With animals it highly depends on the species(like only the highly intelligent ones). But the common rule for all species is to never hold them up to human standards as that isn’t what helps you survive in the wild.
Fish do likely feel pain though. At least they would benefit from it. Pain would make them avoid a behavior that previously led to an injury or tell them which body parts to protect better since they are vulnerable or simple what part not to move so it can heal better. Plants however, well they cant even move, what good would pain do them? It would just cost energy telling them nothing of value since they cant act on it.
I cant believe I got clickbaited into watching a guy explaining the most obvious thing that plants doesnt feel pain - but doing it in such a detailed and entertaining way I keep watching
Ha! I won. I suspected clickbait and spent far longer than the video runs reading the comments to find a comment like yours so i dont have to watch the video! I am a genius! er....big brain me. And no way would i be gullible as to succumb further to the baityclickyness and leave a comment and a like for the algorythm god. Independent thinker me!
It's oddly liberating and comforting to think that we experience pain for primarily the purpose of our own benefit, feeling pain makes us live better lives
Pain and pleasure activate the same areas of the brain. Your brain wants stability. This is why too much pleasure eventually becomes painful, and too much pain eventually becomes pleasant. This is because your body eventually produces the opposite effect in your brain to stabilize your mental state.
@@cvdinjapan7935Too much pain does not become pleasant, and too much pleasure does not become painful. Too much of either pain or pleasure however, does become less impactful over time. You get used to the feeling, and your brain stops reacting to it. It's called desensitization, and it can happen to more than just feelings. If you watch too many brutal videos for example, you may start reacting less towards blood. Alternatively, some people that work in the sewage systems report reacting less towards cockroaches.
Except the only reason there is anything to learn is because pain exists. All knowledge is built on the foundation of avoiding pain. A problem that justifies itself obviously remains unjustified. All pain experienced was an avoidable tragedy. All pain caused an irredeemable crime.
As someone born with a debilitating form of arthritis and a love for learning, no. Awful quote. Pain sucks when it's the only thing you can focus on from sun up to sun down
As a bonsai artist, here's my perspective. If cutting grass is plants screaming, why don't we scream when we get our hair cut? Simple, no pain receptors. Does our hair grow back? Of course. What does pruning do to a plant? Stimulate growth. It responds by growing more leaves, which means more surface area for photosynthesis. What happens when you trim the roots of a plant? Stimulates more fibrous roots, which increases the health of the plant. As for wiring the plant, what happens when you exercise or work out in the gym? Micro-tears occur in the muscle fiber and the body responds by repairing the damaged tissue and building stronger muscles. Why would we do this to ourselves? To get stronger. What happens when you wire a branch and bend it? The same thing. The branch responds by increasing vascular tissue, which increases the flow of nutrients back and forth from roots to leaves and vice versa. Final thoughts: not all damage is bad. We damage our bodies every day, and they try to repair itself. Plants experience damage every day from nature, and they grow back. They also die of diseases, just like we do. However, we can't grow body parts back. Bonsai isn't plant torture. It's a relationship between man and nature. I have learned more about plant behavior from bonsai than sitting in a biology class. BTW, several of my bonsai are over a decade old and flourishing.
Only problem is that hair is not alive. Once hair is out of skin it's dead matter. It's the same with our nails. It's more akin for a tree having a dry dead branch and it falling off or you taking it away. I would find a new example to use because it's not the same as cutting grass. Sure plants go through stimulation when damaged and if done with care and purpose you can make wonders happen. Well done pruning is one thing but messed up job can kill the plant. Even when done well it's really stressfull experience. Some plants don't care how much they are damaged and some say bye at the slighest touch. Plants have a huge kingdom and are not a monolith. We know plants have a stress reaction so they react to damage and to envoirmental stressors. Plants also signal with each other and fungus, to trade materials or warn about bugs etc. What do you define as pain and discomfort? I'm not saying you shouldn't do bonsai or cut grass and so on, but i would say we are inficting "pain" when doing so. Plants are very complex and even more so social plants. They are not animals and should not be treated with same rules. But i'd argue they have a sense of being and with that comes happiness and sadness, however that would be felt in their case. I have happened to study hair dressing and gardening. Something about cutting bushes i guess :'D
@@sunnuntaiselori1927pain is a very specific feeling that is evolutionary costly. Why feel something that could completely disable you due to the intensity when a less extreme noxious stimuli would work just as well? A bad smell, an itch, and semi extreme temperatures cause us stress, but typically not pain. While yes, cutting stresses a plant, they show no signs of pain that many completely unrelated groups of animals share.
But the plants don't come along, rip me out of the house and force me to live inside a gym untill I'm a massive bodybuilder. False equivalence there. While Bonsai is nowhere near the worst we're doing to plants every day it's still absurdly selfish. In terms of ethics it's very much unethical too.
Here is a trick about the process used to shape bonsai into twisted forms.... Trees will actually do this to themselves if they encounter obsticles in nature while growing. They will twist around themselves, objects, and even devour something inside of themselves over time by growing around it to the extent that it becomes engulfed.
@@YUN6_V3NUZ The only plant that would satisfy your urges would be the Bamboo plant, but you'll have to wait hours or even days to receive that gratification
I really like how he responded with a long detailed explanation in a video, rather than just saying "no, they don't feel pain". People that anthropomorphize plants probably won't listen to such a simple answer. But mainly, I enjoy learning exactly why things happen in this world and how.
