Then show me the scientific evidence of pain in mammals. What pattern of neurons must fire to show a pain response? And no, simply asking someone for a number does not count.

And for the article which I assume you didn't read: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-int...

"So what about pain? Do plants feel? Pollan says they do respond to anesthetics. "You can put a plant out with a human anesthetic. ... And not only that, plants produce their own compounds that are anesthetic to us." But scientists are reluctant to go as far as to say they are responding to pain."

And only a bit further down the page, is an example of plants learning:

"Mimosa is a plant, which looks something like a fern, that collapses its leaves temporarily when it is disturbed. So Gagliano set up a contraption that would drop the mimosa plant, without hurting it. When the plant dropped, as expected, its leaves collapsed. She kept dropping the plants every five to six seconds.

"After five or six drops, the plants would stop responding, as if they'd learned to tune out the stimulus as irrelevent," Pollan says. "This is a very important part of learning — to learn what you can safely ignore in your environment." "

Let me see:

Living? Check. Reproducing? Check. Responds to stimuli? Check. Language for expression (chemical vs voice)? Check. Doesn't respond when subject to anesthetic? Check.

I ask again: what makes plant life 'less than' animal life as you defend? I argue that they are equal.

> You are baseless if you think your pandering to plants makes torturing animals any more righteous.

It's not "pandering": They respond to pain, they communicate, and they live. Same with humans, birds, mammals, bacteria, yeasts.. And nor do I advocate torturing animals, which you seem to think I am eager to do. I eat, knowing that whatever I ate gave its life so that I may continue to live.

So, what is your minimum level of lifeform that you consider to have the rights of "animal"? What is your criteria

I read your Mimosa/fern article before. It's just chemical adaption. Plants may have mildly complex hormonal systems to respond to lots of different stimuli. But you still haven't addressed the cold pedant nature of your arguments. It's obvious that animals feel pain. You are really reaching for anything resembling even a physical response by plants, let alone pain. We should strive to treat those similar to us in conscious experience, the way we would like to be treated. Plants have no consciousness that we can relate to, if a consciousness at all. There is no brain. There is no response to physical stimuli, no eyes, no ears. Nothing that can sense the passage of time as quickly as animals. You are truly reaching, and I understand you may have autism which leads you to take this cold anachronistic view of the science of pain. But you really are lost here. Forget the plant thing. Treat animals well.