In fact, not only do they not experience pain, they also do not experience other sensations as we understand them, whether positive or negative. Despite their lack of a brain, pain receptors, and other neurological components, plants still do respond to stimuli, which many have misconstrued as an ability to feel.
Do Plants React to Human Voices? Here's the good news: plants do respond to the sound of your voice. In a study conducted by the Royal Horticultural Society, research demonstrated that plants did respond to human voices. In this study, there were 10 tomato plants, 8 of which had headphones placed around their pots.
Recent studies show that plant organisms perceive sound as a mechanical stimulus and translate it into cellular and metabolic changes. Sound stimuli can influence germination rates and increase plant growth and development, improving the yield of some crops.
Do Plants Have Feelings (Or Emotions)? No – unlike humans and non-human animals, plants do not have feelings. It is undeniable that a plant can respond to environmental stimuli, like turning towards the light or closing over a fly.
Plants respond to the vibrations of nearby sound which turns on two key genes inside of them that influence their growth. Plants also increase photosynthesis production in response to carbon dioxide, which is a by-product of human speech.
Plants can sense and react to more aspects of their environments than we can, and they maintain bustling social lives by communicating with each other above and below ground. They also interact with other species.
Plants thrive when they listen to music that sits between 115Hz and 250Hz, as the vibrations emitted by such music emulate similar sounds in nature. Plants don't like being exposed to music more than one to three hours per day. Jazz and classical music seems to be the music of choice for ultimate plant stimulation.
Research has shown that plants are complex organisms that can feel, communicate and respond to their environment. In fact, plants can feel emotions too. This might sound surprising, but it is true.
We do know that they can feel sensations. Studies show that plants can feel a touch as light as a caterpillar's footsteps. But pain, specifically, is a defense mechanism. If something hurts humans, we react instinctually to it—“fight or flight”—as do other animals.
Given that plants do not have pain receptors, nerves, or a brain, they do not feel pain as we members of the animal kingdom understand it. Uprooting a carrot or trimming a hedge is not a form of botanical torture, and you can bite into that apple without worry.
Rather, sound waves stimulate the plant's cells. When the cells are stimulated by the sound, nutrients are encouraged to move throughout the plant body, promoting new growth and strengthening their immune systems. Believe it or not, studies indicate that plants also seem have a specific taste in music!
Generally, houseplants should not touch each other. Science has discovered they can feel touch, so if touched by another plant it can cause a genetic defense response that reduces growth. Alongside this, houseplants that touch could become more easily infested with pests.
It may not be 'hearing' in the conventional sense, as plants lack both brain and ears, but plants do have vibration-sensing receptors and so, at some level, could well be responding to sound.
In a Mythbusters experiment involving seven plants — two received positive speech, two received negative speech, one listened to classical music, another to death metal and the last was left in silence — the plant left in silence fared the worst. Surprisingly, the one to flourish the most was the death metal plant.
Plants are surprising organisms—without brains and central nervous systems, they are still able to sense the environment that surrounds them. Plants can perceive light, scent, touch, wind, even gravity, and are able to respond to sounds, too.
Sessile – or stalkless – plants evolved to be incredibly sensitive to their environment in order to survive. Research into their awareness has revealed the incredible ways plants sense their environment: from "hearing" their predators, "smelling" their neighbours1and even "mimicking" the shapes of their plant hosts.
“But some research shows that speaking nicely to plants will support their growth, whereas yelling at them won't. Rather than the meaning of words, however, this may have more to do with vibrations and volume. Plants react favourably to low levels of vibrations, around 115-250hz being ideal.”
We have yet to scientifically verify that that plants have feelings. However, we do know that they can pick up on energies and sense.
The reason for this is that, despite the lack of any kind of cognition, plants have souls too, according to Aristotle's widely-accepted theory: trees and flowers nourish themselves, they grow, and propagate, and so they have what was usually called a vegetative soul.
While no one claims that plants “feel” emotions, as humans do, plants do show signs of “sensing” their surroundings. Now researchers are working to see what we can discover about the possibility that plants exhibit intelligence in their adaptations to their environment and changes within it.
Don't Waste Your Emotions on Plants, They Have No Feelings, Grumpy Scientists Say. A tree falls in the woods; but whether or not anyone hears it, the tree has no regrets. Nor does it experience fear, anger, relief or sadness as it topples to the ground.
In fact, years of evidence reveals that plants do respond well to music, specifically music that contains voices in the 115-250hz range (this is most likely a female voice). The music of choice is usually classical, or jazz.
Coffee contains a lot of nitrogen, which not only kills off weeds and bacteria but can also help certain types of plants (a.k.a those that prefer more acidic soil) flourish. Plus, your daily cuppa also contains significant amounts of magnesium and potassium, both of which are key factors in plant growth and health.
More than a century ago, the eminent biologist Charles Darwin suggested that plants have a brain-like structure at their root tips! In this case, Darwin's root-brain hypothesis was wrong, but more modern research shows that plants can communicate. They speak with other plants as well as with animals and even people.