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Plants Can Turn Caterpillars Into Cannibals To Avoid Getting Eaten (nationalgeographic.com.au)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from National Geographic: A new study published in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal found that when some plants are under attack from hungry herbivores, they emit defenses that make themselves incredibly foul-tasting to caterpillars, which spurs the caterpillars to eat each other. "Plants can defend themselves so much that they food-stress the herbivore, and then the herbivores determine that rather than have plants on their menu, they should have caterpillars at the top of their menu," said John Orrock, the author of the study and a researcher in the Department of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Orrock and his research team sprayed tomato plants with methyl jasmonate -- a substance plants produce in response to environmental stresses -- to trigger the plants' defense mechanisms. This chemical allowed the plant to change its chemistry, which made it less appetizing to the beet armyworm caterpillars that were placed on a treated plant. This phenomenon has been documented in a variety of plants, and research has suggested that plants can sense when surrounding plants are under attack, which can spur the production of methyl jasmonate in entire communities of plants.

3 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cool trick! by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No the flood TV and Radio channels that shows how the other guy is so bad.
    For example. If a small group is against something that a lot of people like, they will twist it to make it seem like a much larger group in which this small group is a subset of.

    So all conservatives are racist. And all liberals are atheists. All the rich and powerful are republicans. All the whining protesters are Democrats.

    It creates an us vs them mantality, exaggerating the difference between people, where the difference isn't so great.

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    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  2. Re:New Study my fuzzy caterpillar a$$... by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Studies build on earlier studies. That's how science progresses. The induced cannibalism in the caterpillars is the new discovery in this case.

    If you weren't in such a hurry to dismiss the article as unworthy, you might have noticed your link doesn't mention anything about induced cannibalism.

  3. Re:Cool trick! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Conservatives who voted for Trump are either 100% behind his bigotry, or they are 100% okay with it; there is no effective difference between the two. Apathy is just as dangerous as active hatred.

    Yes, actually, if Hillary had said something so blatantly abusive, had run on a platform of racism, sexism, Islamaphobia, classism, ableism, and basically further disenfranchisement for anyone who isn't a white Christian straight cisgender male - yes, I'd feel exactly the same way about her and anyone who voted for her (and probably be looking for a bridge to jump off, if both of our candidates were so uniformly awful). Because it doesn't matter who does it, it's equally as crappy. It's not about championing a particular issue, it's about not championing the administration who literally wants to institute policies that will kill people.

    It hit me so hard because no matter how much I gave dire warnings to the people who handwaved Trump's chances away, I never truly expected him to win. I never, ever, in my heart of hearts, believed that so many people in my country believed in his racist, sexist, ableist, vile rhetoric.

    The US is much more racist and backward than we ever thought.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!