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

by Zoë Schlanger

For example, in the 1990s, she was studying the triangle of drama between corn, caterpillars, and wasps. First a caterpillar chews a corn plant. The plant notices this, and samples the combination of saliva and regurgitant the caterpillar leaves behind on its leaves; now the plant knows the caterpillar’s species—or at least which species of wasp it needs to come parasitize it. The plant then releases a finely tuned chemical gas. Within an hour, the correct wasps arrive. The wasps, no doubt appreciative of the ideal scene before them, insert their needle-like appendages into the caterpillars’ bodies, injecting their eggs inside them. When the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae use their especially oversize mandibles to eat the caterpillars from the inside out. They then spin their Tic Tac-shaped cocoons, which they glue to the emptied husks of their caterpillar. The result is a green wormish form bristling with white silky spines, like hedgehog quills made of felt. And thus the plant attempts to save itself. De Moraes discovered this behavior in corn, tobacco, and cotton in 1998.