Those people don’t seem to listen regardless. They still just want to believe that plants feel pain and that bonsai is a bad practice even though it’s not.
he didn't answered it correctly and he actually lied in some instances. Plants to avoid distress and to tend to seek experiences with positive reinforcement by creating hormonal chemicals that make those changes in their own bodies. Exactly like pain in animals. Pain are hormones created by your own brain after a stimuli that influence how your own body (and mind) adapts to that stimuli. plants to seek sunny areas and tend to grow in that direction, that can only happen if they have a system that responds to a positive feedback loop. They also avoid growing in stressful areas to their body (for example if they are constantly being cut in a part of their body they tend to not constantly grow at the same rate in that area to avoid being cut again). This adaptation is literally the same as pain in animals. You have a negative feedback that creates hormones that influence how you will act to that stimuli both physically and mentally. So yes plants do feel pain, but it's in a completely different way that humans and animals cannot perceive.
@@paulogaspar8295 Please read a book on the basics of biology. Stressing a plant leads to certain genes getting triggered and thus certain proteins are built in larger numbers and those will trigger a reaction. They don't "avoid" anything. The mechanisms are simply triggered in a way which leads to the mentioned result.
@@paulogaspar8295 Once again, you people are anthropomorphizing plants. Just because plants avoid situations that are damaging to them does not mean they feel pain, it just means that evolutionary processes have provided them with ways to counter these situations. Pain is not just any response to negative stimuli. No one is arguing that plants don’t react to being harmed. You are pointing out that plants react to being harmed and act like this is proof they feel pain, which is where you are anthropomorphizing them. What he did say in the video, however, is that pain is an instant response designed to get an instant reaction. If an organism can’t instantly react, then it makes no sense for it to feel pain. Oh, and pain isn’t a hormonal response in humans, that would be too slow.
Hey man, fellow biologist here. Your first banzai tree vid was in my recommended feed, and I’m so thankful I gave it a watch. Now I’m hooked to your content! Just wanted to say I highly appreciate how you format and present your content. You are super engaging while also maintaining professionalism and intelligence, while backing all of your claims with referenced research, as well as real world applications of the themes discussed. Rare traits to find in the mysterious realm of RU-vid! Please have my subscription, you’ve earned it!
@@raccoonchildbanzai trees fell onto american troops when they were triggered, killing the banzai tree for the survival and glory of imperial japan. their bark was rigged with explosives that detonated upon impact.
"There's nothing done to a bonsai that it wouldn't encounter out in the wild." That's probably the most generally effective message to show people how bonsai isn't torturous for plants.
Nature is cruel. While to a degree we inflict pain on non-human beings when using them for labor, entertainment or food (which I agree we should avoid as much as possible, *especially* in the case of entertainment), you have to keep in mind they would probably endure similar or worse in the wild.
@@hiiambarney4489You are 100% correct. In bonsai we are afraid and often baby our trees making sure we don't stress them out too much, protect them in winters, give them all the water and fertiliser they need, bend them gently etc. Meanwhile in nature they're blasted by the elements, crushed by other fallen trees/branches , eaten by animals and pests etc. This is literally why yamadori (collected trees) are always the best bonsai. They're so crazy and cool looking that only nature can make them that amazing.
This is silly... Animals suffer horrible fates in the wild... Just because this is true doesn't make it okay to inflict these fates on animals yourself... And it doesn't make it not torturous...
This was really interesting! I grew up apologising to plants if I “hurt” them. In my family, we still do this. But I’ve never really looked into the science of it. Thank you 🙏
I still do that too! Part of respecting nature is understanding we are part of it, and I think talking to plants, apologizing to them, and even asking permission to pick fruit/harvest is part of it. These are things our ancestors did, so I wouldn’t change a thing. I think people should do what makes them feel connected to nature, and that can be different for everyone. Some people want to try bonsai, some people might want to garden, to me it’s all good :) Thanks for watching!
While they do not feel pain, it's unnecessary to damage them with no purpose and reduce their chances of further growth. (Bonsai is kind-of different, when you understand how to care for a plant and not mutilate it) So I think respecting them and showing sympathy is a very good thing. Keep your humanity, you're great :)
The way you "argue" is the right way. No anger, just the want to express the truth to those who were unfortunately enough to believe lies. The way it should be done but unfortunately is hard to learn how to (or have the mental restraint to do so).
“Why not grow something you can eat or smoke?” Bonsai techniques are actually super useful for cannabis cultivation, it lets you maintain lots of small mother plants which you take cuttings from. This let’s you keep genetics alive (seeds are genetic siblings rather than genetically identical) so if you have a really great plant you can grow a connabonsai from its cuttings and grow a bunch more of it from cuttings of the mother cannabonsai. Then you can keep lots of these cause their smaller and require less water and you can build out a library of genetics in a small place like a closet. This is theoretically useful for food as well, especially if a plant has lots of unique recessive traits that are preferable and would be difficult to breed traditionally
It's not just theoretically useful for food, it's downright essential to the cultivation of many foods! Apples, pears, most stonefruits, bananas, avocados, potatoes, all seedless fruits, and many more are entirely or primarily reliant on vegetative propagation. This can lead to disease risk, but is important in selecting for good tasting and high producing fruits.
One of the things I learned in undergrad Biology is that for a creature to "feel" pain, it needs nerve endings and a brain to process that stimulus. Plants have neither. The most similar system they have to humans is a capillary system so they can transport water ans nutrients from the soil to the leaves like how the human body have a circulatory system to transport oxygen from our lungs to everywhere else in our body.
