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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.
That's the same the rich do with the poor: convince them that they are, somehow richer than others, thus turning them against each other (instead of eating the -- far more nutritional! rich).
Humans are idiots (myself included, mind you).
When the last of them finally come out of their cocoons they will be Vampire Butterflies?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
A new study on an old topic. The topic of this jasmine compound to mess around with insect digestive habits - has been known since 2009 at the very least as per the website noted in the summary and has likely been known prior before its commercialization.
"Article" doesn't mention any breakthrough discovery. The team sprayed the compound on tomato plants, caterpillars acted as predicted. Just media hyper sensationalism.
REGURGITATED INFORMATION FOR YOU FOR YOUR EVERY DESIRE. Who cares if it's accurate, old, repeated or rehashed somehow. Get your info here and now!
Interesting...the movie "The Happening" had a story of plants turning against humans. Is this proof that this could happen in real life?
My understanding is that cabbages can also sense when they're under attack. They emit a chemical signal that attracts wasps, who then feast on the herbivore invaders. Pretty cool, evolutionary warfare. It's led to some extraordinary adaptations in nature's brutal eat or be eaten battle arena.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
"Plants Can Turn Caterpillars Into Cannabis To Avoid Getting Eaten!"
. . . but, being that I'm watching a story on the news where folks who got caught tossing Molotov cocktails just got released because they have sympathizers in the Hamburg government . . . everything seems a wee bit surreal today.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"Plants Can Turn Caterpillars Into Cannabis To Avoid Getting Eaten!".
Man! I got some wacked out caterpillar brownies you need to try.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You're going to say something like that with no link? Come on, man.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Without releasing chemicals the TV news channels seem to be on the verge of turning human beings into cannibals.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I thought a previous comment said "Humans are all just animals with all that entrails.
I got up too early today.
Anyway apparently maple trees aren't one of the ones who can do this... judging from the gypsy-moth-ravaged one near my friends house.
Someone had to do it.
As this shows, plants to not want to be eaten. This makes it immoral for you to choose to eat them in the same way it is immoral for you to eat an animal.
Actually, it fits in with my philosophy that all life is precious, and deciding that one form of life is acceptable to eat and one form is not acceptable is making a moral choice that is bigoted.
We're here, we're omnivorous, and unless we are on a starvation fast, we need to eat.
I can hardly wait until my next encounter with a vegan that wants to do omnivore shaming.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
While it is cool that plants have defense mechanisms against herbivores, the claim that the plants are "turning caterpillars into cannibals" is a bit of a stretch. Caterpillars are already cannibalistic in a pinch. All the plant does is make itself taste bad. If I only have meat and vegetables in my refrigerator and all the meat spoils first, then my choice to eat vegetables does not imply that meat's tendency to spoil faster turns me into a vegetarian.
Our real enemy will be the humble potato and in one fell swoop everyone with a hankering for french fries or potato chips will become a zombie.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
So, use it on spider mites?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.