Journalist Zoë Schlanger has been tracking the new science of plant intelligence. Plants can exhibit some of the same behaviors as animals with nervous systems, including decision-making and elaborate defenses against predators.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Nature
Have you ever wondered how plants find enough light and water? How they ward off attacks from predators? It turns out they’re a lot smarter than you realize. Plants can send out distress signals. They have memories. They may even be able to see.
Suzanne Simard transformed our understanding of forest ecology by uncovering the fungal networks that trees use to communicate with each other. Anne Strainchamps went walking with Simard to see firsthand how a forest is like a kinship network.
“Psychedelic people are practicing at the very edge of anyone else’s comfort zone,” says psychologist Katherine MacLean, on her pioneering work as a psychedelic researcher and why she reveres the Mexican healer Maria Sabina.
What can we learn from whales — and whales from us? Technology like AI is fueling new scientific breakthroughs in whale communication that can help us better understand the natural world.
A Maori conservationist in New Zealand, Mere Takoko is arguing for granting personhood for whales, who she says are her Indigenous Polynesian ancestors.
Scientists at Project CETI exploring the sounds of whales have found a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet.” Carl Zimmer, author and science writer for The New York Times, puts the latest whale communications research and news into perspective.
Roger Payne revolutionized the science of whale biology by discovering the songs of humpback whales. In this 1995 interview, Payne (who died in 2023) described the thrill of touching a whale, and why he fears for the future of whales.
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