plants know when they're beating eaten, "hear" and recognize different vibrations

[Stranger]

link

[Rhayader]

But the vegans will still think they're inferior to animals and humans.

[Stranger]

The whole Universe is alive and aware, from animals to planets to crystals - and we're told even atoms have awareness. I think awareness is an inherent property of light, and everything is light. The more regular the organization of that light, the more awareness and organized thought is possible. Since we're designed to use other life to sustain our own, all we can do is consume consciously and gratefully, and minimize our impact. I continue to feel that being vegetarian is the right choice for me, and can't justify having one animal for a beloved pet but endorsing cruel raising and slaughter of others that aren't different in any meaningful sense for food.

[Diana]

But the vegans will still think they're inferior to animals and humans.

That is incorrect.

If you actually read the exchanges on those threads that discuss meat eating you would know that no vegetarian or vegan, here at least on this forum, think that at all.

[Unbound]

Well, most vegetables are eaten in terms of pieces taken off the plant. So again, this to me speaks of eating the dead flesh of a creature no different from eating the dead flesh of another. In this case though the study seems to be focused on eating of the plant while it is still integrated (e.g, a caterpillar munching on some leaf still attached) and doesn't quite address whether or not the plants like being "dismantled" or having their parts taken off.

[Nuria Luz]

Many plants have evolved to be eaten so the seeds are scattered around in animal's faeces. And as Unbound says, from some you take only parts (that regrow later). Did you know you can regrow a lettuce from the core?

[Unbound]

I think there is a distinct difference between eating fruiting bodies, and eating the actual body of the plant, personally.

[Parsons]

There is a much more extensive, earlier article linked in the above article. It's a really interesting read:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/1...gent-plant

The most controversial presentation was “Animal-Like Learning in Mimosa Pudica,” an unpublished paper by Monica Gagliano, a thirty-seven-year-old animal ecologist at the University of Western Australia who was working in Mancuso’s lab in Florence. Gagliano, who is tall, with long brown hair parted in the middle, based her experiment on a set of protocols commonly used to test learning in animals. She focussed on an elementary type of learning called “habituation,” in which an experimental subject is taught to ignore an irrelevant stimulus. “Habituation enables an organism to focus on the important information, while filtering out the rubbish,” Gagliano explained to the audience of plant scientists. How long does it take the animal to recognize that a stimulus is “rubbish,” and then how long will it remember what it has learned? Gagliano’s experimental question was bracing: Could the same thing be done with a plant?

Mimosa pudica, also called the “sensitive plant,” is that rare plant species with a behavior so speedy and visible that animals can observe it; the Venus flytrap is another. When the fernlike leaves of the mimosa are touched, they instantly fold up, presumably to frighten insects. The mimosa also collapses its leaves when the plant is dropped or jostled. Gagliano potted fifty-six mimosa plants and rigged a system to drop them from a height of fifteen centimetres every five seconds. Each “training session” involved sixty drops. She reported that some of the mimosas started to reopen their leaves after just four, five, or six drops, as if they had concluded that the stimulus could be safely ignored. “By the end, they were completely open,” Gagliano said to the audience. “They couldn’t care less anymore.”

Was it just fatigue? Apparently not: when the plants were shaken, they again closed up. “ ‘Oh, this is something new,’ ” Gagliano said, imagining these events from the plants’ point of view. “You see, you want to be attuned to something new coming in. Then we went back to the drops, and they didn’t respond.” Gagliano reported that she retested her plants after a week and found that they continued to disregard the drop stimulus, indicating that they “remembered” what they had learned. Even after twenty-eight days, the lesson had not been forgotten. She reminded her colleagues that, in similar experiments with bees, the insects forgot what they had learned after just forty-eight hours. Gagliano concluded by suggesting that “brains and neurons are a sophisticated solution but not a necessary requirement for learning,” and that there is “some unifying mechanism across living systems that can process information and learn.”

