Plants can learn and memorise.
Evolutionary ecologist, Monica Gagliano, has managed to demonstrate that plants can learn and memorise too. In other words, these are capabilities that do not belong solely to the animal kingdom. She worked with pea plants to discover this, using an established conditioning methodology. She persuaded the plants to respond to an electric fan that had previously been associated with light. Light to plants of course is as attractive as catnip to cats and plants grow towards it. Thus, she was able to show that plants could learn that the fan was a precursor to the subsequent appearance of light. Not only that, but she showed that the plants could remember the significance of the fan weeks later. The interesting question is whether one concludes that plants are, therefore, sentient. Or instead that memory and learning are not such special tricks after all.
Link to article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032050-400-smarty-plants-they-can-learn-adapt-and-remember-without-brains/
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