The behavioural cue of ‘flexible self-protection’ is a way to establish whether an animal feels pain, scientists say

Crickets that received the hot probe “overwhelmingly” directed their attention to the affected antenna – they groomed it more frequently, and tended to it over a longer period of time, he says. “They weren’t just agitated and flustered. They were directing their attention to the actual antennae that was hit with this hot probe.”

Link to the paper

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also worth saying that for animals, when someone nibbles off your arm, that's a serious injury which can strongly affect your survival chances. For plants, that's just a regular workday.

Kind of been my hardest lesson in keeping houseplants, too. Seemingly most plants need to be nibbled on (or ya know, get cut back), otherwise they will try to grow towards the sky and hurt themselves in the process.

I've killed two basil plants, because you look away for one second and they just grow half a meter tall. To support the weight, they become woody at the base. And eventually, they can't sustain the leaves at the top anymore, but when you cut them down to the woody part, they can't grow leaves on that anymore, so RIP... 🫠

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

because you look away for one second and they just grow half a meter tall.

Were they bolting? Bolting occurs when the plant is getting ready to flower, usually in response to high temperatures.

If you see your basil plant beginning to bolt, give it a trim. Otherwise it'll turn bitter. The link provided has more information about when and how to trim it to keep bolting under wraps.