"..emitted the scent of rotting meat.."

I fondly remember a specimen of flora, which I encountered in the rainforest exhibit of the Cape May County Park Zoo (NJ)...a free zoo that now rivals the Bronx Zoo in size and includes acres of natural habitat rather than encagements, including an extensive African Savannah recreation, but I digress...

This particular tropical flower was a carnivorous plant that had actually assumed the "aroma" and appearance of a rotting piece of meat to attract the insects it liked to eat, and what's more, the type of decomposing meat it mimicked was these insects favorite meal! I had had an ongoing debate with my best friend's wife, Lee, a PHD biogeneticist, for years about the sentience of plants. No matter what I threw at her she held fast with her "natural selection...chance mutation" argument. For instance, I'd say, "plants which grew burrs to attach their seeds to roaming animals must've known something to evolve that device for ensuring their survival." No, she would say, one day one plant mutated by chance a burr or two on its seed pod that happened to catch on a animal, and that direction was the survival of the fittest and gave rise to the burr-bearing plants of that species. "Yeah, sure...", I'd say. But, finally, after over a decade of bickering amicably back and forth about the sentience of plants, with my flinging all kinds of these suspect irregularities at her, I had my weapon and moved in for the kill. When I learned of this tropical carnivore that actually had copied it blossom and smell to the favorite *rotting piece of meat of its most sought-after insect prey I knew I had her! Sure enough, when I called her and so deliciously maliciously flung this new discovery in her face, and then asked, "so are you going to try to tell me that this was a *chance mutation that just happened in one plant one day and took hold, good ol' natural selection, c'mon!??? What are the coincidnetal and mutational chances of that?"...there was deathly silence. I closed the deal. "What? What's this I hear, Lee? No rebuttal? Does this me I'm finally hearing your concession?"

"Well," she said. "What do you expect me to say!"

And we both just laughed...so, armed with the concession of my good and steadfast friend, a biogeneticist, I challenge anyone to convince me that this particular specimen could evolve without some knowledge, some sense of what it was doing....coincidence, baloney...rotting baloney, even...