Is Eating Plants Wrong?
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are plants rather cleverer than once thought? Scientists from around the world are claiming that plants cannot just sense, but communicate, learn and remember. In an experiment in Australia, plants appeared to learn to associate a sound with a food source, just as Pavlov's dogs linked the sound of a bell with dinner. In Israel they've found that plants communicated a message from one to another, and that the information was then used to survive drought. In British Columbia and the UK researchers have shown that trees pass information and nutrients to each other through an underground fungal network. This even happens more with closely related trees or seedlings than with strangers. And in California it turns out that sagebrush shrubs have "regional dialects"! Botanist James Wong explores these findings and asks whether, if plants can do all these things, and if, as one scientist says, they are a "who" and not a "what", then is it wrong to eat them?
Producer Arlene Gregorius
Contributors: Prof. Richard Karban Dr Monica Galiano Prof. Ariel Novoplansky Prof Suzanne Simard Dr Brian Pickles Prof Michael Marder.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | Hi, I'm Riana Dylan. |
| 0:42.0 | Welcome to the home of seriously Hi, I'm Riana Dylan. |
| 0:43.0 | Welcome to the home of seriously interesting stories told a little sideways. |
| 0:49.0 | Plants are more effective at communicating with their neighbors who grow in the same geographic area as they do |
| 0:59.3 | than they are at communicating with individuals from several hundred kilometers away. |
| 1:05.0 | That's Professor Rick Carbon. |
| 1:07.0 | So it's almost as if the sagebrush plants are using different regional dialects for communication. |
| 1:15.0 | Yes, it sounds almost as if the plants are talking to each other. |
| 1:21.0 | Today's story is brought to us by James Wong. He's a botanist and he's been speaking to other scientists from across the world who believe that plants don't just sense but also communicate, learn and remember. |
| 1:36.4 | And that's leading James to ask, |
| 1:38.5 | is eating plants wrong? wrong. |
| 1:45.0 | I'm sitting in a vegan restaurant in trendy West London that's packed out. I'm sitting in a vegan restaurant in trendy West London |
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