Do plants, vegetables, trees etc have feelings?

[justasking]

Since they grow and they can die, do you think they have feelings. E.g if you pick a flowers petals would it hurt them?

[CrazyWolfman]

It depends on what you consider 'hurt' to mean. Plants don't have a central nervous system so they do not feel pain in the same way we do. Nor do they have brains for that matter. However some plants do react to being cut damaged or even poked, so just because they don't feel pain as we do it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't react to painful stimuli. On the other hand, I'm a zookeeper, not a botanist, so the main criteria for pain are perhaps different. In animals pain guarding is a main 'symptom' of the ability to feel pain. This is where the animal tries to avoid the painful stimulus in order to reduce further pain (like taking your hand out of a pan of boiling water), plants do not do this which would suggest an innability to feel pain. However this may just be because plants have evolved with a relative innability to move anyway. (ie. they would move if they could, but they can't.)

In my opinion though they do not feel pain as they don't seem to have the necessary organs or tissues to do so (no brain / CNS). But, for the above reasons I would suggest you got a second opinion on that.

[Lonnie]

A good question, Plants actually do everything we do, just differently, they have sex, colonise, make war, hunt, just because they are a totally different type of creature to us, I think that at least, some of them feel pain.

There's a species of tree, when attacked, gives off a type of gas that alerts others of the same species, and thy put up a defence,

The thing is, no-one really knows, so just think about it, when you pull any plant up out of the ground, its starts to die, put the whole thing int a pot of boiling water, ie, Cabbage, how do you know its not screaming with pain, cut the grass, are you hurting it?. trees self prune, but they do it when <b.they are ready, when we do it, generally, its not when they want it, so, are we causing them pain?.

Don't send for the men in white coats yet,

[justasking]

I used to wonder if i was hurting grass when i walked on it. Which is why i asked the Q. Nice answers to both it's nice seeing 2 diff opinions and i agree both of you in parts.