Babies Reluctant to Touch Plants, Study Claims

A latest study states that babies have a natural aversion to touch plants. The study claims that this helps the infants to protect themselves against thorns and possible toxins present in the plants.

Plants that are central to human life as a source of food and raw material have certain chemical defenses such as thorns, toxins, etc. These defenses within the plant determine the behavioral strategies of all  animals.

"When you think of humans in their historically natural environment, plants were a huge part of their lives," Wertz said

The latest study conducted by researchers at Yale University reports that infants as young as eight months display a high reluctance to touch plants when compared to other objects.

The research conducted at the Infant Cognition Center studied 47 children of ages 8-18 months. The children were placed before two real plants, two artificial plants and two different objects.

The study lead psychologist Annie Wertz and Karen Wynn noticed that the young infants took an average nearly five seconds longer to reach out and touch plants when compared to the other objects that were placed before them.

After noticing this difference, the researchers tried to determine whether the infants were just interested in touching new things and more attracted to manmade objects. So they repeated the experiment on 44 babies and used fabricated objects like seashells, spoons and lamps. They noticed that the babies were not reluctant to touch any of the objects, reports Discovery News.

The researchers suspect that this reluctance that the young infant develops is a default strategy and this can be overcome with right information given by people who can explain which particular plant is safe to eat and which plant is harmful.

As stated in the journal, the study shows that infants are sensitive to certain ancestrally recurrent dangers.

The researchers want to further determine how infants quickly learn to differentiate plants from other objects, their potential harm and also if any cultural experiences also influence the choices.

The study was published in the journal Cognition.