Book completed

[eve_prime]

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, by Zoë Schlanger. I’ve now read several books about the surprising capabilities of plants, and this one – carefully researched and informed by credible scientists doing cutting-edge research – is by far the best. I made a point to read only one chapter at a time, because I wanted to take time to assimilate what I was reading. If we were to consider a simple animal that had a long list of abilities – it can communicate, possibly hear, and even possibly see; it can recognize its kin, its neighbors, its allies, and its enemies and treat them as such; it can remember its experiences, form preferences, and make future decisions accordingly – we would recognize that such an animal has awareness and at least a rudimentary form of intelligence. However, suppose the living being is different from animals in three main ways: It’s anchored to the ground, its perception-and-response system is distributed throughout its body (no brain, but as if the entire body were a brain), and its food source is neither plants nor animals but light. Suddenly we no longer see awareness and an appropriate level of intelligence; we’re more likely to think it’s basically a living machine. This is a major bias on our part! But note that it hasn’t been all that long since animals, even familiar ones like dogs, were seen as living machines too. It’s absolutely fascinating that so many surprising things have been discovered about our plant neighbors, and I encourage everyone to read this book.