can respond to certain stimuli, suggesting that they, too, are capable of feeling, and even experiencing pleasure and other emotions.
Cleve Backster, a lie-detector expert who ran a school on lie-detection for policemen and security agents in New York City, rather accidentally detected primary perception in plants in 1968. While at work one day, he hooked his polygraph up to a tropical plant on his desk, just to see what would happen. After watering it, he was surprised to see that it produced a pattern on the graph very similar to that of a person after receiving an emotional stimulus. After further testing, he found that, somehow, the very thought of setting fire to its leaves drastically changed the pattern of the graph. It seemed as though the plant could not only feel, but also read his mind.
Tests also showed that plants might have the ability to show concern for other organisms, as well as each other. A potted plant in one room was connected to a polygraph unit. In another room, both live and dead shrimp were being dropped into a pot of boiling water. At the instant live shrimp were dropped, the polygraph showed significant electrical changes in the plant, while there was no reaction when the dead shrimp were dropped into the pot. It was almost as if the plant felt sorry for the live shrimp who were being boiled.
Biologist Lyall Watson has been able to successfully reproduce one of Backster's experiments. It is a game played with six people and two potted plants, similar to a game called Murder. The six people, chosen randomly, drew lots to see which one was going to be the murderer. No one was to disclose whether they were or not. The two potted plants, which could be of any species as long as they were both the same, were placed in a closed room. Each player had ten minutes in the room alone with the plants, during which time the murderer was supposed to kill one of the plants. At the end of the hour, the surviving plant would be hooked up to an EEG or a polygraph, and the six people were individually brought back into the room to briefly stand near the plant. In almost every trial of the experiment, the plant would show no response to five of the people, but one person would cause a significant change in the plant's graph. This person was usually the murderer.
The reason for the obvious changes in the plant's polygraph tests is not definitely because it felt sorry for the shrimp, or because it knew there was a murderer next to it. In the case of the shrimp being dropped into the boiling water, the changes in the graph could have been caused by the water boiling in another room. Backster had already determined that a plant is stimulated when it is watered. It can be stimulated in the same way if there is a sudden increase in water vapor in the air. The fact that the graph only changed as live shrimp were being dropped could be attributed to any movement of the live shrimp in the water. They may have splashed, and the plant was able to detect the extra moisture in the air. In the case of the murder game, perhaps the murderer was the only person out of the six who had done anything while he was in the room. Maybe the plant detected an identifying chemical or something given off by the person, perhaps remnants of the other plant that remained on him. Maybe plants can tell if there are other plants near. No one knows for sure yet.
Plants do not have brains, they cannot remember people, or feel pity for other living organisms. They do not have nerves or a spinal cord, so they can not feel pain. All living things, though, have a will to survive, to pass their genes on to future generations. If a plant is being watered, it will immediately use it and the nutrients in it. This could cause the chemical changes that were detected by the polygraph. Therefore, a plant cannot actually feel pleasure as people know it, but it goes through changes when it is watered, much like when animals eat and digest food. If we can consider eating pleasurable, then perhaps plants consider being watered pleasurable.
