Does PETA consider plants "animals", i.e., organisms that should be treated "ethically"?

If not, then what exactly is an "animal", in PETA's opinion?

Thanks for your note to PETA.

There is currently no reason to believe that plants experience pain, devoid as they are of central nervous systems, nerve endings, and brains. It's theorized that the main reason animals have the ability to experience pain is as a form of self-protection. If you touch something that hurts and could possibly injure you, the pain will teach you to leave it alone in the future. Since plants cannot locomote to escape pain and therefore do not have the need to learn to avoid certain things, the ability to feel pain would be superfluous and evolutionarily illogical.

Furthermore, being uncertain about plants' sentience doesn't justify causing pain and distress to animals like dogs, cows, rats, or chickens, who we know are capable of suffering a great deal.

Sincerely,

Hello Alison,

Thanks for your reply. I was worried that it wouldn't come.

You said:

"Since plants cannot locomote to escape pain and therefore do not have the need to learn to avoid certain things, the ability to feel pain would be superfluous and evolutionarily illogical."

Not quite true. Ever heard of the Mimosa plant? On the leaves are sensitive pressure receptors. When the receptors are stimulated - by the touch of a foreign object, or perhaps a strong wind - the leaf closes to protect itself (Note: I found some info on this neat page.)

Similarly, the blossoms of many flowering plants close in periods of low light, presumably to protect the blossom from freezing at night or adverse weather.

Wouldn't the effect of an insect munching mimosa leaves or the freezing of a blossom constitute "pain" for the plants involved? Are the defense mechanisms I mentioned really "superfluous and evolutionarily illogical?"

So now let's compare the mimosa plant to an earthworm. By most accounts, the former is a plant, while the latter is undoubtedly an animal. Flick an earthworm and electrical impulses propogate along its "nervous system", allowing it to recoil from the attacker. Flick a mimosa leaf and something very similar happens: "If you carefully touch the last couple of leaflets on a compound leaf, it folds itself up slowly, starting with the leaflets you touched and moving down the length of the leaf," to quote my source on the mimosa plant. And as far as "pain" as something that induces learning, well, neither earthworms nor mimosa plants learn - they simply react.

So what EXACTLY is pain? From the example I gave above, it would seem that mimosa pain and earthworm pain are quite similar physiologically, yet one organism is plant and the other animal.

If I interpret what you say correctly, and thus infer the PETA position, the real delimiter is "suffering" - if an animal suffers as it is being killed, then the killing is morally wrong.

Some questions:

1. What does it mean to suffer?
2. Do some animals suffer and others not? In other words, does our friend the earthworm suffer? What about the Mimosa plant? Grasshoppers? Dogs?
3. If death occurs instantaneously, i.e., before the electrical impulses signaling "pain" can be interpreted by the animal's brain as "suffering", did the animal still suffer?
4. If it is wrong for a human to kill an animal, why is it not wrong for an animal to kill another animal? Or is it?

Looking forward to your reply,

Again, the jury may be out on the issue of plant pain, but it doesn't justify causing pain to animals who we KNOW can suffer. Furthermore, we need to eat plants in order to survive, and we don't need to eat animals--in fact, we're healthier if we don't.

Tempting as it may be, I must refrain from engaging in a debate on the relative virtues and vices of vegetarianism.

Really, I'm just trying to fully comprehend the PETA philosophy. As I see it, the crux of this philosophy centers around "animal suffering". You said:

"Again, the jury may be out on the issue of plant pain, but it doesn't justify causing pain to animals who we KNOW can suffer."

To make things simpler, I'll pare down my original four questions to two.

1. What does it mean to suffer?
2. Do some animals suffer and others not? In other words, does our friend the earthworm suffer? What about the Mimosa plant? Grasshoppers? Dogs?