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Watch: Time-Lapse Photography Exposes Plant “Neurobiology”.

by . October 13th, 2015

Photography is not just for record-keeping nor expressing a photographer’s ideas. It can also be a gateway to better understanding the natural world.

Plants of course, do not have brains or “neurons” in the way we know them. However, as you will see in the video by The New Yorker, at least some plants clearly have an awareness of their surroundings. The mechanism by which they do this is still a mystery to science, and the extremely slow time scale by which plants operate obfuscate our understanding of how plants actually act.

But thanks to researchers and photographers like Michael Collin, we are now better able to get a handle on that problem.

Strange as it might seem, time lapse photography can make it easy to anthropomorphize plants. We see signs that seem to indicate struggle, disappointment, and relief.

Of course, these are plants, and what we are seeing might not be those things at all. Still, you probably won’t see them the same way ever again.

 


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What other ways do you think photography helps us understand the world around us? Comment below!

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