It is often grown for its curiosity value: the sensitive compound leaves quickly fold inward and droop when touched or shaken and re-open a few minutes later.

Like a number of other plant species, it undergoes changes in leaf orientation termed "sleep" or nyctinastic movement.

[10] The roots of Mimosa pudica create carbon disulfide, which prevents certain pathogenic and mycorrhizal fungi from growing within the plant's rhizosphere.

This reflex may have evolved as a defense mechanism to disincentivize predators, or alternatively to shade the plant in order to reduce water loss due to evaporation.

[14] In line with the touch-sensing function used for tasks such as for defense or nutrient maintenance, these parts have mechanoreceptors linked to mechanosensitive channels that can conduct calcium ions and indirectly relative anions upon touch stimulation, giving rise to depolarization, the initiation of an action potential (AP).

It can also be found in Asian countries such as Singapore, Bangladesh, Thailand, India, Nepal, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Japan, and Sri Lanka.

It has been introduced to many other regions and is regarded as an invasive species in Tanzania, South and Southeast Asia, and many Pacific islands.

[19] It has also been introduced to Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Seychelles, Mauritius and East Asia but is not regarded as invasive in those places.

[16] In the United States, it grows in Louisiana, Florida, Hawaii, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, Puerto Rico, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia, the territory of Guam, and the Virgin Islands.

Crops it tends to affect are corn, coconuts, tomatoes, cotton, coffee, bananas, soybeans, papaya, and sugar cane.

[24] Thirty-six native Thai plant species were tested to see which conducted the most phytoremediation of arsenic-polluted soils caused by tin mines.

[25] Other studies have found that Mimosa pudica extracts heavy metals such as copper, lead, tin, and zinc from polluted soils.

Burkholderia phymatum STM815T and Cupriavidus taiwanensis LMG19424T are beta-rhizobial strains of diazotrophs that are highly effective at fixing nitrogen when coupled with M. pudica.

Burkholderia is also shown to be a strong symbiont of Mimosa pudica in nitrogen-poor soils in regions like Cerrado and Caatinga.

Additionally, the plant is shade intolerant and frost-sensitive, meaning that it does not tolerate low levels of light or cold temperatures.

[31] Aqueous extracts of the roots of the plant have shown significant neutralizing effects in the lethality of the venom of the monocled cobra (Naja kaouthia).

This plant has also been demonstrated to be non-toxic in brine shrimp lethality tests, which suggests that M. pudica has low levels of toxicity.

Chemical analysis has shown that Mimosa pudica contains various compounds, including "alkaloids, flavonoid C-glycosides, sterols, terenoids, tannins, saponin and fatty acids".

[36] Further experimentation was done in 1965 when Holmes and Gruenberg discovered that Mimosa could distinguish between two stimuli, a water drop and a finger touch.

Their findings also demonstrated that the habituated behavior was not due to fatigue since the leaf-folding response returned when another stimulus was presented.

[36] Electrical signaling experiments were conducted on Mimosa pudica, where 1.3–1.5 volts and 2–10 μC of charge acted as the threshold to induce closing of the leaves.

[37] This topic was further explored in 2017 by neuroscientist Greg Gage who connected Mimosa pudica to Dionaea muscipula, better known as the Venus flytrap.

These experiments showed that anesthetics cause narcosis of the motor organs, which was observed by the application of volatile ether, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, formaldehyde, and other substances.

[39] In a preclinical study, methanolic extract of Mimosa pudica showed significant antidiabetic and antihyperlipidemic activities in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.

[40] In 2018, two research groups from the Universities of Palermo (Italy) and Lugano (Switzerland) demonstrated the feasibility of using such plant as a building block for creating plant-based controllable two-color displays, exploiting air jets instead of electrical or touch-based stimulation.

Moreover, they found that disrupting cytosolic Ca2+ dynamics through pharmacological manipulation or CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing made M. pudica more vulnerable to herbivorous insect attacks.

The findings suggest that these rapid movements based on propagating Ca2+ and electrical signals serve a protective role for the plant against insect herbivory.

Further experiments showed that the plants continued to not react to dropping for at least 28 days, suggesting that they have the capacity for some form of memory associated with their habituation.

[45] In this experiment, researcher Monica Gagliano wanted to study if Mimosa plants in low-light conditions would have a greater potential for learning than those grown in high light.