The mystery of the mimic plant (2022)

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2022/11/30/23473062/plant-mimicry-boquila-trifoliolata

by ipsum2 • 3 years ago

96 38 3 years ago

On iOS here and half the screen is taken up by a cookie pop up and my only option to dismiss it is by accepting. Is that legal in the eu?

e40• 3 years ago

Don’t see that myself but using a couple of extensions in safari. 1Blocker and AdGuard.

_a_a_a_• 3 years ago

Disable JS. No popup or anything. Full article visible.

ajb2• 3 years ago

Same on Firefox on Android, but reader mode gets past the popup

The plant the article is talking about is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boquila which can apparently mimic nearby plants of different species, and can mimic several at the same time. It's not understood how yet.

One experiment showed that it could mimic fake plastic plants, which would be mind blowing as it would require something approaching vision, but the study apparently has flaws.

melagonster2• 3 years ago

the interesting part is main author of the research just did his experiments in home. he contacted a professor and hope professor do research on his plant. but the professor encouraged him finish this by himself. unfortunately, this why critics found problems in it.

n8cpdx• 3 years ago

Between 1Blocker, consent-o-matic, and Lockdown Mode, I didn’t have any issues. I checked and lockdown mode isn’t the cause of the good experience this time, so it must be one of the extensions.

nayuki• 3 years ago

xkcd mimic octopus: https://xkcd.com/928/ (2011-07-22)

smusamashah2• 3 years ago

FYI, ChatGPT-4 fails when you ask which plant mimics leaves and always give wrong answers. But if you give it name of this plant it will tell you it is known for mimicking leaves.

raldi2• 3 years ago

That’s a known issue with LLMs; you can train them hard on “The capital of England is London” and they’ll consistently give the correct answer for “What’s the capital of England?” but then fail miserably at, “What is London the capital of?”

chagen3• 3 years ago

What you're saying was true for primitive LLMs from a couple years ago, but in my experience, any of the advanced LLMs today (GPT-4, Claude, etc.) have no issue with this. I'm open to changing my mind if you can provide any examples of GPT-4 failing at this task.

perihelions• 3 years ago

It got it correct for me. How are you asking it?

https://chat.openai.com/share/e2f2589c-a96b-4284-b058-505cec...

smusamashah2• 3 years ago

I tried that when this plant was shared last time and didn't work no matter what kind of prompting I tried.

I tried again (I am using gpt4 via api) and it still failed. You perhaps got lucky or may be ChatGPT plus uses internet.

vinnymac• 3 years ago

SciShow did a video on the subject.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWWsYw9fH0

If trees are capable of communicating at the roots with nearby offspring through mycelium, while sharing resources and information, why couldn’t a vine?

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

If it can mimic plastic plants placed next to it, and do that repeatedly under more rigorous experimental conditions, then it would seem to suggest the conclusion, that this vine can somehow visually 'see'.

anotheryou• 3 years ago

last time I checked evidence for that seemed a bit inconclusive

m3kw9• 3 years ago

its cells could detect discrete levels of light to detect a shape

HarHarVeryFunny4• 3 years ago

The phenomena is very interesting, but the article is useless. This is a very simple and telling experiment - if the plant can mimic a plastic plant then it rules out all sort of potential explanations, and would have to be based on light (but let's not go overboard and say it'd require "vision" or a brain).

So, why haven't hundreds of university labs, or amateur plant lovers attempted to replicate or improve the experiment, and if they have why doesn't the article present the results?

samstave3• 3 years ago

Put plants made from Lego next to it and see if it’s mimicking the physical surrounding as it senses the environment from the way the photons are hitting it.

If the photons also carry the color of and it can sense the color of the photons, I wonder how similar this is to camelions and actopi and cuttle fish…

throwawaaarrgh2• 3 years ago

Wouldn't need to be visual. Just requires some way of determining the placement of specific compounds. In most organisms this is by generic coding; your cells don't see a human standing next to your embryo and then decide to make you look like a human. If the plants aren't connected it could be inferred through other means, electromagnetic, auditory, maybe some plant cells move through the air.

p1mrx2• 3 years ago

Those non-visual mechanisms do not apply to a plastic plant.

GuB-42• 3 years ago

Plants can obviously react to light. Photosynthesis, that's how they get their energy. Most plants seek light one way or the other.

Assuming the plastic plant really turn out to have an effect, It would be possible, I think, for a plant to somehow sense shade patterns using photosensitive chemicals diffusing through the plant at specific speeds.

NotGMan• 3 years ago

The book "The Secret Life of Plants" is a very interesting ones and sheds interesting light on many unknown features of plants.

But it requires an open mind, not something most acedemics are known for :)

block_dagger• 3 years ago

Skepticism is a valuable pillar of science. Extraordinary claims, etc.

jemmyw• 3 years ago

I looked at the photos on the article and I'm hard pressed to call that mimicry. The leaves of the vine could just have a ragged and smooth configuration.

The Wikipedia entry for this plant just seems to repeat the same source as the article. So colour me skeptical for the moment.

The mystery of the mimic plant (2022)

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