Aristotle's teleological ethics would say that bonsai trees are unethical because one is preventing the sapling from reaching its full potential or full size. So you can't torture a plant, but you may potentially "torture" a plant's potential or purpose by constraining its amount of soil. I don't personally agree with this ethic but it's interesting to think about. I like thinking about environmental ethics, such as Leopold's land ethic (I love Leopold!), because it connects me with nature and tells me what to do with the science we learn. I like your bottom line because it is so important for people to connect with nature in our modernized world.
By that logic, trees growing in extreme conditions like up high on mountains or near tge edges of large bodies of water or off the edge of cliffs are restricting the tree in turn from reaching its fullest potential.
That is an interesting take! I don't think anyone is gonna fight you that bonsai is restricting their full potential. I just looked up Leopold's land ethic and I like what I see so far, gonna read more about it. Thanks for sharing and commenting! I appreciate you
I’ve pondered this as well, and I think the difference is intention. Mountains, cliffs, etc don’t intend to stunt the tree. The tree just so happened to plant it’s roots there and grew. Bonsai has the intention to restrict. You can argue that there are mature trees in a forest that intentionally shade out saplings, which could mean they are nerfing these tiny trees, BUT it’s also a fact that these mature trees feed small shaded saplings as well. I can’t think of a natural occurrence where something intentionally restricts the growth of a tree. But that could me I need to read more 🤷🏾♂️
@@TheBackpackingBiologist I know, I saw it. I think your assessment is fair but I feel mine is more correct especially when you loom at trees growing under certain conditions that are forced to stay small to survive.
I wanted to see you struggle to pull the axe out of the tree, just as you were stating it cannot fight back. 😅 I have had so many injuries from pruning accidents, especially from thorny plants.
Dude, I'm not even 2 minutes in yet and I'm getting a nostalgic vibe from literally just the format of this video. It feels just like watching an old Bill Nye the Science Guy episode, just less aimed specifically at young kids. Not quite so fast-paced, fewer silly noises, but a hint of the same comedic style and similar back-and-forth between "whiteboard explanation" and "in-the-field demonstration" segments. I love it!
Some plants have actually evolved to be fire retardant like you mentioned briefly. The longleaf pine is one of them, which is prominent in Southern US. They have a very long growing stage, 9 years, in the small form. This is because the tree will be low enough where a fire could not kill the tree. Once 9 years is up, it will rapidly grow in a period of months to get tall enough to ensure it won't burn down from a fire. There is a period during those several months of rapid growing where it is in danger of burning from the fire because the heat of fire changes depending where one is in the fire. Low enough = no burn, high enough = no burn, middle = burn.
Great point! Eucalyptus trees in Australia evolved to be highly flammable because fires are crucial to germinate a lot of native bush plants! That's one of the reasons fires are so scary here, the eucalyptus oil is basically explosive, and the fires burn incredibly hot. Great for the plants, but humans have certainly has a hard time adapting down here.
I love plants. I love long treks through forests. I love sleeping under the canopies of trees. But I also show my love through cutting down dead trees, prescribed burning, or just plucking the weeds in my yard. Excellent video.
Amazing man. Respect comes in many forms 💪🏾 I’m very intrigued with prescribed burnings. I’m planning on making a future episode on it. Wish we did it more in California. Thanks for watching!
@@TheBackpackingBiologistCalifornia could seriously curb its wildfire problem if they did do controlled burns. It’s insane that they don’t(or not enough). Here in the south, essentially every land owner does them yearly.
with "grass screaming" i think like someone walking in his lawn and then a monster made out of grass comes out of the ground, grabs them by the head and screams in their ears
Great video, instant sub. I totally agree about your concerns of us being increasingly disconnected to nature. When people settle, it seems like they lose the interest in the world around them. I can never understand why friends of mine travel to different countries just to sit in a hotel and never leave. After all no city, no hotel, no resort - no matter how beautiful, expensive and carefully they've been built - they will never reach the beauty of trees growing, animals interacting and life simply living.
Not only are we becoming far too disconnected and careless with the natural world around us, but as for what little care most give, it seems to be completely spur-of-the-moment emotion and sentimentality driven reactionism, with little thought or self awareness given at all. Some folks will seriously sit at their computer screen taking to the comments to call bonsai unnatural torture while chowing down on their McNuggets, paying no mind to the torturous and unnatural conditions the chicken suffered.
Wondering how many of those plant torture accusations are serious. Otherwise I agree, stop worrying about plants that do not have a neurological capacity for suffering and start worrying about animals that do have that capacity, including chickens, or other humans for that matter.
@@neetocracy "vague reference to nonexistent people" oh so I suppose the commenters this video talked about as well as the many reactionaries and hypocrites I personally know are all made up fictions to suit a bias. Hmmmhm, okay, whatever you say Mr.InternetRandoKnowsItAll#9702
Our own perception of pain and stress as only bad seems as a major point of origin for this discussion. Exercise is self induced stress and can even be a little painful, would any reasonable person say exercise is bad? I believe that experiencing hardship and overcoming it usually makes us better than who we were before.
Bro fr like also. HAVE PEOPLE NOT HEARD OF PRUNING? “Cutting off limbs” the fuck? Then why is the plant growing stronger overall after having its “limbs” cut off? Its not the same as animals, if there was an animal equivalent hydra that grows more powerful each time you cut the head off.
Quality video, compellingly explained. I dropped bonsai as a hobby years ago because I was worried about the off chance that I was hurting the plants I was pruning and shaping. Thanks for putting that to rest. 🙏
The pacing of your video's is great. You said you need an editor in the end of your video, but you're doing it better than many big channels -- and I legitimately believe this. You have a very good grasp on cutting out unneeded fluff and get straight to the point. Whoever you may find, be sure to let them stick close to your style.
