There is some possibility of explaining the varied relationships between one animal species and another by postulating their possession of reasoning ability. The hermit crab carefully places a stinging anemone on its shell with the intention of protecting itself from enemies. The Pompihus wasp paralyses the black tarantula without actually killing it because it knows, or assumes, or is aware that its own grub will not eat dead flesh. The young swallow flies south for the purpose of finding warmth and food. But only by stretching the imagination to the utmost can we suppose that a plant chooses its companions, food and habitat by this means.
The popular conception of a plant is that it has no sensibilities at all. Those who are in touch with nature know, however, that plants are sensitive to a number of external influences. The leaves of many species follow the movement of the sun across the heavens; the daisy closes itself at the onset of dewfall;1 the rootlet of a seed almost invariably seeks downward. No modern scientist attempts to explain these things in terms of plant “mind”; to him they are all tropisms, reactions of the organism to external stimuli, reactions which have developed by means of evolution for the benefit of the plant. There are strange relationships, however, of plant with other plant, or plant with animal, which cannot be explained so plausibly.
Certain animals need to take in minute quantities of cobalt in order to ensure that healthy growth occurs. The element is not directly available to them; they have to obtain it from the green plants which absorb it from the soil. Thus there is unconscious co-operation between plant and animal, the former possessing the key which unlocks the cobalt stores of the soil for the animal whose very existence depends thereon. “Cobalt, if of any significance in plants at all, is required in such small amounts that a pasture may be growing luxuriantly and yet induce emaciation and death in grazing ruminants.”2
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Author: D. A. B. Owen
Keywords: Evolution, Evolved, Evolve, Man evolved, Evolution of the species, creationism, Theory of evolution, evolutionism, Intelligent design, Darwinism, Charles Darwin, Symmetry, symbiosis, symbiotic relationship, plants, animals, plants and animals, botany, flora, flora and fauna, fauna
Bible reference(s): Gen 1, Gen 2:1-2, Gen 2:5, Gen 2:7, Gen 2:19, Neh 9:6, Job 9:8, Job 37:16, Psa 8:3, Psa 14:1, Psa 19:1, Psa 33:6, Psa 90:2, Psa 102:25, Ecc 3:11, Isa 40:12, Isa 42:5, Isa 44:24, Isa 45:12, Isa 45:18, Isa 48:13, Jer 51:15, 1Co 15:39, Heb 1:10, Heb 11:3
Source: “Co-operation” The Testimony, Vol. 18, No. 206, February 1948, pp. 69-71.
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