Hey, Vegans, Plants Have Feelings, Too

It's hip these days to banish meat from the diet, chow down instead on the plant world, and congratulate ourselves for our enlightened morals. But what about the poor plants? They "no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot," writes Natalie Angier. "This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside," she writes, noting that the more scientists study plants and their sophisticated ways, the more impressed they become.

"Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl," Angier writes in the New York Times. "Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication—their feedback, you might say—are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help." It's time, she concludes, for a "green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds." (More plants stories.)