"Plants are not static or silly. They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk." That's Monika Hilker, of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin, to Natalie Angier in today's Science Times. Like Stevie Wonder, and Michael Pollan, Angier shows how plants demonstrate a sort of will to live that she thinks might give ethical vegetarians pause. (Which is really just kind of mean. Those people are already so hung-up. And the poor Jains.) But the interesting stuff is in the evidence. The "talking" Hilker cites takes the form of volatile chemicals released into the air as "cries for help" when a plant is being eaten. Say, by a caterpillar. Angier writes: "Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within."

Dr. Hilker and her coworkers determined that when a female cabbage butterfly lays her eggs on a brussels sprout plant and attaches her treasures to the leaves with tiny dabs of glue, the vigilant vegetable detects the presence of a simple additive in the glue, benzyl cyanide. Cued by the additive, the plant swiftly alters the chemistry of its leaf surface to beckon female parasitic wasps. Spying the anchored bounty, the female wasps in turn inject their eggs inside, the gestating wasps feed on the gestating butterflies, and the plant's problem is solved.

Cool! But really, anthropomorphizing plants doesn't always serve to foster sympathy. Watching that stop-motion film of growing brambles from BBC's David Attenborough, for example, it's like, Damn, we'd better eat these things before they eat us.