[Monica]

Don't plants feel pain, too?
post: #188 Monica

Science shows that plants feel pain too! Therefore it's ok to eat animals!
Post #224 Pablísimo
Post #825 Monica (and a heated debate ensues, which continues for several pages)
Post #2675 Monica (plants communicating psychically - what does that signify?)
Post #2680-2682 Monica (group consciousness)
Post #2684-2692 Pickle
Post #873 Monica
Post #912 Namaste
Post #957 Monica
Post #2642 Monica
Post #1327 Diana
Post #1398 Pickle & Monica

Trying to justify one's self regarding the consumption of meat, by using
plants as a counter argument, holds no valid ground. And...what kind of
entities will cows be when they graduate to 3D?
Post #1405 Namaste
Post #1497 Monica
Post #1149 Monica - on Ra's statements about trees developing sentience
Post #2786 Monica
Post #2650 Diana
Post #2657 Diana

Eating plants saves more plants!
Post #975 Monica
Post #1012Diana

Compassion for plants...raising carrots as pets!
Post #1165 Monica

Vegetarians are hypocrites because they eat plants!
Post #1483 Monica

Are plants in constant agony?
Post #1532 Monica
Post #1534 Icaro

Plants vs. animals for food
Post: #1542 Diana

Most crops grown to feed meat animals - highly inefficient - we could end starvation by feeding people instead of farm animals, + kill fewer plants too!
post: 2026 (80% of corn) Pickle

---

link

From the above link:

plants can sense when they are being eaten

was observed.

However,

and send out defense mechanisms to try to stop it from happening

is pure speculation. To state this as factual, and then extrapolate from that, is building from a false premise.

We are all speculating about what plants feel, since they don't have pain receptors like animals do.

But there is NO speculation about animals. We KNOW they feel pain and fear. That isn't speculation; that is fact.

[mjlabadia]

Hi everyone, I've been watching some of the debate unfold regarding meat/vegetarian/vegan lifestyle. I don't have an opinion either way, but my preference is to live as an omnivore.
However,..I was aghast at some previous threads portraying dairy farmers as heartless profiteers, who care nothing for the suffering of animals.

Before I became an engineer, I worked a dairy farm with my ex wife for 10 years. It was the closest thing to living the Law of One I have ever felt.

Here in upstate N.Y., dairy farms are universally family owned. Usually, husband, wife, and kids. I can speak for my family, and the members of N.Y. Farm and Family, and say WE LOVED OUR COWS,....and THEY LOVED US BACK!! I have found this to be true in EVERY instance among the members of our Grange.

Every cow had an individual, and very sentient personality. They would have moods, we had the "cool cow cliques",...the airheads,...an occasional grumpy bully,...the busybodies,...etc. My fondest memory is of watching the kids get off the bus from school, and the cows running to greet them, kicking, with their tails up in the air. (That is their "I'm so happy" posture.)

I would have a certain group of cows that, as soon as I got my toolbox out, would follow me around from project to project, to give me "advice" on what I was doing, or just to hang out and gossip among themselves.
If you ask any farmer about this, he will mention similar experiences.

We farm because we love it. There is very little profit in dairy farming, at least at the farmer level. Typical raw milk prices are from $14 to $18 per hundred-weight. (100 pounds of raw milk.) The price is very strictly controlled, and we have no say in the matter. In fact, we often have no choice what company we can sell our milk to. Additionally, we cannot sell milk to the general public.

I also heard tell about hormones. ABSOLUTELY NO-WAY. At every pickup, a sample of milk is drawn from our holding tanks and tested for hormones/medications/impurities.
We are not allowed to give our cows hormones. If one of our girls gets sick or injured, and she must be medicated, she is hand-milked to prevent mastitis, and the milk is usually thrown away. (We would sometimes give it to the cats, if our prelim tested clean. Our prelim not as exact as the pre-pickup test.) This USDA law. At least for the family farm.

As far as the "milk from contented cows" saying goes,....I can tell you from experience,...stressed out cows give very little milk. You can't just suck milk from a cow. It doesn't work that way. They have to be relaxed. (A calf doesn't really suck on the teat, so much as lick and and pull the milk in,...some suckling involved but The Mama has to co-operate!)
However, there is a bit of negative pressure on the teat cups, to transport the milk through the lines to the tank.

Anyone who has hand-milked a cow for the first time will tell you, there is a finesse, and gentleness to the procedure. They GIVE milk,...you can't just take it.
In fact, any farmer will tell you, that as you work your way down the line, and you put the cups on the next section of three or four cows,...the cows stop their giggling and gossiping, because they are concentrating,...on relaxing and giving milk. You can see it in their facial expression.

After they have had their first feeding, (4:30 a.m.) and their first milking,...(around 6:30 a.m.,....depends on their mood),...they leave their stalls to go play outside,...so we can do our first stall cleaning session. (Twice a day, everyday, Christmas, no matter).
We had about 150 head of Holstein, we kept about 100 wet at any given time.
Our day started at 4:40 a.m.,....ended around 9:30 p.m. (The cows were OUR BOSSES! (Usually, the kids finished earlier, as they had homework and school.)

Not to be crass, but it takes a special kind of love to be up to your elbow inside a cow, turning around a breach birth.
I can't tell you how many nights my wife or I slept next to a cow and calf in a stall. Trying to get some colostrum in her, because she wouldn't feed.
This isn't because we were the epitome of compassionate farmers,...this is the norm.
Of course, like other farms we had pigs (Very smart), Chickens,(Not so smart,...but still quite sentient.) Horses, dogs, cats, etc. We have them because we love them. Not because they generate profit.

Everybody, when we had that farm, that is the closest to the creator I have ever been. (Including the present, after finding the Ra Material.) I believe this type of service, (Investment), is an important aid in our growth.

There is so much more I could tell you, but my post is long winded already. This isn't an attempt to convince anyone to consume dairy.
I just wish to relieve your concerns regarding at least the farming end of dairy.
There is no "big dairy" at the farming end. At least not here in upstate N.Y.
Big Dairy starts after the tank truck leaves our farm.

[Shemaya]

Hi mjlabadia,

I am so glad you shared this story. I was thinking yesterday how, between small farmers and farm animals there is such a symbiosis. The animals are cared for and they give back. And the way of life for these small farms is so grounded and close to the earth. Something our modern world needs badly!

I think the profiting comes more from the really large agri- businesses and factory farms, etc. it would be so good to see these abolished, including the huge businesses that grow plants.

[Parsons]

Wow... I'm finding the longer article I linked very interesting. Another excerpt:

The most bracing part of Mancuso’s talk on bioinspiration came when he discussed underground plant networks. Citing the research of Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist at the University of British Columbia, and her colleagues, Mancuso showed a slide depicting how trees in a forest organize themselves into far-flung networks, using the underground web of mycorrhizal fungi which connects their roots to exchange information and even goods. This “wood-wide web,” as the title of one paper put it, allows scores of trees in a forest to convey warnings of insect attacks, and also to deliver carbon, nitrogen, and water to trees in need.

When I reached Simard by phone, she described how she and her colleagues track the flow of nutrients and chemical signals through this invisible underground network. They injected fir trees with radioactive carbon isotopes, then followed the spread of the isotopes through the forest community using a variety of sensing methods, including a Geiger counter. Within a few days, stores of radioactive carbon had been routed from tree to tree. Every tree in a plot thirty metres square was connected to the network; the oldest trees functioned as hubs, some with as many as forty-seven connections. The diagram of the forest network resembled an airline route map.

The pattern of nutrient traffic showed how “mother trees” were using the network to nourish shaded seedlings, including their offspring—which the trees can apparently recognize as kin—until they’re tall enough to reach the light. And, in a striking example of interspecies coöperation, Simard found that fir trees were using the fungal web to trade nutrients with paper-bark birch trees over the course of the season. The evergreen species will tide over the deciduous one when it has sugars to spare, and then call in the debt later in the season. For the forest community, the value of this coöperative underground economy appears to be better over-all health, more total photosynthesis, and greater resilience in the face of disturbance.

