Page 20 - The Jewish Voice - April '25

Page 20, The Jewish Voice

arts & entertainment

Book Review enough to hear the lions with them the most extraordinary and surprising facts of

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen roar for their dinner plant life—then describing all of it in these pages so clearly
every afternoon when
and convincingly that even the most skeptical reader will
World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New I returned home from find it difficult to deny the miracles of nature that have
Understanding of Life on Earth elementary school, and surrounded all of us, all our lives, without our awareness
I walked the zoo from and appreciation.
By Nils A. Shapiro end to end hundreds There are so many such examples that to offer just a
Nils began his career of times. The famed few here seems unfair and almost counter-productive, but
as marketing director for New York Botanical the following “tease” will lead to my comments about the
a major book publisher. Gardens were also only author’s final chapter.
He has since edited the a short walk away. Plants obviously do not have ears. But after many
authors’ manuscripts’ for Little did I know then experiences indicating that plants can somehow “hear,”
more than 20 published that there was far more two of the scientists decided to test Arabidopsis (a weedy
books, written more than constant interaction mustard plant) by playing the sounds of several different
200 book reviews, served and communication objects, including something that would surely eat it:
as Publisher of several between the “residents” a cabbage white caterpillar. When they had the leaves
million-plus circulation of that beautiful analyzed in a lab, they found that only as a response to the
national magazines, attraction than at the sound of the caterpillar chewing did the leaves discharge
created the official yearbooks for teams in Major zoo. a chemical defense compound.
League Baseball, the National Football League, National In 2016 I reviewed for this column a book, Sex on Six • Plants also have the same ability to communicate
Basketball Association and National Hockey League, and Legs, a nonfiction report on insects and what scientists warnings to their neighboring plants about such dangers as
“retired” as president of a successful telecommunications have learned about their aspects of memory, decision- insect invasions that trees in a natural forest do, as referred
company. making and free will. It was fascinating. to above in this review.
Of the more than 200 books that I have reviewed in A year later, in Gift from the Crow: How Perception, • Boquila trifoliata is a simple-looking plant, a vine
this column in what is now its 19th year, only a half dozen Emotion and Thought Allow Birds to Think Like Us, the with bright-green oval leaves in groups of three, like a
have affected me in a life-changing way. I cannot promise author pointed out that these birds often outscore human clover or a common bean. A Peruvian ecologist, Ernesto
that it will do the same for many of this column’s readers, children in tests designed to measure intelligence. Gianoli, had discovered that this common “chameleon”
but for those who share my profound interest in the vast In that same year, primatologist and ethologist Frans de rain forest vine was capable of doing what no other plant
diversity of life with which we share this planet—and who Waal’s Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals could do: “It could, quite spontaneously, morph into the
are willing to be open-minded about what the most recent Are? won for its author a major award for demonstrating shape of almost any plant it grew beside. … A research
science is discovering—this is a book that will make you parallel behavior between humans and primates in the group in Germany felt sure this incredible mimicry implied
think … with a capital T.H.I.N.K.! aspects of empathy, morality and justice. the plant could see. How else could it accurately reproduce
It was inevitable that I would someday be captivated by Later, Sy Montgomery’s international bestseller, The the texture, the vein pattern the shape, of a neighboring
this area of interest. I grew up as a child living in New York Soul of an Octopus, made a worldwide splash by revealing leaf?”
just one city block from the wondrous Bronx Zoo, close the stunning cognitive abilities of these undersea geniuses. In this book’s final chapter—one of the most thoughtful,
But it was with the publication of The Hidden Life of well-reasoned and compelling writing I have come across
Trees by Peter Wohlleben, the head of Europe’s largest in a long time—the author addresses her readers’ likely
natural forest located in Germany, that this evolving initial skepticism directly and responds with understanding
life-changing experience reached a high point for me. To and a logic that I found irrefutable.
discover that what I had always thought of as “inanimate, I will quote here just two paragraphs from that chapter’s
unconscious” life forms were actually very much alive in 20 pages:
the sense of communication with the other trees around “At the end of the day, whether or not plants are
them—as just one example, warning them of attacking intelligent is a social question, not a scientific one. Science
insects so that those other trees could immediately protect will continue to find that plants are doing more than we’d
themselves by sending poison into their own leaves to kill imagined. But then the rest of us will have a look at the data
the specific invading species—was enough to turn me into and come to our own conclusions. How will we interpret
a believer. And that was just the beginning. The statement the new knowledge? How will we fit it into our beliefs
that “there are more life form organisms in one handful of about life on earth? That is the exciting part. Perhaps we
soil under a tree than there are people in the entire world” will see them as the animate creatures they are.
is a fact that even I, by now a convert to the new sciences, “But what happens then? Underlying all this is the
can barely comprehend. deeper question, the one that matters most: What will we
To her credit, the author of The Light Eaters—Zoe do with this new understanding? There are two directions
Schlanger, an award-winning science writer for the to go in: we do nothing at all, and carry on as before, or
Atlantic magazine, Time, Newsweek, The Nation, The New we change our relationship with plants. At what point do
York Times and other publications—presents her subject plants enter the gates of our regard? When are they allowed
on the assumption that many, if not most, of her readers in to the realm of our ethical consideration? Is it when
will approach it as skeptics, not quite prepared to accept they have language? When they have family structures?
the idea of coupling plants together with such concepts When they make allies and enemies, have preferences,
as “intelligence,” “decision-making,” “consciousness,” plan ahead? When we find they can remember? They
“seeing,” “hearing” and other capabilities. seem, indeed, to have all these characteristics. It’s now
The result is a book that is organized as the author’s our choice whether to let that reality in. To let plants in.”
report on the most current studies and experiments In recommending this book to you I have planted the
in botanical science around the world based on her seed. Whether you have the desire to grow—as a plant
own travels—meeting with leading botanic scientists, surely does—is up to you.
witnessing their work from laboratories to forests, jungles,
deep underground caves, wherever it leads, discovering Arts & Entertainment from page 22
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