“If plants didn’t move, they couldn’t be intelligent — because intelligence requires picking up information through behavior as it unfolds.”

In this interview, Paco Calvo challenges conventional, human-centric notions of intelligence by arguing that plants exhibit a genuine form of intelligence grounded in behavior rather than centralized control or brain-based cognition. He explains that plants’ survival, despite their immobility, demonstrates their capacity to effectively sense, anticipate, and respond to environmental uncertainty. Calvo critiques the widespread assumption that intelligence requires a single internal “driver” or controller, proposing instead an ecological, emergent view in which intelligence arises through ongoing interaction with the environment. Drawing parallels between human perception while driving and plant growth dynamics, he shows how both humans and plants exploit information directly available in their surroundings rather than performing internal calculations. Through this lens, plant movement—expressed through growth rather than locomotion—becomes central evidence of intelligent behavior. Ultimately, Calvo suggests that studying plant intelligence not only broadens our understanding of cognition across life forms but also forces a reconsideration of human intelligence itself, encouraging a move away from anthropocentric, neuron-centric, and locomotion-centric biases toward a more humble and inclusive view of life’s problem-solving capacities

Credits:
Production, Camera and Editing by Felipe Castelblanco