Hey TBB, this is really excellent video-making and I'm happy and surprised to be stumbling across it randomly. The thought and craft you've put into making this clear , educational, and entertaining is apparent. As an anecdote, I did coral reef research as an undergraduate, and I remember finding my PI furious one day over the way a recent paper had been reported. The paper found that the nighly movement of microorganisms brought an upswell of cooler water, and this had a measurable effect on Sea Surface Temperatures. The was it was reported? "Plankton May Hold Key to Solve Global Warming?" This was in 2010. In many ways, things have only gotten worse. But on the other hand, now there are thousands of independent science educators who, like by PI before them, have become fed up with sensational science reporting. Thanks for putting in this work, it's needed and loved.
I wish I had this video to show people when I started vegetarianism. Everyone had an opinion about my diet but some would say that I was being cruel to plants instead of animals, UNIRONICALLY. Great video, keep up the good work!!
vegetarian/vegan hypocrisy is real. pretty gross how ignorantly genocidal you all are. Imagine if humans did mass culling of animals for meat without considering the ethical or environmental impacts, oh wait they already do that. you are doing EXACTLY the same! all the while acting like pompous blowhards. you are the exact reason people don't like vegans.
I'm subscribing purely because I understand the amount of patience it takes too turn such idiotic thoughts into a learning moment without letting them get frustrating.
Ditto. While I wish such......lets say "opinionated individuals" would engage in good faith and either learn/accept the argument put forth or spend a similar amount of time/effort developing a response, I *HIGHLY* doubt that will end up being the case. A lot of this strictly shame-based """"activism"""" does nothing but allow for a target to be selected and let like-minded individuals rage over said chosen target - getting that lovely endorphin/dopamine hit all the while. Constantly seeking conflict because the behavior is chemically programmed to provide a "reward" in a way they are unable to generally recognize as addictive behavior. Last bit Ill say (sorry....bad habit of writing way too much) I'm a chemist by trade and while vaccinations aren't my area of expertise, myself and my colleagues understand the biochemical mechanism behind RNA vaccines and see the immense advantages - ESPECIALLY in R&D time. Yet - amazingly, whenever a controversy within the lab was started, it was never the staff lab staff but HR who decided to go on outright vindictive streaks to harass people genuinely trying to combat COVID the only way currently known by modern science. Much like the people anthropomorphizing plants, this subset of a subset was willing to literally cause possibly irreparable harm solely for the sake of ego/"""""clout"""". While more extreme than the plant activists in terms of sentiment/consequences, the same "ego-based bad faith argumentation" appears in both examples and frankly social media as a while. IDK what the answer is, but right now no matter how insane an idea I'd be willing to bet you can find a MIN of 50 others given enough time online.
The funniest thing is I would tell people about plant reacting and being stressed but I never consider it as them feeling pain. Just how fascinating it is they use it to try and communicate to other plants or insects like you said to call parasite to attack the herbevore bug. I usually tell these facts to make people more considerate of plants because they are alive not a rock, but it very easy for people to be confused by that.
Isn't that the point though? If I want to convince someone to be more considerate of plants and take better care of them, there are two ways for me to do that (I can do just one or both). One: argue through the logical benefit that comes from plants, e.g. plants will give you oxygen, make your garden pretty, sustain the surrounding ecosystem, caring for plants can be relaxing and good for your mental health, etc. Two: argue through empathy and/or moral duty, e.g. you want to care for a plant because that would make the plant feel good and not feel bad, you should care for a plant because a plant's life and experiences are intrinsically valuable (EVEN IF they were not beneficial to you or the environment), etc. It seems to me that pointing out the ability to detect damage or feel stressed is making an argument for number two.
Honestly now that I think about it, there is a third option: Threats. E.g. if you don't take care of this plant then they're going to fine you or put you in prison, if you don't take care of this plant then I'm taking away your video games, if you're mean to this plant then you're going to hell, etc. In a way this is like the inverse of the first option.
Fun video! I know that plants can react to tissue damage, but like you said current scientific consensus is that they don't feel pain. I forget the exact experiment (I read about it during a class), but when a seedling's cotyledon is damaged it can lead to the plant focusing its growth heavily on the side that wasn't damaged. I think that in the experiment they determined that even a few pinpricks (through the leaf) could cause a reaction like that to occur. Pain isn't needed for damage to be registered and reacted to though. Similarly, like you said, theoretically (and in some cases, probably in actuality) the conditions of bonsai'd trees can be met in the wild. It's fairly well known that plants in windy areas grow more compact and shorter than the same species planted elsewhere as a reaction to that environmental pressure, where being taller and more spread out could result in them being uprooted by the wind.
An inflated balloon makes a sound when you cut it. Thus, the balloon feels pain and it's screaming. It reminds me of this iron gate that screams in agony whenever people move it.
@@Jorge-np3tq Apparently so! They were applied to the balloon after it had been cut, and the painful screaming began to subside until it no longer screamed at all. The analgesics even worked on the iron gate, when mixed together with an oil-based solution. Very effective at managing pain, for both balloons and iron gates.
@@cvdinjapan7935 Not how measuring reactions works. Ever heard of control samples? You cut two balloons and only give analgesics to one, and see if there's a difference in results between the two. That's how it's done with animals and yes, plants. Have you read Nick, P. (2021). Sensitive or sentient-a painful debate. Protoplasma, 258(2), 235-238? It's a good summary of the current debate on plant pain.
