The Myth of Human Supremacy

by Derrick Jensen

  And it gets even better. Scientists have covered plants with plastic bags containing herbivorous insects, and the plants have still been able to communicate to their relatives, friends, and neighbors that they need to prepare their defenses. In this case, how? Through the mycelial networks. The fungi facilitate their communication. More on this in a moment.

  It’s a good thing no reputable scientists believe in plant sentience.

  Now let’s say hello to Charles Darwin, who also wrote on the intelligence of plants. In 1880 he published a book called The Power of Movement in Plants,” in which he wrote, “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle . . . acts like the brain of one of the lower [sic] animals; the brain being situated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-organs, and directing the several movements.”21

  It’s a really good thing no reputable scientists believe in plant sentience.

  If you Google “plant intelligence” you can see that articles on plant intelligence have been published in dozens of even mainstream sources, including The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Guardian, and for crying out loud, Wired. The New York Times article was entitled, “Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too.” As the author notes, “The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants—their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar—the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.”22

  Or consider the following from a New York Times blog: “A team of scientists from the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University in Israel published the results of its peer-reviewed research, revealing that a pea plant subjected to drought conditions communicated its stress to other such plants, with which23 it shared its soil. In other words, through the roots [and our old friends the mycelia networks], it relayed to its neighbors the biochemical message about the onset of drought, prompting them to react as though they, too, were in a similar predicament. Curiously,24 having received the signal, plants not directly affected by this particular environmental stress factor were better able to withstand adverse conditions when they actually occurred. This means that the recipients of biochemical communication could draw on their ‘memories’25—information stored at the cellular level26—to activate appropriate defenses and adaptive responses when the need arose.”27

  Or we can talk about an op-ed written by Anthony Trewavas of the Institute of Molecular Plant Science in the journal Trends in Plant Science called “Green Plants as Intelligent Organisms” that “assesses whether plants have a capacity to solve problems and, therefore, could be classified as intelligent organisms. The complex molecular network that is found in every plant cell and underpins plant behaviour is described. The problems that many plants face and that need solution are briefly outlined, and some of the kinds of behaviour used to solve these problems are discussed. A simple way of comparing plant intelligence between two genotypes is illustrated and some of the objections raised against the idea of plant intelligence are considered but discarded. It is concluded that plants exhibit the simple forms of behaviour that neuroscientists describe as basic intelligence.”

  In other words, plants make decisions as to where they should grow more roots, and where they should grow fewer. If there are more nutrients, they grow more. Given a choice between growing roots into soil with the roots of other plants, or no roots of other plants, they will choose the latter. They make similar decisions with leaves, deciding where to grow and how to face leaves, and deciding when to abandon these leaves and let them fall. And plants predict the future, then make decisions based on these predictions. The article cites neuroscientists Peggy La Cerra and Roger Bingham as stating, “The sine qua non of behavioral intelligence systems is the capacity to predict the future; to model likely behavioral outcomes in the service of inclusive fitness,” and then goes on to note that in “recurrent and novel environmental situations, cells, tissues and whole plants model specific future behaviours so that the energetic costs and risks do not exceed the benefits that adaptive, resilient, behaviour procures. Such modeling takes place on an adaptive representational network, an emergent property constructed from cell transduction and whole plant networks.”

  Before we continue, I want to mention something about their definition of intelligence. They write, “The sine qua non of behavioral intelligence systems is the capacity to predict the future; to model likely behavioral outcomes in the service of inclusive fitness.” My grandfather had diabetes. It affected his life. My mother has diabetes. It affects her life. I have known the relationship between diabetes and ingesting carbohydrates since I was a child. This didn’t stop me from drinking pop in high school, drinking milkshakes (homemade: a pint of ice cream, three bananas, a pint of strawberries, a pint of milk, dashes of nutmeg and cinnamon, and three raw eggs; serves one) through my twenties, eating ice cream (four scoops and a banana) through my forties, and eating my beloved potatoes (in any form: baked (six at a time), mashed, scalloped, fried, JoJos, you name it—even, I must admit, raw—and oh my god, how could I forget in the form of potato chips) up to the age of fifty.28 And then, at fifty-two, I learned, what a surprise, that I was pre-diabetic. Despite the fact that I had sufficient information (and presumably motivation), did I “model likely behavioral outcomes in the service of inclusive fitness”? Clearly, not at all. Clearly, I was not behaving in a manner indicative of having any native intelligence.

  Trewavas gives examples of intelligent plant behavior. “Branch and leaf polarity in canopy gaps have been observed eventually to align with the primary orientation of diffuse light, thus optimizing future resource capture. The internal decisions that resulted in the growth of some branches rather than others were found to be based on the speculatively expected future return of food resources rather than on an assessment of present environmental conditions.”29

  Read that last sentence again. The plant is basing its decision on where to grow branches—which is a long term project, and in the case of trees can take years—on its prediction of how sunlight will come through the overstory by the time the branch is able to grow to that spot.

