Animals and all of us sometimes have to make decisions about which path to take and which is better to give up. In a new study, scientists wanted to find out how plants will behave when they are required to assess risks and make vital choices.
For his experiment, Alex Kachelnik from Oxford University, along with Israeli colleagues from Tel Hai College, used peas. The roots of the young plant were divided into two pots with different amounts of nutrients. As expected, as the peas grew, they concentrated their efforts on the pot with a richer ration. Animals do the same, preferring to dwell in places where there is more food.
The next difficult situation in which the scientists put peas growing on two pots was that in one of them the food was constant, and in the other it was changeable. As a result, the roots of the plant behaved in the same way as people or animals found themselves in similar conditions. For example, for the latter, the risk is considered justified if it makes it possible to improve the current situation in the event of a win. So, a hungry animal is ready to take risks, but a well-fed animal will not endanger itself even for the sake of large prey.
According to Kachelnik, at the moment this is the only work that demonstrates the reaction of adaptation to risks in an organism devoid of a nervous system.
An article about the study was published in the journal Current Biology.
