Steps Magazine has an article discussing animal-vegetable hybrids, genetic engineering, and a suggested psychological aversion to mixing the two. I’m not sure I buy into the aversion part, but its a good read. The paragraphs dealing with Cleve Backster were particularly interesting. Also, there are lots of pictures of caterpillars with mushrooms growing out of their heads.

Let’s look at a much later example, where science, rather than religion, was the milieu for another experiment in communication between taxonomic kingdoms. In 1966, Cleve Backster was working for the CIA building and testing polygraphs. On a lark, he hooked his lie detector equipment up to the leaves of an inexpensive rubber tree plant his secretary had brought in. There was little response from the plant until it occurred to Backster to try burning one of its leaves, in an attempt to get a rise out of the staid ficus. Before he so much as lit a match, the needle on his polygraph jumped dramatically, leading Backster to conclude that plants, unbeknownst to most of us, partake in “primary perception”, an intuitive awareness of the thoughts and mental states of other living things around them.

I See Men as Trees Walking – Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, and the Horrors that Lie Between