this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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Terms like "sense" and "tell" are a bit misleading. It's very much a chemical/mechanical interaction that's automatic. Rather like soap bubbles "sensing" when they've reached the surface of the water.
Plants contain a protein called phototropin, which is activated by light. When it's activated, it changes the shape and alignment of the "skeleton" of the cell, making it more cube-shaped as opposed to long and skinny.
That means the light side of a plant gets shorter, while the dark side remains long. The dark side also grows slightly faster, on a count of having more cells there (you can fit more skinny cells side-by-side than wide cells), and so the plant angles and grows toward the light.
I mean, so are our sense before being processed by the brain.
What's a tree's brain in this analogy?
Nothing, but I'd argue you don't need a brain for the sensory parts doing sensing to count as senses.
I'd disagree with that argument and draw an analogy with the short reactive pathways triggered by e.g. that thing where you tap a knee with a hammer and it jerks; I don't think the reaction loop there counts as a sense, and only when you add in the CNS and perception of it does it even connect to one. But it's hardly a cut'n'dried argument and I'm sure there's a lot left to plausibly disagree on here
Tell me you don't communicate science often without saying it. Know the audience is rule 1.
But ok, 'tell' is useful anthropormophism to get an idea across. Sensing though? In what way is reacting to a stimuli not sensing? It is the word scientific papers use. What would you say instead?