@@Jorge-np3tq Yes, I did forget to mention the control group. The balloon in the control group stopped screaming because it died, while the balloon that was given analgesics stopped screaming because the pain went away. On a more serious note, did you know that people who can't feel pain due to nerve damage still respond chemically to being cut? Their body will still respond to the cut, even though their brain doesn't know about it. One can look at the data and say "Yes, this person feels pain." But if one asks such a person if they feel any pain, they will say no, they don't. A lot of people want to say that plants feel pain, but they are misled.
@@cvdinjapan7935 I don't "want" to say plants feel pain. I would be more comfortable in a world where it is confirmed that they don't. But to act as if there is no serious debate between academics on the topic when there obviously is represents getting ahead of the science. I could take "there is no clear evidence that plants feel pain", but not "we definitely know plants don't feel pain". You might be surprised, but I personally support the idea that they don't, because without a brain there's no obvious experience integrating mechanism. But unlike you I don't pretend the debate is settled. Indicators like reaction to anesthetics, wound protection, selective self-defense mechanisms, danger communication and so on do not prove by themselves that plants feel pain, but provide reason not to discard that possibility. If an alien came to earth, and their nervous system functioned without a brain (because their evolution had been so different from ours) but with some analogous, anatomically and chemically different organ called an X, they could run tests on humans and determine, despite our screams and cries, that we don't feel pain since we don't have an X, so long as they don't manage to recognize the brain as analogous to the X.
It's more certain that plants don't feel pain than it is that cigarettes cause cancer. But yeah it's good to be open to the possibility of the opposite being true.
@@DonnieMouse that's actually the one time that there's no person in the world that's unironically like that fruits have developed to be nutrient dense specifically to be eaten and have the seeds inside them spread the fruits very existence is to be eaten by an animal of its choice the plants want this there's no two ways about it fruit is peak thing in the world where the food is not prey vs predator but a through symbiosis
Personally, I think you're asking the wrong questions here. We shouldn't be asking "do plants feel pain?" Like the pinned comment said, this is a problem of semantics and plants may be able to feel an analogue to human pain that we dont know of. Pain is a fundamentally very human thing. Even though we can see animals experiencing pain, we have to anthropomorphize to a certain degree to get anywhere in this conversation. So I propose a different question. "Should we practice the ethical treatments we practice on animals as we would other kingdoms of life?" I think the answer is yes, though I don't have an opinion on if bonsai is considered unethical. My line of logic is as follows: is it alive? If yes, they don't want to die. All living things from bacteria to animals only want one thing: to not die. This isn't even anthropomorphism because that's literally the point of life - survive long enough to produce offspring. Like you said, even plants evolved defense mechanisms to continue living. Is that not objective proof plants avoid death? Now, I'm biased here. I would kill a million animals and plants if it means I can save a human life. I believe we are the masters of Earth simply because we are intelligent. I also believe that because we are intelligent, we ought to put ourselves to a higher ethical standards than organisms that cannot make a conscious decision to abstain from harm. Just by living, we must kill to sustain ourselves. Abstaining from blood, whether animal or plants, is impossible. This is why I don't really like the vegan philosophy about saving animals because plants are alive just as animals are. And do plant rights movements exist? No. Same way nobody cares about the honour of single-celled microbes. People care about pets more than they would a snake. At the end of the day, our feelings on nonhuman organisms are just that - feelings. And everyone feels differently. My personal opinion on this is let every human have their own opinion on the matter. It's impossible for eight billion people to agree. However, we must make an _institutionalized_ effort not to let ourselves slip down a slippery slope. Animal cruelty is immoral and the Three Rs of animal testing (Reduce, Refine, Replace) is a step towards the right direction. Animals raised for meat should be free roaming in an ideal world and everyone must dispatch live animals before they cook them. And don't waste the carcass once they've been hunted; that's both wasteful and disrespectful to the animal. And I say why can't we treat plants the same way? "Is bonsai evil" is the wrong question to ask. "What can we do to reduce deforestation" is a better question. It doesn't matter if they feel pain. They want to live just as much as animals and humans do. Don't cut down a tree in your front yard just because they block the sun. That's true vanity, moreso than bonsai. Also, as a footnote, since nobody probably cares about single-celled organisms at all, despite them making up more than half of all the biomass on Earth, we can avoid making institutionalized efforts to treat them to ethical standards. We already have enough on our plates with animals.
["All living things from bacteria to animals only want one thing: to not die. This isn't even anthropomorphism because that's literally the point of life - survive long enough to produce offspring."] - That is anthropomorphism though isn't it?, you are assuming all life forms, including stuff as simple as bacteria have "wants", when it is much more likely they simply follow some biological programming they evolved by random chance. ["Like you said, even plants evolved defense mechanisms to continue living. Is that not objective proof plants avoid death?'] - Everything evolves to avoid death to some degree, because everything that doesn't is extinct. Things don't conciously evolve, for example lets say a plant that grows from a seed has a genetic mutation that makes its leaves less tasty to the deer that eat its species completely by random chance. Naturally the deer avoid this plant because there are better options right next to it, so the plant survives longer and produces more seeds. Some of these seeds carry the mutation along and again survive better and long that those that don't. Eventually over a long period of time the original plant has been fully replaced by the mutated version. The plant did not choose to evolve to avoid death, a random lucky mutation made it that way. And random random mutations can go the other way too. I was born with medical issues that would have caused my death if we still lived in a time of natural selection, I didn't choose it, and I could have just as randomly been born with something that would've given a natural advantage.
