Posthuman Religion

Plants

In plants, Ultimate Perfection lies in evolution as well, but their evolution is more easily understood as the attempt to reach imperviousness to herbivores and maximize plant matter loss in order to grow physically larger and thicker as a direct result. One of the most common and effective ways that plants do this is by developing toxic secondary compounds that affect herbivores, often through touch or digestion. According to W. A. Laycock, plants use their evolved toxic compounds to do at least one of three things to ward off predators:

1. Extreme toxicity, which either kills the animal instantly or severely inhibits the animal's ability to develop or function properly or their fertility, all three of which are directly detrimental to the animal's trajectory toward Ultimate Perfection. However, since most large herbivores tend to eat any and all plants in their grazing vicinity, there may not be any advantage to any one specific species, since if an animal eats a toxic plant in a certain place, the animal will often simply move on to another place instead of identifying the specific plant species that was inedible. This means the other plant species will experience the same diminished losses due to the absence of the herbivore.

2. Poisonous properties correlated with palatability, which simply means that the plant may taste bad to some of the herbivores that make up the species' main predators. The problem with this is that there are often more than one predators in any certain area, and a plant will often find itself unpalatable to some herbivores but acceptable in taste to others. This does often afford it some advantage over other species with regard to loss of plant matter, especially if the plant can easily differentiate itself from other plants, such as with a fruit that looks or feels different from the other fruits around it to its predators.

3. Aversive conditioning, which is a more gradual but often more effective way of thwarting herbivores. This method encompasses the concept of plant-animal coevolution, where a plants inedibility is learned and passed down, making it the least preferable in a cocktail mix of vegetables that a herbivore may be presented with in their natural habitat.

Plants 

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