The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

by Zoë Schlanger

It took the neuroscience revolution of the 1960s for researchers to think of the “mind” as something scientists could study by watching people’s behavior, rather than by directly observing their brains. By the 1990s and 2000s, ambitious zoologists were using those techniques on dolphins, parrots, and dogs. They found that elephants could recognize themselves in the mirror, that crows make tools, and that cats exhibit the same attachment styles as human toddlers. Today, just four decades since Griffin’s plea to his field, it isn’t heresy to talk about animal cognition, to study the behaviors of individual animals, and to ascribe to them personalities. In fact, it’s approaching the mainstream. In 2012, a group of scientists gathered at the University of Cambridge to formally confer consciousness on all mammals, birds, and “many other creatures, including octopuses.” Nonhuman animals had all the physical markers of conscious states, and clearly acted with a sense of intention. “Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness,” they declared.