@@stork01 sure everything evolved from random chance but the other option is that we use this reasoning to justify washing our hands from ethical treatments on nonhuman organisms. I say treat all life with respect
You cannot have pain without a nervous system. That is how pain works. It is debatable whether certain animals can feel pain. But we know for sure that any animal lacking a nervous system does not feel pain. This is why anesthetics work on you...because they disable the ability of nerves to function properly.
Thank you for a video so detailed on the matter, I do Bonsai for quite some years now, and I had some people questioning that, a friend of mine even got really pissed about it, even me being way more connected to nature... I don't just grow Bonsai, I do plant fruit trees, vegetables, and even care our neighborhood trees. It's sad to hear that kind of comply from people who never actually planted anything in their lives, and their greenest experience is to watch a tree on a park (that someone else planted and care for) or on a supermarket section...
I find a danger with anthropomorphism (especially with animals) is people assume an organism needs and likes are similar to theirs when it can be harmful to that species.
People will be shocked that the vegetables and fruits we eat have been bred into genetic deformities to produce more of their fruits and vegetables. Some plants like bananas couldn't survive without human maintainance.
Great video. As a vegan, this has long been the most irritating conversation to engage with. "You don't eat animals, but plants are alive, too!" It's such a tedious thing to explain, and you did a great job of doing so succinctly and thoroughly.
It’s wild how many people think plants can feel pain. I would anthropomorphize every living being as a child because I misunderstood “alive” as meaning sentient. I also thought non-human animals thought in language lmao
For me Bonsai is an expression of reverence towards nature. I don't have a national forest in my backyard, and driving to one whenever I need a hit of biophilia isn't sustainable for my budget or for the planet. Bonsai allows me to try to capture some of the essence of these beautiful wildernesses in an environmentally friendly way. I love my trees. They never experience the stress of flooding or drought or heavy winds. Its leaves gets carefully cleaned with water to avoid spider mites without using sprays. Yes, there is wire on it, yes, I prune it, but the plant would naturally stretch and bend to find light and abscise weaker branches and twigs.
the best way ive heard the distinction described is when you burn your hand on a hot stove, youll instantly react and pull it away before you even "feel" anything, the immediate response is a reflex that protects you from further harm, the PAIN sets in after when you start to feel the burn, this is useful for teaching us to avoid this damage in the future. A plant would respond to damaging stimuli but they literally do not have the capability to have the subjective experience of pain, it wouldnt serve them much use when they are so much more resiliant to damage than animal life
Paused at 0:40 to say, logically plants shouldn't receive pain as there is no benefit because it cant withdraw reactionally. the entire point of pain is the body telling the mind to withdraw from what is happening.
I found the five criteria for pain you listed interesting, but I personally prefer a seven criteria model proposed by one RW Elwood that I found while doing a research project on animal consciousness. In this model, there are seven criteria: having a central nervous system, showing avoidance learning, showing protective motor reactions, showing physiological changes (such as an increased heart rate), showing trade offs between pain and other desires, responding to anesthesia (shows definitive proof of pain receptors and works in unrelated animals like crustaceans and cephalopods), and being conscious. Interestingly, this model led me to roughly the same conclusions you did: vertebrates, crustaceans, and cephalopods fulfill all seven criteria so they almost certainly feel pain; insects fulfill four, lacking the motor response, motivational trade offs, and anesthesia response, so it's difficult to say for certain; and plants have at most one (physiological changes) so they almost certainly do not feel pain.
I love the style of this video, it's like a biology show I'd see on TV when I was a kid. I have never actually asked the question if plants feel pain or not, but even then, it's weird to think about either the "yes" or "no" response. But I do understand how anthropomorphism is something to avoid while thinking of animal behavior. For example, when people own a pet but forget they aren't a human in miniature, even cats and dogs are still different species to us, we can't just expect them to understand our frustrations or force them do to routines and chores they can't comprehend in their own nature, otherwise it only harms the pet at most
ANIMALS - have legs, can flee harm, all the reasons to have pain warn them of threats to survival. PLANTS - stationary, can multiplicate, expand and regrow what you cut off of them, no reason whatsoever to experience pain. Beyond the neurology, this evolutionary explanation has always sufficed me.
1. Rocks have veins, (ore) basically nerves 2. Rocks are made of smaller rocks 3. Rocks are immortal 4. Rocks go flying away after hitting rhem with a hammer 5. Rocks prevent future damage by becoming smaller dusty rocks I'll take extra credit on this one, prof
A big reason why people anthropomorphize plants is denial. They want to believe that a cabage feels as much pain as a cow, so it doesn't matter if they are vegetarian or not, they are still causing suffering, as it is a rule of nature or something.
My bio prof once called pain a tragedy of consciousness. Without a level of self/worldly awareness pain, as we humans understand it (more than just a signal of damage), is a byproduct of an active and conscious mind😔
There is a basic level of empathy only missing in psychopaths. There is also an amount of empathy only existing in the mind of those completely out of touch with reality. Equating pruning to torture is the second.
In my experience, nost people who claim plants feel pain usually do so as an appeal to futility to absolve them of other wrong doings they commit... "plants feel pain tho" is only really brought up when the morality of someone's actions are brought into question.
I remember watching your other bonsai video some time ago, this is a great follow up and response to all the concerns in the comments. I love your presentation and editing, very clear and concise!
I remember scratching the bark of a tree when i was in elementary school, a girl that didn't like me came by and said "they feel pain too, you know?" i replied "actually, they don't, plants do not have pain receptors, and even if they did, they would still not feel anything by me scratching the bark, as it is actually composed only of dead cells" i think she just started insulting me afterwards 😂
6:18 i think plants have their own version of sensation, specifically in that wording. i do NOT think that plants feel pain. but like with carnivorous plants, they feel the sensation of the bug on them and close the trap, or other plants that react to being cut, or when plants react to sunlight even. but it doesnt really mean anything when it doesnt have a real brain like vertebrates do.
