Bioscience

Smarty Plants
Name
Institution
New words/ concepts
Plant intelligence
This is the ability of the plants to use their brains to get an integrated signaling view by responding to the environmental stimuli through movement and morphological changes. Here, the brain is metaphorically used, and the plants communicate as they actively compete for resources.
Signal transduction
This is the ability of the plants to sense the environment and respond to it with consciousness.
Summary
The podcast is about Monica Gagliano’s research on whether plants need a brain to detect their surrounding (Robert 2018). It talks of the surprising facts about the brainless plants that can sense what they require from the environment and grow towards them especially water and light. Monica, through a series of unique research experiments, turns how people think of plants and try to prove that plants can do things that people would not imagine. Monica’s claims have always been controversial, and she has received equal amounts of attention from the media and colleagues about the research. Most of these critics are based on the fact that she uses language metaphors to interpret her findings. From the podcast, Robert dismisses Monica’s claims that plants are capable of being conscious of their environmental surrounding. The podcast is worth listening to as it gives the listener a new perspective on how they should view plants, not just as plants but as conscious organisms just like animals
My opinion
On Dr. Monica result, they are not surprising though I can say they are exciting.

It is because plants are prehistoric creatures and they have a variety of ways of which they can use to adapt to their surrounding conditions. Another opinion is that it would really be reasonable to carry out confirmation experiments by other researchers before more conclusions are made out of the study.
Reference
Robert, K. (2018). Smarty Plants | Radiolab | WNYC Studios. [online] WNYC Studios. Available
at: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/smarty-plants [Accessed 7 Nov. 2018].