  These plants not only show themselves capable of making better decisions—or being better at “modeling likely behavioral outcomes in the service of inclusive fitness”—than I, they are also more observant than I am. I, too, live in a forest, and I’m not sure I could predict what the overstory might look like in any particular place a few years from now.

  Trewavas continues, “The Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), a forest floor plant, also makes commitment decisions as to branching or flowering years ahead, using a multiplicity of current environmental information. Many temperate trees make decisions about flower numbers a year ahead.” Plants can predict not only future sun, but future shade, and make decisions as to how and where to grow based on these predictions. He says, “The stilt palm (Socratea exorrhiza) ‘walks’ out of shade by differential growth of prop roots.”30 This was a bit much even for me, but I researched it further. Here’s what I found. The base of the trunk can be up to a meter off the ground, and is supported by an open cone of spiny stilt roots. When the palm finds that it would be better off elsewhere, say if a tree falls and knocks it over or blocks its sunlight, or if it germinates too close to the parent tree, it sprouts new roots, each one higher than the old ones. These roots reach out in the direction the plant wishes to go, and eventually the plant “walks” to the desired spot, at which time the old roots and the trunk below the new roots rots.31

  Plants also plan for the future when it comes to water. Trewavas writes, “When
provided with water only once a year, young trees learn to predict when water will be provided in the future and synchronize their growth and metabolism with this period only.”

  The author paraphrases two other scientists (Seeley and Levien), who say, “It is not too much to say that a plant is capable of cognition in the same way that a human being is. The plant gathers and continually updates diverse information about its surroundings, combines this with internal information about its internal state (simple reasoning) and makes decisions that reconcile its well-being with its environment.”

  Near his close Trewavas cites another scientist, who has studied the intelligence of predatory protozoa (single-celled creatures), and who emphasizes that “organisms must be studied in wild environments that challenge the organism to observe intelligent behaviour. It is perhaps no accident that the plant behaviour described in this article was largely published in ecological journals.”32

  •••

  And then there is Cuscuta, also called dodder or strangleweed. The plant has no roots, nor does it effectively photosynthesize. It gets its food by parasitizing other plants. On sprouting, the seedling has less than a week’s worth of stored food. If it doesn’t find a host within that time, it dies. But how does it find prey? By recognizing volatiles released by tomato and other species of host plants. Or, as those who are not human supremacist might put it, “smelling.”

  If you plant a seedling equidistant from a plant it prefers to eat, like a tomato, and a plant it doesn’t, like wheat, the plant will grow toward the scent of the tomato. On reaching it, the dodder will encircle the prey and grow haustoria, roots that dig into the plant and begin to extract nutrients.33

  •••

  Or there are tomatoes. Did you know that some plants, like tomatoes or potatoes (especially the wild variants) are carnivorous? No, I’m not talking about pitcher plants, bladderworts, sundews, and the other plants we know are carnivorous. It ends up that some plants, like tomatoes and potatoes, capture and kill small insects using sticky hairs along their stems. They do this as a way of feeding themselves. The insects decay, fall to the ground, and fertilize the soil at the plants’ base.34

  •••

  Of course, there are those who’d be quick to claim that none of this shows any plant intelligence at all. They’d argue that this is all mechanical, it’s no different from the body producing white blood cells when confronted by an infection. I’d argue that you not consciously thinking about your white blood cells doesn’t mean your body is also not thinking. The body is making those choices, and doing so with intelligence. But there’s another point to be made here: when one plant communicates the presence of pests to another plant, how different is that from you communicating to another human that a swarm of mosquitoes is descending upon the both of you? Oh, but when plants do it, it’s just distress pheromones being automatically released, kind of like a rush of adrenalin, except that everyone else can perceive it. When you do it, however, you’re choosing to swat wildly at your face and arms.

  There’s yet another point, which is to ask, how would human supremacists mechanistically explain the ability of plants to make decisions based on future conditions?

  I’m guessing they’d say the plants are detecting current factors in the environment that we simply cannot yet understand, but will be able to understand someday. These environmental factors cause hormonal changes that cause differential growth in plants. Actually I don’t need to guess. The person who literally wrote the book on (and called) Plant Physiology has been described by Michael Pollan as “confident that eventually the plant behaviors we can’t yet account for will be explained by the action of chemical or electrical pathways, without recourse to ‘animism.’”35 Problem solved. Supremacism maintained.

  Whew!

  Part of the problem is too often, too many people seem to believe that being able to track the biochemical or bioelectrical processes by which some decision is made or action taken implies that there is no volition in these choices or actions. But just because you understand that electrical signals traverse nerves, causing muscles to tighten or loosen as you move a pen, doesn’t mean that writing Hamlet didn’t require thought or creativity. Just because we understand that there is a chemical basis for brain function doesn’t mean we don’t think.

