Do plants have feelings?

“But plants have feelings, they feel pain too.”

At first glance, one might consider the above as a valid justification to continue eating meat and consuming dairy products. Afterall, why should one draw the line between plants and animals? Aren’t plants living and just about the same as animals? These are questions that loads of people have asked me. If you are skeptical about veganism, I am sure you have these questions in mind. In this article, I will try to clarify these points and hopefully, you will leave knowing more about why one should go vegan.

So, get set plant-rights activists and plant lovers, let us embark on a journey to find out whether plants really have feelings and feel pain, too.

Are plants sentient?

According to numerous scientific studies and experimentation, plants are not sentient. We can observe this too.

To understand how one can observe that plants do not feel pain and pleasure (i.e. are not sentient), we need to understand evolution and why one feels pain or pleasure.

According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, pain and pleasure act like triggers or indicators in complex organisms, which let the organisms know that they are in danger (by means of pain) or let them know that their chance of survival is high (by means of pleasure). For example, a dog will run away if someone pelts him/her with a stone, because of the sensation of pain. In contrast, the same dog would go to a place where there is food, led by the feeling of pleasure. Evolution takes place in such a way that organisms evolve to attain traits that increase their chance of survival, like pain and pleasure.

Do plants have the ability to behave in the same way – that is, run away when they sense pain or come close when they sense pleasure?  

As you have observed in the example of the dog, pleasure and pain, or sentience, is just a trigger or a sensation that motivates or demotivates an organism to do an activity. This would require an organism to run away if pain is felt, like in the case of the dog. But plants are not capable of performing such action. A plant does not run away if hit by a stone. So the trigger or the sensation of pain, is absent in plants. Evolution provides an organism with tools to survive. Plants will not evolve to feel pain and pleasure.

“But hold on a second,” you might say “I saw an experiment in which the famous physicist and botanist, Jagadish Chandra Bose demonstrated that plants have life and plants feel pain.”

That’s true. Well, quite.

Plant research of Jagadish Chandra Bose

Plants are indeed living but they are very different from us from the ‘animal kingdom.’ What Jagadish Chandra Bose showed was how plants too have their own system of being aware of their surroundings. However, a central nervous system which, as scientists call the hub of consciousness, is absent in plants. It is in the brain that the components or figments of our consciousness join to give us the ability to perceive our surroundings.

Since plants lack a central nervous system, they perceive their surroundings through simple chemical reactions such as in the case of a touch-me-not plant, which releases a certain chemical when touched, triggering the closing of the leaves.

We very well know that plants don’t think and perform actions similar to animals.

“You know, I think I will close my leaves when someone touches me,” says Harvey the touch-me-not plant to its neighbor, the grass and decides from that day onward it will curl up when anyone touches it.

That’s obviously not how a plant behaves, since it is not sentient. Plants are living organisms and can, to a certain extent, interact with their environment as Jagadish Chandra Bose has shown us. But that is simply not what we call sentience.

The environmental costs of eating plants compared to animals

For one tiny second, let us just assume that plants are sentient and that plants can feel pain and pleasure. Do we then justify that plants and animals are the same and that refraining from the exploitation of animals is pointless? No, and here are the reasons.

We breed billions of animals into existence for which they have to be fed. So what do we feed them? We sow and harvest (kill) acres of plants such as corn, soy, etc. to feed to animals. What happens when we don’t have these many acres of arable land? That’s right. We cut down forests and in the process, kill wildlife and plants.

Has it occurred to you that if we don’t breed animals into existence, none of this destruction would happen? It is true that if humans switched to a plant-based diet, then a certain number of plants would have to be “killed.” But that cost is miniscule when compared to the number of plants fed to 77 billion land animals with forests like the Amazon literally being wiped out of existence to make way for agricultural land.

Climate change, animal agriculture, and species extinction

Did you know that the deforestation of 91% of the Amazon Rainforest is due to animal agriculture?

That need not be the case if we switched to a vegan way of living. Global land use would drop 75% if everyone went vegan, says an Oxford Research. All that land will slowly rejuvenate into forests and foster millions of trees and wildlife, all of which right now doesn’t exist because we have destroyed them. So, we have the solution to save, protect, and conserve plants, animals, and humans alike.

The eco-system is delicate and is a complex link of all organisms. Do you think that if we kill billions of land animals (77 billion to be precise) and trillions of marine animals every year, there would be no impact on us and our environment? If you think there would be no impact whatsoever, you are sadly wrong.

A study shows that there has been a tremendous peak in the extinction of species due to human intervention and habitat destruction. Since forests were chopped off the face of the earth by, you guessed it, animal agriculture, climate change has destroyed the habitats of all – animals, plants, and humans.

Summary: Vegan argument against “plants feel pain too, they have feelings”

So, just because plants too have feelings, all of this is fine?

Is the loss of life of all of these innocent beings justified?

Are we going to witness the impact of climate change in the form of floods and forest fires on all our fellow human beings and animals, without taking action?

I mean, don’t we have a responsibility, to care for, to love, and to be kind?

Isn’t being kind and compassionate a culture and a way of living?

Why and when did we stop being kind? If we think that we are indeed kind like many of us believe, then we are ignorant and blind to the suffering that prevails. So far, we have been kind selectively. We cared for our loved ones and our “pets.” But we must care for all. All humans. All animals. All species. All that lives. That is true love and true compassion.

We need to stop the extinction of species.

We need to stop the slaughter of our fellow beings, the animals.

We need to wake up and go vegan, not only for ourselves but for the collective betterment of all.

We need to look in the eye of an animal that is tortured and is about to be thrown into the gas chamber and tell the animal that we are there to protect her/him. That we care. An empty promise won’t do. We need to make a promise that lasts. A promise that makes a change. A promise that changes the life of all that lives, for the better.

“But plants feel pain, so why go vegan?” Well, now you know.

About the author, Manish M

“I am an animal rights activist and a vegan. I went vegan for the animals and I believe that together we can create a vegan world where every animal is cared for and loved and not exploited in any manner. I love writing poems about veganism and I also cook vegan food. I run Cloud Nine, a vegan food business based out of Trichy, Tamil Nadu with the motive of providing vegan alternatives to the people of my city.

You can contact me on Instagram @man1sh.2306.

You can also check out my poems @manish_the_little_poet.”

Cover Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels