The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth Hardcover – May 7, 2024

This is a fantastic book. I haven’t taken notes on a book since university, and every few pages of this book resulted in me finding something else to look further into.It’s extremely well written. You can read it straight through, but it’s also great for just reading a page or two as you find the time.It brings up point after point that deserve serious thought and makes the world of botany even more fascinating.

I read a lot of science books, and find myself interested in learning more about the world. But at 64 years old, I rarely find a book that completely reshapes the way I look at and understand my world. Besides being beautifully written - Schlanger's style is engaging, fun, and simply a joy to read -- it also tells the story of her investigation of how scientists understand plants in a way that builds the readers' knowledge step by step. I also really appreciate how she weaves interesting insights of the philosophy of science and its impact on her investigation - it is primarily a book about the amazing existence of plants, but also about science and scientists. It really has changed how I view my world - not just the plants, but the nature of life and existence itself. Simply, I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a book - and given that I wasn't especially interested in plants and ordered it on a whim, that's a pleasant surprise!

The Light Eaters -- catchy title -- is about the latest discoveries in Botany suggesting that plants are far more complex and active in looking out for themselves than previously supposed.This isn't some New Age claim that plants like classical music and thrive if you talk nice to them. Zoe Schlanger is an experienced journalist, and fairly disciplined about citing authoritative sources for what she expounds, and she is mostly careful not to make unwarranted claims about the abilities of plants at communication, socialization, fighting off pests and disease, adapting to their environment and so forth. Mostly.Now and again, however, the reader finds himself down the rabbit hole, as Ms. Schlanger rhapsodizes in a flurry of ifs, maybes and perhapses about plants that talk, see, shape shift, and have emotions. There are occasions, too, when Schlanger seems to contradict herself and leave out scientific details that one suspects contradict her conviction that plants are conscious entities.Example: the remarkable shape shifting Boquila, we're told, can't be successfully grown in a botanist's lab, but, a few pages later, some guy in London sends that same botainist pictures of a Boquila growing nicely in his apartment and mimicking the appearance of one of his other houseplants. She exquisitely details a theory about Bacteria clouds causing the Boquila's ability to mimic other plants by hijacking the copied plants genetic material and altering the Boquila's DNA with it, without explaining how the Boquila has been known to mimic plants made of plastic (there is no DNA in plastic), or how mutations in DNA takes far longer to show up as a phenotype, than it takes a Boquila to mimic a plant.Ms. Schlanger may be forgiven for dwelling a little much on the philosophical ramifications of the 'plants are people too' suggestions in The Light Eaters. In these times when mankind seems to be working hard at killing off itself and all living things on the planet, her fantasy of giving plants legal rights and standing in the courts is not a bad idea, however fanciful it may be. Her prose, on these occasions is a little too purple " drawing attention to itself, and away from the story being told." The author would do well to let the facts in her book draw the reader to his own conclusions than try to enforce hers.On the whole, though, the book is a worthwhile, fascinating, informative and thought provoking read, making some important points about the plant life that is essential to the survival of us and of our planet.

Well researched and skillfully told. Glad I found this book and I bought a copy for my science oriented friend. Also sharing tidbits with my microbiology coworkers.

What a fascinating book. Very scientifically researched, it truly changes your perspective on the nature of plants and of our living world.

I am up to Chapter 3. A good read so far. Great perspective!

The author is a nature lover who thinks like a scientist and writes well. The subject is fascinating, eye opening. The beginning of the book is somewhat marred by too much attention to controversies about whether words like intelligence can be applied to plants. The bottom line is that they are sophisticated in what they can learn from the environment and how they adapt to that learning.In the following, each capability applies to at least some plants, not necessarily all plant species. Plants have memories; some time their flower display to the intervals between bee visits, and will change the next day if the interval changes. They can count, which guides the Venus Fly Trap whether a touch is by prey, more touches, or some random object blown by wind. They can distinguish kin from others which impacts how loudly they send out chemical distress signals or how aggressively they promote their root growth. A root can determine not only in which direction there is a source of water, but whether it will encounter soft clay or hard rock. Depending on the quality of light falling on them, a plant can sense if it is being reflected from rival plant leaves so that it needs to grow taller. In a lab, parasitic dodder vine seedlings appeared to detect the size, shape, and distance of neighboring plants, and used that information to decide which plants to grow toward and parasitize. Depending on the sound of chewing, a plant can summon an appropriate predator. If a plant senses a drier environment, it can modify its seeds so they have more porous surface area.Plants are experts in formulating appropriate chemicals. They can make their leaves distasteful or even deadly to predators. They use volatile chemicals for communicating with other plants, or between different plant parts; for the latter, they also use electrical signals, hormones, and other non-volatile chemicals. Some plants can make their leaves appear like those plants they are growing among, possibly using sight, but more likely because of microbial RNA shared with the other plants. Like humans, microbial RNAs play a big role. Plants also rely on fungi attached to their roots for gathering resources, communicating, and possibly sensing the environment.How do plants do all this without a brain – by distributed intelligence. Note, “when neuroscientists peer inside the (human) brain, they find a distributed network. No discernible command post exists.” Pollution, and even rising CO2 levels, can impair the plant’s use of volatile chemicals. Breeding plants in a protected environment can have the side effect of selecting for plants with less innate capability to withstand pests.