Sharks that eat.........plants? (Eden, evolution, creation, hell, America)

[Kungfuzed]

Originally Posted by fantôme profane

Good point. It depends of course on how you eat the plant. Eating the fruit does not kill the plant and is in fact beneficial to it. But generally it is just a fact of our existence that in order to be alive, you have to kill something.

To eat the fruit of a plant, are you not performing an abortion? What about the poor plant that could have lived and grown had you just simply planted it instead of eating it?

[Real Sorceror]

Originally Posted by Kungfuzed

To eat the fruit of a plant, are you not performing an abortion? What about the poor plant that could have lived and grown had you just simply planted it instead of eating it?

Thats the sort of rational that cuases you to starve and die.

[Seyorni]

Originally Posted by Kungfuzed

To eat the fruit of a plant, are you not performing an abortion? What about the poor plant that could have lived and grown had you just simply planted it instead of eating it?

Fruit is designed to be eaten. Fruit is a seed dispersal device. Animals enjoy the pulp and later deposit the undigested seeds at some distant location, along with a generous dollop of fertilizer.

Very clever -- and devious -- these plants...

[fantôme profane]

Originally Posted by Kungfuzed

To eat the fruit of a plant, are you not performing an abortion? What about the poor plant that could have lived and grown had you just simply planted it instead of eating it?

No of course not. You are not performing and abortion, quite the opposite. You are helping with a birth. Fruit bearing trees and animals have evolved a mutually beneficial relationship where the animal takes the seed and disperses it. This is good for the continuation of that species of tree, and in return the animal gets a nice healthy snack. Naturally the kind of fruit that animals like to eat gets selected more often. So many plants have evolved to provide convenient tasty food for animals in order to induce them to carry their seed more often.

[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by Seyorni

Fruit is designed to be eaten. Fruit is a seed dispersal device. Animals enjoy the pulp and later deposit the undigested seeds at some distant location, along with a generous dollop of fertilizer.

Indeed. In fact, some plant seeds need to pass through an animal gut or they won't germinate.

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by Seyorni

Very clever -- and devious -- these plants...

Yes, their evil plan is to take over the world bwahahahahahha! If they did not need our CO2 to survive we'd be gone already. We've got 'em by the short tendrils on that one.

[sparc872]

Actually there is evidence that plants do register pain. They have anervous system, just not an animal-like nervous system.
When you rip off a leaf or pull up a carrot, chemicals and hormones are released that spread throughout the organism. I've also read research (that i can't sem to find online, so assume it was in a journal) that there is also an electrical response induced in injured plants.

I've even seen some research looking at electrical communications between plant roots via ground water. Plant neurobiology is still a young science though.

The simple fact is that because people cannot observe a reaction to pain that they recognise in plants, as they would in other animals, they assume that plants are unaware, they are not. The evidence is growing that plants are just as aware of their surroundings and of their own bodies as animals.

Many people justify killing animals to themselves because the animals are "inferior to us, they aren't human". The vast majority of humans use the same logic with plants "plants don't feel pain, they aren't animal, they are inferior", they just don't realise it.

Plants, and fungi, are as evolved as any animal organism on this planet. Their bodies are different, they live in a totally different way and they interact with each other and their environment in such an alien manner that, as animals, humans simply don't notice.

Pretty cool stuff. I am very interested in finding out more about this.

[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by sparc872

Pretty cool stuff. I am very interested in finding out more about this.

Here's a start on this controversial new area of botanical research
http://www.plantneurobiology.org/
(click on the "Society for Plant Neurobiology" link first).

It would be good if you had some subscriptions to a few good journals, as most innovative research takes a good while to reach the public internet (and i mean years), but the research is out there if you're willing to take the time to search for it.