Willow Defebaugh

speaker

731 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 8 Sep

Willow Defebaugh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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The Nature Of with Willow Defebaugh · Are Plants Intelligent? Zoë Schlanger Has the Answer · 8 Sep 2026 podcast

Can you share a little bit about why this is such a hot topic?

And stepping outside, I would imagine, are very human centric ideas of what it means to be intelligent.

You know, I I think about in in the world of, you know, studying animals, the mirror test is still often used for how we measure or think about cognition.

And that's, you know, a dot traditionally is painted on an animal's face and you watch to see if they can identify with themselves in the mirror, right?

Mm.

And there are certain animals like dogs that don't pass that test, right?

And you think, okay, but for anyone who lives with a dog, you think how how can how can this animal not possess some kind of higher cognition?

Mm-hmm.

Well, dogs have terrible eyesight.

You know, we we are measuring their intelligence based on one of our strongest senses, right?

And so I think it's it is a very fascinating moment for science more broadly to look at where are we being wholly anthropocentric in our thinking about life forms that are so different from us.

Something that I love that you point out is that as organisms that are relatively rooted in place, plants have had to become very creative.

Can you share some examples or even just one that still blows your mind to this day?

And the example of the wasp orchids brings up an incredibly fascinating question, which is how do they know the shape of the female wasp that they are producing this appendage in the image of?

And this comes up in the chapter of the book also about the Bokila vine.

Do plants see?

I mean, how how are they able to mimic?

I mean, the bokila vine can take the shape of many different plants that are around them.

And you go into some of the different sort of potential.

Theories and explanations for how this is possible, but

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