M Night Shyamalan did a documentary on this I think

Considering what we do to them, they have every right to defend themselves.

As an asthmatic hay-fever sufferer, fuck yeah - you're onto something!

There's a theory that allergies are getting worse due to an imbalance of gender selection when planting trees in urban environments. Here is some additional context.

I just want to point out that this source indicates researchers reviewed 1500 papers on the topic and found that unsupported claims had doubled.

However, they never indicate the number or give a percentage of those 1500 papers that featured unsupported claims.

So is it doubling from 2 to 4, or from 700 to 1400? Because that's a major difference.

This is a problem with AI articles on science. They skim other AI articles and repeat without bringing all the important facts with them. Then we get dozens of results for one claim about science, with only maybe one or two original sources.

Then the idea spreads through reddit or whatever forum you prefer.

We know trees share resources, that they have been demonstrated to signal pain and danger to other plants, that they signal food availability to pollinators via electromagnetic fields. We have had hard evidence for all of this.

David Attenborough said it, opinion discarded

It's an interesting hypothesis run amok because a core group of biologists WANTED it to be true so badly.

There's a GREAT episode (ep. 425) from the In Defense of Plants podcast that covers the misinformation and misunderstanding perfectly.

Probably not in my butt, but that's where it's going! ;)

If complexity alone is enough, then why wouldn't silicon brains connected to multiple external sensors be enough? The computer scientist are even starting to experiment with bio fuel cells that convert light to energy, and using fuzzy logic for AI networks. Our brains are giant fuzzy logic processors.

We have such a human-centric and focused interpretation of knowing, and what qualifies as intelligence.

This has been my response to all of the bullshit alien claims recently. It's always some kind of very human-centric idea of a bipedal being using a second thing as a vehicle. Just that entire concept is so human-centric.

If extraterrestrial ilfe exists, it's not going to resemble humans. Unless it's literally our cosmic ancestors or some shit.

It's a start: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-13-8922-1

The mycorrhizal networks are a real phenomenon, and as recently as 2016 were confirmed to share resources between trees.

Researchers exposed certain trees to a specific carbon isotope and found their unfed neighbors were processing that specific isotope despite not being exposed.

We've also found that many plants generate interacting electrical fields that help promote pollination and may indicate to pollinators which plants are ready to be harvested.

We've also found, by sequencing fungal DNA, that mother trees do have a resource sharing preference for their direct offspring.

We don't have hard evidence for direct communication between trees, in the sense that we don't speak tree. We do have hard evidence that they share resources, have preferences, express pain signals externally and other plants react, and can indicate information to other species.

This comment is the definition of joie de vivre.

I like this comment for many reasons, but I'll mention just that I have never heard the word "kayfabe" until today and I love it!

Thanks for the tip, I’ll keep an eye out for it.

But it helps me anthropomorphize them into ents so it must be true

RIP in peace

Tom Holland already looks like a young Tom Holland though