What if plant life could...

What if plant life could or does feel real pain? Interesting concept isn't it, although it doesn't stop us from killing many of the other life forms on the planet I wonder if our ethics for killing life is based on the organisms ability to express it's pain. If trees could scream while we cut them down, would we cut less? If animals could beg for their life would we kill less? Chances are we would, and it is interesting because while we define killing another human being as murder, some would call killing animals a sport, or something they enjoy.Something I've discussed with friends and classmates is the possibility of plants having the ability to feel pain. I remember during my early days as a biology student, comparing and contrasting animal cells and plant cells and how similar they really are. It is as if we derive from one another. What if trees could feel? It raises a series of questions, like where would we be today if we found out about this a century ago? What if we found out today? Would we stop? I recall finding a video on youtube, unfortunately I can't recall the name, if I find it I will post it. There was a short film about a young man who created machine that could listen to what trees were saying. He would approach all the trees with scars and marks, and all he could hear were short bursts of shrieks and screams. It was actually kind of frightening, and it is what spawned the idea for this blog.

Perception based on senses

I quote a segment of John Burroughs text in The Art of Seeing things.
"Of course one's powers of observation may be cultivated as well as anything else. The senses of seeing and hearing may be quickened and trained as well as the sense of touch. Blind persons come to be marvelously acute in their powers of touch. Their feet find the path and keep it. THey come to know the lay of the land through this sense, and recognize the roads and surfaces they have once traveled over."

I think most people agree that human beings rely primarily on their sense of sight, in fact we rely on it so much that it's very stressing to imagine a world without sight, and hearing seems to take second place. Burroughs explains that a blind persons sense of touch becomes much more acute and strong because it becomes their primary form of perceiving the world, and while he does not speculate on their ability to hear, you can imagine their hearing ability is probably enhanced as well. However, I believe there is a subtext going on in the paragraph above and that is that perhaps we take our other senses, like hearing, taste, smell, and touch for granted. Although we use them all the time subconsciously we don't seem to place as much importance on them, now imagine if they were just taken away, it would be a severe loss for us then. Im not condoning that you should be going around touching and smelling everything you come to encounter, but at times where you can purposefully use these senses, just be aware that you do have them and you should be using them graciously. In fact just to get a taste of this as an experiment I thought maybe one day walking around with a pair of goggles maybe painted over pitch black so I couldn't see anything, and then bringing a friend along for my own safety would help put things into perspective for me, and to understand what life is like without the sense of sight.