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Asked by Maximus Decimus Meridius Commander of ..... to Cristiane, Nicki, Nikolai, Richard, Samuel on 10 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by Belgium is a conspiracy!!!.
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Samuel Ellis answered on 10 Mar 2015:
This is more of a question for Nikolai and Cristiane who work with plants directly. Plants are more interesting than they may seem though, and a lot more complex. For example, they have their own version of an immune system for fighting off pathogens. They also have quite complicated genetics sometimes, with wheat having around 5 times more DNA than a human!
And of course sometimes they just look cool, like Venus fly traps 🙂
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Cristiane Calixto answered on 10 Mar 2015:
Thanks, Sam. I agree with you, plants are amazing!! Think of all the food we eat: chocolate, bread, chips — it’s all plants.
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Nikolai Adamski answered on 10 Mar 2015:
I thought exactly the same way, even when I started studying biology at University. Animals were always so much cooler: They jump around, eat other animals or plants and are more “real” in a way. But when I started reading about plants I got very fascinated. Animals can move about when they don’t like a place (e.g. there is a predator there). Plants cannot move, but still want to survive even when there are predators. So they have to come up with ingenious solutions to these problems.
Also, some plants and animals have co-evolved, i.e. they help each other to survive in the wild. Even some Venus fly traps work together with certain ants!
My advice is: Give a new topic (any topic) a fair chance. If it still doesn’t interest you, don’t pursue it. I wouldn’t work on plants if I wouldn’t find them interesting! That is the best part of the job: I do what I find interesting 🙂
Hope that answers your question
cheers
nikolai
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