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2024-11-11

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Plants Really Do 'Scream'. We've Simply Never Heard Them Until Now (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

And how did you determine what the purpose of fruit is? It certainly can't communicate its preferences or desires.

All you can observe is that the species as a whole thrives when fruit is consumed. But the same is true of farm animals. You are simply projecting the motivations you want to see, like self-sacrifice, onto one but not the other. After all, many fruits are poisonous. That suggests that fruits don't want to be eaten, but animals evolved mechanisms to safely eat some fruit.

Finally, factory farms certainly cause animals to suffer but from an evolutionary perspective thriving is not about avoiding suffering. It's about producing offspring, and in that sense farm animals thrive. And given that the OP is about the potential suffering of plants, I don't see why fruit farms are any less horrific than animal farms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I don't know of a single fruit that's poisonous to every animal. There are fruits that are poisonous to certain animals, but that serves mostly to select for particular animals. A popular example is capsaicin, which is painful for mammals to eat but doesn't affect birds. This suggests that these fruits do want to be eaten, they're just selective about which animals eat them.

And even assuming the most woo-woo levels of plant consciousness, fruit farms create nowhere near the suffering of factory farms. Factory farms are a life of constant suffering, fruit farms are just plants vibing.

Again, you're just debatelording at this point.