Plants still can't feel anything. Venus flytraps don't feel anything. They have trigger hairs that don't feel, but instead they trigger the closing of the leave.
Very informative and good explained. I started vegan diet and with that video, i'm even more certified that i am doing the right thing! Thank you for this video.
It was speculated for a long time that they don’t feel pain, and even to this day, there are scientists that still believe they don’t. It’s surprisingly a contested topic
The foot binding analogy is so stupid. humans are MEANT to walk and move around, foot binding is painful and prevents being able to walk on one's own. Plants on the other hand.. don't walk..and aren't meant to move around, no matter what you do to them.
Plants is the living defenition of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", also plants don't feel pain they don't have pain receptors like we do but they do respond to being attacked or being interact with, but yeah they dont feel any emotion.
here's a quote from my favourite book as a child: "Every every creature has to kill to live. But to wound an animal was something else." I really don't think the morality of harming animals goes any deeper than that.
Brilliant video! I've been thinking about this specific issue recently. I've decided to draw the line at never deliberately harming my tree's. There are many wild pine bonsai growing around where I live in Sweden. The ice age left very little topsoil, but I've noticed many are starting to die off, and I assume that this is a product of global warming. They're right on the edge of what's possible for survival so it's very sad to see.
I can respect it! I personally don't participate in bonsai anymore, partially because of the work, and partially because it's not my preferred way of connecting with plants. It is sad to see trees that have been surviving for so long die off, and I'd expect you're right with the global warming. Plants will have to become hardier in the years to come. Thanks for watching!
1. Fully avoiding anthropomorphism also has the effect of completely underestimating animal experiences and consciousness. Psychology has become a little more nuanced in that sense. Animals are definitely not devoid of emotion and being afraid to antropomorfise results in human exceptionalism, forgetting that humans are also just.. animals. 2. I don't think scientists were ever convinced that fish don't feel pain. It was always something that was just assumed by the general public because it's very difficult to identify with a creature that looks like a fish. Also it's a convenient assumption seeing how insane humans treat fish.
Anthropomorphism specifically refers to human exclusive traits. So even tho humans contain water, it's not anthropomorphising to say that lakes contain water. Just like it's not anthropomorphising to say animals feel pain.
I haven't gardened much, but when I have, I've found the tips that "bending or even almost snapping" some places in the stems make it stronger - the bending or breaking is the "stress." In physical terms, they don't mean emotional.
Good Video overall. Just the criteria of short lifespan seemed a bit odd to me even more so with the exaple of flys since in recent years there have been multiple convincing studys published stating that fruitflys (Drosophila melanogaster) are capable of nociception and learning to avoid pain inducing stimuli in future. Some gene analysis showed they share some indentical genes to those responsible for painreception within mice. Your reasoning seems logical but you say yourself its just "less likely". On the other hand the oldest animal is an antarctic Sponge (Anoxycalyx joubini) that live tenthousand years cause they are sedentary and have slow metabolism but they don´t have a nervous system at all so im pretty sure they dont feel pain despite theire long life. It might be a rough guess but doesn´t suffice to be framed as a criteria since unlike all the other ones mentioned it doesn´t lead to any falsifiable hypotheses since it´s not causally conected to perception of pain by itself. Maybe fruitflys are the exception to the rule but maybe all the thousands of flys, insects and other arthropods just haven´t been as thouroghly studyed yet. Regarding the conclusion at the end I fully agree. People be like "Bonsai is torture" and proceed to eat plants, sit on wooden furniture and mow theire lawns; most probabbly even eat animal products too like they have no clue where all that comes from cause they are so disconected. Personally I love Bonsai especially for this Illusion of a natural looking tree that is so unnaturally "tortured" to be pushed to this shape, it´s like a magic trick. Keep up the good work, looking forward to the plant intelligence video. :o
All great points! I saw some studies on Drosophila before I posted the vid, very interesting! I guess that's the thing with science, it is always updating. I'll def be keeping an eye on that. Who knows, maybe in 5 years this video will be obsolete. As far as the long lived parameter, I agree that being long lived alone isn't proof, which is why I used it as a potential indicator along with the other 4 examples of who may feel pain. I find a combination of the 5 are telling, because as you said, sponges don't have a nervous system. and to my knowledge, I coudn't find any research on any sessile organisms that showed having pain. Thanks for the comment, I loved it, and thanks for liking the vid!