  And just because you don’t consciously tell yourself to sweat doesn’t mean you can’t think, “Wow, I’m really hot.” And just because you don’t consciously choose to shiver doesn’t mean you can’t say to your friends, “Damn, it’s cold.” Likewise, just because you can explain how a hard frost harms plants doesn’t mean the plants don’t talk about the weather.

  A bigger part of the problem is that it’s impossible to prove another being’s subjectivity. You have only your own experience, and you cannot know for an indisputable fact that anyone else subjectively exists, that anyone else has experiences. For all you know, everyone but you could be projections of your own mind. When I was a teenager my friends and I used to play this game quite often. I’d say, “Ron, you are a figment of my imagination. I’m the only person who exists. Everything you do is because I imagine that’s what you’ll do.” Since we were teenaged boys, he’d respond by socking me in the arm. I’d say, “I imagined you’d do that.”

  Unfortunately, we have an entire culture that belongs in the sad joke; is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?

  Or everyone else could be automatons programmed to act in certain ways, with programming sophisticated enough to cause them to sometimes “act” in ways that surprise you. When we figure out everything using our big and complex brain, there will be no more surprises!

  This is not hyperbole. This is mechanistic science.

  Here’s another human supremacist response, and perhaps you can play spot the tautology on your own. We know that plants aren’t intelligent because they don’t have brains. Do you see it? Because we think humans think with our brains, we humans have decided that brains and central nervous systems are the only way that anyone can think and are therefore necessary for cognition. Therefore plants, not having brains and central nervous systems, cannot think. It’s been proven. Thank goodness our supremacy withstood that one!

  Think about it. What if I said to you that because quite often my sexual pleasure involves a penis ejaculating, all sexual pleasure experienced by anyone must involve a penis ejaculating? Ridiculous and self-centered, right? Sex has evolved on this planet in a myriad of beautiful and ecstatic ways, as different for flowering plants as it is for great apes as it is for shellfish as it is for fungi. And what if I said that just because my breathing involves lungs, all breathing must involve lungs (fish and trees and insects all say hello)? How do you know it isn’t the same for intelligence?

  It all comes down to this: the fundamental assumption of supremacists is that until proven otherwise—and, in fact, long after—supremacists presume the other is not a subjective being. It’s what men and whites and the civilized have been doing since the beginnings of their respective supremacies. It’s what supremacists do.

  Why don’t we flip that on its head? Why don’t we assume that, until proven otherwise, others are subjective beings? Answer: because the truth is this: the only thing that matters is that we’re number one. It makes it so much easier to rationalize exploiting everyone.

  Years ago I asked a mechanistic scientist what would be sufficient proof to convince him that nonhumans can think, and that we can communicate with each other. He said, “If you asked the creature to do something against its [sic] nature, and it [sic] did so.”

  Can you see the problems with this?

  What is its nature? Wouldn’t this be the first round of the same sort of moving target as the brain-mass-to-body-ratio fiasco? You ask a dog to do something against her nature, and after a few training treats she’ll roll over. The mechanist says, “Well, rolling over on command is obviously in her nature.” So now y
ou train her so when you point your finger at her and say “bang” she will stand on her hind legs, then fall over and lie still. The mechanist says, “But that’s obviously in her nature, too, or she wouldn’t do it.” So you train her to keep a treat sitting on her nose until you say the phrase, “You can eat it,” after which she tosses it in the air, then catches it. The mechanist says, “That’s what I’ve been trying to say. Dogs are capable of being trained. That’s not communication or sentience. That’s just dogs responding mechanically to physical stimuli in a fashion that has been consciously molded by you. You’re the only creative subjective force here. It’s as though you fashioned a curvy clay track down which a marble could roll, and then you saying ‘bang’ is the equivalent of you starting the marble down the track. You’ve shown me no communication, no sentience on anyone’s part but your own, as the teacher.”

  So what is or is not the creature’s perceived “nature” will change according to what is required for the human supremacist to retain the self-perception of supremacy.

  * * *

  17 A great example of this mimicry occurred to me today. I have a pretty bad flu infection, with coughing, fever, chills, the whole thing. I slept all day, waking up several times only long enough to stagger into the bathroom, use the toilet, and take more cough syrup. I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I have these sorts of illnesses, I enter strange half-waking obsessions, where a single thought overtakes me and I won’t be able to get rid of it. Today it was the song “Allouette,” which I, like many others, learned as a child. I always presumed the song, which is in French, was about the adventures of a child named Allouette. But that’s not true. It ends up that the song is about plucking a lark. It begins “Lark, nice lark/Lark, I shall pluck you/I shall pluck your head.” And so on. The point is that I still remember this song from when I learned it forty-five years ago, but I had no idea what it was about. I learned it by mimicry. Does this mean I’m not intelligent?