>> Greetings...
>> Cool question. Plants certainly can respond to injury and they do transmit
> impulses from one cell to the next, but this is not the same as feeling pain.
> I think in order to "feel" pain, you have to have a brain, or some
> centralized area to process and integrate incoming info, which plants DO NOT
> have. I would even go so far as to say that in order to feel pain in any
> kind of emotional way, one needs a pretty fancy brain (like, with a
> cortex).
Interestingly, there aren't any "pain neurons" in the somatosensory
cortex. It is a puzzle as to how exactly pain is perceived at the
concious level.
> This is why anesthetics can be used for surgery in humans. During
> surgery, pain impulses are initiated and sent to the spinal cord, but the
> brain is "shut off" by the anesthetic, so no pain is felt. Certainly
> animals feel pain, which is why a vegan lifestyle no doubt causes less
> pain than if you ate animals! Hope this helps. Maybe a botanist would
> know better?
>> Sandra
>>> ----------------------
>sandraw at U.Arizona.EDU>>>
