A new and surprising study has discovered that plants, which don't have brains, somehow seem to make life and death decisions as sophisticated as humans. And it seems plants are better at determining risks despite the absence of a brain and complex nervous system, believe it or not.

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A study published recently in the scientific journal, Current Biology, reveals the pea plants used in the study displayed "behavior" consistent with "risk-sensitivity theory," which predicts a decision maker might prefer high-risk options in situations of high need, when lower risk options are unlikely to meet those needs.

The theory explains why people gamble more when they're losing money. They hope for the best in a bad situation.

In this experiment, pea plants were faced with the choice between a pot containing constant levels of nutrients and a mystery pot with unpredictable levels. In most cases, the plant picked the mystery pot when conditions were sufficiently poor.

"It raises a question, not about plants, but about animals and humans, because if plants can solve this problem simply," then maybe humans can, too, said Dr. Hagai Shemesh, a plant ecologist at Tel-Hai College in Israel who was part of the study.

"We have a very fancy brain, but maybe most of the time we're not using it."

In a set of experiments, Dr. Shemesh and Alex Kacelnik, a behavioral ecologist at Oxford University, divided the roots of pea plants into two different pots. Both pots had equal amounts of nutrients on average.

One pot, however, always had the same amount. The other pot sometimes had a lot of nutrients and sometimes a lot less.

Surprisingly, the plants turned out to be good at picking the best pot. When there were lots of nutrients overall, plants chose the consistent pot. When nutrients were low, they chose the unpredictable pot.

 "They are less than pea brains, they are no brains," said Dr. Kacelnik. "But they did it."

This makes sense for a plant trying to survive, said Dr. Kacelnik. This because in bad conditions, the only chance of success is to take a chance and hope it works out, and that's what the plants did.

It remains unclear how brainless pea plants evaluate risk but Dr. Shemesh thinks they must be following simple rules, not reasoning.

"Even if you have no cognition or fancy nervous system, you can still get some pretty complicated behavior."

Tagspea plants, Dr. Hagai Shemesh, Alex Kacelnik