[Stranger]

Before I became an engineer, I worked a dairy farm with my ex wife for 10 years. It was the closest thing to living the Law of One I have ever felt.

Service to Udders!!!!

[mjlabadia]

Before I became an engineer, I worked a dairy farm with my ex wife for 10 years. It was the closest thing to living the Law of One I have ever felt.

Service to Udders!!!!

Oh Stranger, that's a good one!!

[Diana]

Here in upstate N.Y., dairy farms are universally family owned. Usually, husband, wife, and kids. I can speak for my family, and the members of N.Y. Farm and Family, and say WE LOVED OUR COWS,....and THEY LOVED US BACK!! I have found this to be true in EVERY instance among the members of our Grange.

I used to live in upstate NY. In a town called Bouckville (I grew up in Verona).

A boyfriend of mine worked on a dairy farm. It was family-owned, but it was very large. They did not treat their cows well. It was all automated—no one "milked" the cows. The brothers that owned it were ruthless a******* (sorry but I did not like them). My boyfriend was horrified one day because he witnessed one of the owners killing a cow in a horrible way which I really don't want to describe.

I'm not trying to argue here, but I don't want the idea to go out that all is well and happy. Even in some family-owned farms, things are not well.

[Unbound]

There are both sides of the fence to all things.

[mjlabadia]

Oh Diana, that sounds horrible. I can assure you that they would have been ostracized by the F.F.A.,...the local grange,.....4H,....any of the farming groups if we had known about it,..and perhaps even reported. I'm sure their production wasn't good, and butterfat content very low.

I am not sure what automated milking is. We didn't "hand milk" normally. There is a Milk Line that runs down both sides of the barn. We basically slide down the line with our teat cups, and after a liberal application of Bag Balm (actual brand name,.... prevents the girls from chafing.)... we attached the cups. Usually in groups of 2/3/4. Depends on the mood of the group we're milking. Some of the "clique" members get jealous if they're not milked with the "cool cows"!!
You get quite the dressing down if you commit that offense. And if that doesn't teach you a lesson, and you still milk them with the neighboring group, there is always the dreaded "tail whack" to the face. They all hang out together anyway,....they return to their same stalls upon returning from outside time.

Some farms have milking parlors, where you bring the cows in from the barn and they get milked, then go back to their stalls.

Well,...yes,....there is bad in all elements of life. But Diana, they are the exception,...not the norm.
Additionally, I imagine their relationships in all areas of life reflected their relationship with their cows.

I wonder if that farm is still operating? Same family?
We were in Schoharie County, near Huntersland. Northern Catskills Mountains.

Diana, I miss that time in my life so very much. Every time I drive by a farm, the smells, (silage/manure/fresh cut Timothy),..... it feels like coming home.

[Shemaya]

A boyfriend of mine worked on a dairy farm. It was family-owned, but it was very large. They did not treat their cows well. It was all automated—no one "milked" the cows. The brothers that owned it were ruthless a******* (sorry but I did not like them). My boyfriend was horrified one day because he witnessed one of the owners killing a cow in a horrible way which I really don't want to describe.

I'm not trying to argue here, but I don't want the idea to go out that all is well and happy. Even in some family-owned farms, things are not well.

That's a good point. I think this is the difference between people who have chosen to live their lives from their green ray and those who have not chosen. All is not well in the world as anyone who is half-awake can see.

I feel that mjlabadia's story is a great example of how humans and animals can live in a symbiotic, positive interaction that is based in 4D vibration. Not exploitive, not cruel, energetic exchange in a positive sense. It would give purpose to domesticated animals to continue in these type of communities (animals and humans).

From my perspective, nature is about community, ecology is a web of interdependence.

mjlabadia's experience demonstrates a very positive, interdependent relationship/ shared ecology between animals and humans, imo.