Some Form Of Cognition.

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1. Plants operate in ways that are difficult for us to perceive, so people have traditionally assumed they aren’t doing very much. But more recently, researchers have found them to possess many sophisticated and surprising abilities. 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. Tomato plants, for example, release chemicals that encourage their caterpillar predators to indulge cannibalistic instincts and turn on each other. Bee orchids trick male bees into landing on their flowers by looking and smelling like exotic female bees, then load the duped insects with pollen. Evening primroses can “hear” their pollinators and fire up nectar production when exposed to their specific vibration frequencies. Arabidopsis plants can use the unique wavelength profiles of light reflected off nearby plants to tell relatives from non-relatives. Some of these capabilities are evolved stock responses to particular situations – simple, hardwired reactions. Other behaviors, though, might be underpinned by some form of cognition. (Source: newscientist.com)