Can plants feel pain?

The scientific community is just beginning to recognize plants’ advanced capabilities, and we now know that they experience a variety of sensations. They can close or open up to avoid an attack or to await rain, for instance. Studies show that plants can feel a touch as light as a caterpillar’s footsteps and send out signals—similar to those sent by the human body—to warn their other leaves to release bad-tasting chemicals in order to deter damaging insects. Studies show that plants also communicate with one another; share medicinal compounds with other plants through their roots, an underground fungal network, and the air; release pheromones; see, hear, smell, and react to dangers in the environment via sensing proteins; pass knowledge on to younger plants; and more.

Just as at one time, many people did not realize that octopuses—whose nervous systems differ significantly from that of humans and other animals—are extremely intelligent and sensitive to pain, it’s possible that plants have intelligence and sentience that humans cannot yet detect. Perhaps one day, we will learn that they have ways of experiencing pain that we have yet to comprehend.

Whether or not that’s the case, there is no need to harm plants unnecessarily. While we must eat in order to survive, we can harm fewer plants by going vegan, because eating plants directly, rather than feeding them to animals and then killing those animals for their flesh, requires far fewer plants and hurts fewer animals who, we already know for sure, feel pain. Cows, for example, must consume 16 pounds of vegetation to yield 1 pound of flesh, so by being vegan, we save many more plants’ lives than if we ate meat. And of course, vegans also save nearly 200 animals every year—living, feeling beings who, scientists now know beyond a shadow of a doubt, experience the full range of sensations and emotions, including pain, discomfort, fear, and sadness.

Whether it can be proved that plants experience pain or not, vegan foods are the compassionate choice because they require the deaths of fewer plants and animals.