Hormonal sentience, first described by Robert A. Freitas Jr., describes the

information processing In cognitive psychology, information processing is an approach to the goal of understanding human thinking that treats cognition as essentially Computing, computational in nature, with the mind being the ''software'' and the brain being the ''hard ...

rate in

plants Plants are the eukaryotes that form the kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria to produce sugars f ...

, which are mostly based on

hormone A hormone (from the Ancient Greek, Greek participle , "setting in motion") is a class of cell signaling, signaling molecules in multicellular organisms that are sent to distant organs or tissues by complex biological processes to regulate physio ...

s instead of

neurons A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...

like in all major animals (except sponges). Plants can to some degree communicate with each other and there are even examples of one-way-communication with animals.

Acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as wattles or acacias, is a genus of about of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa, South America, and Austral ...

trees produce

tannin Tannins (or tannoids) are a class of astringent, polyphenolic biomolecules that bind to and Precipitation (chemistry), precipitate proteins and various other organic compounds including amino acids and alkaloids. The term ''tannin'' is widel ...

to defend themselves when they are grazed upon by animals. The airborne scent of the tannin is picked up by other acacia trees, which then start to produce tannin themselves as a protection from the nearby animals. When attacked by

caterpillar Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder ...

s, some plants can release chemical signals to attract

parasitic wasp Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps ( Orussoidea) being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, sooner or later causi ...

s that attack the caterpillars.De Moraes, C. M.; Lewis, W. J.; Paré, P. W.; Alborn, H. T.; Tumlinson, J. H. (1998). "Herbivore-infested plants selectively attract parasitoids". Nature. 393 (6685): 570–573. doi:10.1038/31219. A similar phenomenon can be found not only between plants and animals, but also between fungi and animals. There exists some sort of communication between a fungus garden and workers of the leaf-cutting ant '' Atta sexdens rubropilosa''. If the garden is fed with plants that are poisonous for the fungus, it signals this to the ants, which then will avoid fertilizing the fungus garden with any more of the poisonous plant. The

Venus flytrap The Venus flytrap (''Dionaea muscipula'') is a carnivorous plant native to the temperate and subtropical wetlands of North Carolina and South Carolina, on the East Coast of the United States. Although various modern hybrids have been created ...

, during a 1- to 20-second sensitivity interval, counts two stimuli before snapping shut on its insect prey, a processing peak of 1 bit/s. Mass is 10–100 grams, so the flytrap's SQ is about +1. Plants generally take hours to respond to stimuli though, so vegetative SQs (Sentience Quotient) tend to cluster around -2.

References

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External links

Xenopsychology
by Robert A. Freitas Jr. Botany

See also

References

External links