No. A compass needle is mobile. For me it is memory and fear.
If that so, plants would also be so called sentient beings. We are just not advanced enough to study their memory and fear. We cannot claim plants have no memories or fear without studying them. They got simple reactions too. Would that make them sentient?
About signaling…
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Yes. That’s right. I completely agree with you. We need to do the experiments. I don’t know if they have been done with plants. They have been done with ecoli and we have also found the mechanism which is super cool.
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As buddhism never consider plants as sentient beings we have to admit that the mechanisms which happens in the most primitive sentient being are much complex than these so called memory and fear found in plants and bacteria.
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I think that the Buddha of the EBTs was an excellent teacher who gave a view of the Dhamma to the potential student that they would understand according to their personal knowledge and also embedded in the general culture and knowledges of the day. Maybe if he was giving teachings today he would embed them in the (predominantly scientific) culture and associated knowledges that we share today (as well as homing in on the personal knowledge of the individual)?
What is your definition of ‘sentient being’? Mine is ‘that in which I perceive suffering’. This view is, of course, highly subjective. But it does help with my contemplations into the great extent of suffering in the world. It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that ‘suffering’ (and hence ‘sentient being’) was a fundamental aspect of the universe.
Do you happen to know if there is a definition of ‘sentient being’ in the EBTs? 
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Some links from elsewhere.
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Yes, but it is beyond our senses to decide who could be considered as sattā.
Sir, they speak of this thing called a ‘sentient being’.
“‘satto, satto’ti, bhante, vuccati.
How is a sentient being defined?”
Kittāvatā nu kho, bhante, sattoti vuccatī”ti?“Rādha, when you cling, strongly cling, to desire, greed, relishing, and craving for form, then a being is spoken of.
“Rūpe kho, rādha, yo chando yo rāgo yā nandī yā taṇhā, tatra satto, tatra visatto, tasmā sattoti vuccati.
When you cling, strongly cling, to desire, greed, relishing, and craving for feeling …
Vedanāya …
perception …
saññāya …
choices …
saṅkhāresu …
consciousness, then a being is spoken of.
viññāṇe yo chando yo rāgo yā nandī yā taṇhā, tatra satto, tatra visatto, tasmā sattoti vuccati (SN 23.2).
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That’s great. Thank you. So if I understand correctly then (like my own definition), arahants are not considered sentient beings from an EBT point of view. Or have I misunderstood?
I love that sand castle analogy in the sutta. It reminds me of my first major loss as a child when a supposed friend stole my marbles. Oh the grief! 
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In that case I doubt the term “sentient beings” doesn’t give the proper meaning to satta. Because literally arahants are also sentient, but don’t crave them. Are arahants beings? I mean alive?
I would say yes they really do. This makes more riddles that are off the OP. 
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I think the modern definition of a plant is an organism that’s able to make it’s own food using chlorophyll. Animals have to eat something else to produce the same thing as plants. Also, plants have a different respiration chemistry, so they consume carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen and water; animals consume oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants move quite a bit, but too slowly to notice.
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Problem here is are plants sentient?
EBT says that they are not in an indirect way, not mentioning them as sattā.
When it comes to microbes, we cannot draw into any conclusions due to lack of details in EBTs. This might be due to its less usefulness to the path. At the buddhas time there was no proper understanding about microbes. They have used them without knowing that they are microbes (curd, liquor production etc.).
The buddha never wanted to explain what is not relevant to the path (ṭhapanīya). Therefore, we have to decide with our own assumptions which is a bit tricky.
I think unicellular organisms and plants are not sentient beings even though they have some features that of animals.
And I think one needs a nervous system (that level of complexity) to be a sentient being; to bare the six sense fields. They should be Sacetanika to be sentient beings.
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This week I’m studying DN1 because it talks about what is not relevant to the path and how we might get trapped in the Prime Net. Interestingly, although microbes aren’t mentioned, plants and seeds are:
DN1:1.7.2: And what are the trivial, insignificant details of mere ethics that an ordinary person speaks of?
…
DN1:1.10.1: ‘The ascetic Gotama refrains from injuring plants and seeds.’
Notably, the above is mentioned in the context of “trivial” things, so microbes would presumably be even more trivial.
DN1 then proceeds to talk about deeper topics and traps that one might get stuck in.
This is due to below reason,
It seems the society demanded from all the paribbājakas and samanas to refrain from injuring plants and seeds. The buddha always considered peoples view when he layed new rules.
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I agree. If we say being able to sense the environment and react without any consciousness, then they would qualify. If we say that they also need to have consciousness, etc, then it would seem they are not sentient. Paramecium seem to react to an amoeba attempting to engulf them, and they try to flee, but it seems to be an automatic reflex that has evolved, not consciousness. Same with the amoeba that attempts to eat other microbes. There’s no nervous system or senses.
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I don’t normally post the same link twice in a thread, but perhaps you missed it. E.coli has been shown to have something that is functionally the same as a nervous system and senses (except without actual nerves because it’s a single cell creature). Anyway I highly recommend this article.
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Right. Just watching some videos of microbe behavior, it seems clear that there’s some sort of rudimentary way of detecting these and reacting. That’s what I meant by an automatic reflex. We could imagine a consciousness, but it’s rather difficult if we assume there needs to be a nervous system involved. Buddhist myth doesn’t assume that, of course. Devas in the formless realms don’t have any senses at all, if I remember correctly.
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They don’t have rūpa, according to Tibetan scholastic exegeses, but have the remaining aggregates afaik. I don’t know what they would be basing their findings on. This is related to the notion of “plant life is merely two-aggregate life.”
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What two specifically ?
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I have to look it up as I’m merely parroting a Nyingmapa löppon. Please give me a day, and I’ll get back to you with a source, bhante, but don’t expect it to be an EBT.
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That idea of rudimentary detecting and reacting was what the scientists also thought going into the investigation of these creatures. But that’s not how it has turned out so far. What they found was memory, learning, volition, etc… Then they uncovered the nano brain organelle. They are right at the start of these experiments, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see how it progresses.
Yes. With each passing experiment, that assumption that we need a nervous system for consciousness looks increasingly shaky. And of course that fits in very well with the Buddhist idea of consciousness … With sense-organ(elle) and sense-object, sense-consciousness arises.
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