Question

Science fiction enjoys creating hybrid creatures and humanoid forms of various animals and plants. Explain using as much detail as you can how you would adjust the structures of a plant to accomplish the goals of movement like an human. Essentially I am asking you to make an animal-plant hybrid of some kind and explain how it would have to be physically designed in order to be capable of surviving. Be sure to include information on associated laws and structures.   Use your imagination but make sure your statements are routed in the animal systems science you have learned.

Answer 1

            If we want to move our plant like a human we have to take eukaryotic multicellular plants into consideration.

            Movement can be a sign of life. It’s not that plants don’t move. Plants move in various ways but they cannot efficiently carry and displace themselves from one place to another like humans.

            Plants do not have a central nervous system or any networks of nerves (specialized network of cells with specialized chemicals for signal transmission) that could connect all part of their body continuously. We have both hormonal and neural control while plants have chemicals and hormones those help them to respond to external stimuli.

            To connect every part of the body first we have to introduce something similar to nervous system in animals.

            To make the plants move we can rely on the structures like tendrils of a climber plant. We can modify these tendrils in such a way that it can hold on to something and drag the entire plant body. This is because plants lack muscle and bones. Muscular contraction and relaxation is very important for locomotion. However we can eliminate the need of an endoskeleton by comparing our plant with a larvae or any invertebrate that lack endoskeletons.

            If we rigidly strict to our imagination to make a plant move like a human we cannot make our plant crawl like a worm but we need limbs. For making limbs we can take the help of the roots. The main roots have to be modified to walk on the land and taking minerals and water from soil. The roots must have the capacity to withdraw themselves from the deep soil and act as limbs on ground. For maintaining the upright position like human we have to think of prop roots of banyan tree which can be modified to provide support and help to maintain the upright position.

            These are the minimum modifications required in a eukaryotic multi cellular plant to walk like a human.

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