Summary
Highlights
The speaker begins by highlighting a fundamental error in the story of Noah's Ark: the absence of plants, which are often not considered 'living creatures' in traditional views. This underestimation of plants, even by esteemed figures like David Attenborough, leads to misconceptions, such as believing the blue whale is the largest creature, when in reality, the Sequoiadendron giganteum (giant redwood) holds that title by mass.
Aristotle's 'De Anima' categorized plants as having only a 'vegetative soul' due to their supposed lack of movement, placing them on the edge between living and non-living. However, the speaker demonstrates plants' diverse movements, from the rapid snap of a Venus flytrap to the graceful light-tracking of a bean sprout and the 'playful' training of young sunflowers. Time-lapse photography reveals flowering and even sleep-like cycles in plants like Mimosa pudica.
Plants are exceptional communicators, distinguishing between kin and non-kin and interacting with other species and animals through chemical volatiles, especially for pollination. Some plants even manipulate animals, like orchids promising sex and nectar but delivering nothing, to achieve pollen transport. These complex behaviors raise the question of how plants manage such feats without a brain.
Charles Darwin, in his 1880 book 'The Power of Movement in Plants,' revolutionized the understanding of plant movement. He concluded that 'it's hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radical acts like the brain of one of the lower animals.' This was not a metaphor, as Darwin further discussed the 'brain in plants' in his letters. The root apex, particularly a small 'transition zone,' exhibits high oxygen consumption and action potentials similar to neuronal signals, suggesting significant computational power.
A single plant, like rye, can have millions of root apices, forming a vast underground network spanning hundreds of kilometers. Each root apex acts as a small computing machine, working in a coordinated network akin to the internet. This distributed intelligence allows plants to survive even when 90% of their root system is removed, offering valuable insights for evolving robust networks.
The speaker proposes developing plant-inspired robots, or 'plantoids,' for tasks like soil exploration and colonizing new territories, where plants are masters. He also suggests creating hybrids that combine living plant parts with machines. The relative ethical simplicity and presence of computing power and electrical signals in plants make them ideal candidates for such hybrid technologies, particularly using algae, leaves, or roots as the living component.