I'm not so sure that #3 follows. If an organism has nociceptors, that's extremely compelling evidence that they can sense tissue damage and react appropriately, no matter the span of their life. Additionally, the emotional component of pain is important for learning to avoid tissue damage, which is something that pure nociceptors cannot do. Most invertebrates also have nociceptors, can learn and display "motivated" behavior (Adamo 2016, "Do insects feel pain?"), and can learn to avoid tissue damage specifically (Horvath et al., 2013, "Invertebrate welfare") and some mollusks (particularly cephalopods like squids and octopuses) are actually used as model organisms when characterizing pain pathways. Furthermore, octopuses are famous for their behavioral flexibility and cognitive repertoire, despite the fact that the longest lived species barely makes it past five years, and most species don't live past 1-2 years. In contrast, many marine invertebrates (particularly deep-sea inverts) can live for decades or even centuries, and plenty of terrestrial invertebrates count their lifespan in years, not days (such as cicadas and Roman snails). Invertebrate emotional states are trickier to study than vertebrate emotional states due to the vastly different body plans available to inverts as well as their tendency towards more dispersed nervous systems. However, the different style of nervous system organization is not a good argument for a lack of pain, as invertebrates with highly dispersed nerve nets have also evolved highly complex eyes (box jellies are my absolute favorite example of this). But because of this difference, we tend to have to use behavioral indicators for pain perception, most typically modeled after drug trials. Basically, if we administer a nociceptor-blocking drug to an invertebrate, will their behavior revert back to baseline after an injury has occurred? And the answer to that seems to be "yes" more often than "no". Even Drosophilia, with their tiny lifespans, change their behavior when given a damaging stimuli, and revert back to baseline when given a pain-blocker (Horvath et al., 2013, "Invertebrate welfare"). Just like with vertebrates, invertebrates display localized grooming and rubbing to the damaged area (think of a dog licking a wound, or of scratching your own wounds while they heal or rubbing a sore spot). Prawns given Benzocaine didn't attempt to escape noxious stimuli, while those who weren't given it did display escape behaviors. Motivational changes were also seen in hermit crabs who were given electric shocks. Following the shocks, the hermit crabs immediately evacuated their shells and spent a considerable time outside of any shells so they could groom their abdomen. When given the option of multiple shells, the hermit crabs typically chose a new shell, rather than return to their old shell, and spent less time inspecting the new shell (such as making sure its empty and fits the crab properly) (Horvath et al., 2013, "Invertebrate welfare"). And something to keep in mind, different species have different biological perceptions of time (Healy et al., 2013, "Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information"). This generally means that small bodies with high metabolic rates tend to perceive time faster, and thus react and learn at a faster pace than large bodies with low metabolic rates. So while days or hours may be too short for us humans to use pain to learn about what we should avoid (a statement that seems very doubtful, considering such learning takes the mere seconds of synaptic processing), such a timespan is more than long enough for a tiny fruit fly, who must learn as a larva what is dangerous to a larva and learn as an adult what is dangerous to an adult so that it can live as long as possible. In the lab I worked in as a grad student, my advisor made sure that we were aware of the literature on invertebrate welfare so that we could euthanize invertebrates with as little pain as possible, and he's even published a paper on anesthetizing snails (Wyeth et al., 2009, "1-Phenoxy-2-propanol is a useful anaesthetic for gastropods used in neurophysiology."). That being said, I agree that neither the literature nor evolutionary pressures supports the evolution of pain or pain-like systems in plants. There is a growing and very interesting body of literature on how plants perceive, communicate, and interact with their world, and that includes behaviors that reduce tissue damage (such as using species-specific pheromones to attract predators of pests (cotton) or releasing chemicals to make tissues unpalatable (Acacia trees)) or prevent tissue damage (such as reacting to airborne chemicals released by conspecifics being predated upon by releasing chemicals to make them unpalatable (Acacia trees) or by physically moving leaves away from a stimulus (sensitive plant)). Happily, it seems that plants are able to sense and respond to tissue damage without feeling pain. Which is great for me, as creating miniature bonsai (and penjing) forests is one of my hobbies, and also I grow fruit and berry trees as bonsai because I live in apartments but dream of having my own food forest someday. I can grow my food forest in miniature until I get land, then once the trees and shrubs are planted they will grow just like a normal tree.
yesssss omfg, I never see anybody talking about all this, it's always just hundreds of people using circular logical fallacies that essentially boil down to "I cant see the pain so it's not real". The utter lack of basic education on other creatures perceptions and any semblance of compassion in some people is astounding. (I mean, by that logic clearly pathogens are a lie and diseases are all just in our heads.)
@@suruxstrawde8322 It's really complicated trying to study the umwelt of invertebrates, because of just how different their body plans are and the dispersed nervous system so many of them have. We are so much more familiar with vertebrate centralized neural systems, and that makes it so much harder to explore dispersed neural systems. We can use the similar body plan and behavioral patterns in other vertebrates to explore their sensory, emotional, and cognitive world because our body plans are very similar and the vertebrate brain is highly conserved (meaning similar features such as the cerebellum show up in all vertebrates). But we still have a very poor understanding of how invertebrate neural systems work. Many of the same molecules appear to work on most invertebrates in the same way that they work on most vertebrates, but we don't always know if the functional area in, for example, arthropods is in the ganglion cluster that we call the "brain", or in one of the other ganglion clusters located along the ventral nerve cord. I feel that it is more ethical to treat all animals as though they can feel pain, especially since we already know animals can feel physiological stresses, which then changes motivational states. I make sure that if I find or cause a fatal injury to an animal, invertebrate or vertebrate, I do my best to dispatch them as quickly as possible to minimize their suffering and perception of pain.
@@AdairPastos I, too, have definitely noticed that the less similar to us an organism is, the less likely people will attribute intelligence and/or the capability to experience emotions or to suffer. Over-anthropomorphism of animals like dogs leads to inappropriate emotional attributes to some behaviors (such as believing that a scolded dog is "feeling guilty" when they're typically displaying submissive behavior (not saying they can't feel guilt)), and under-anthropomorphism of animals like lobsters leads to equally inappropriate dismissal of the possibility of an emotional umwelt. And unfortunately it can lead to a lack of critical or imaginative scientific exploration in animals that look lees like humans. (There's also the problem of the difficulty of getting funding for such research, but that's a different problem.)
Short, precise, sources citations, and also good quality in both image and sound, and even entertaining. Ok, I like and I comment! That's really uncommon for me, but this video deserves it. I'm gonna go see what else there is on this channel. THanks.
