system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does a vine searching for and object to climb “know” not to wrap around itself?

I’ve seen a time laps video of a climbing vine and as it circles around searching for something to climb it seems to run into a chute from itself. Upon interacting with itself it simply disengages and continues its search for another object.

How does it recognize itself?
gpt
There are surface proteins which sense when  the vine is touching something. When it does it sets off a signal cascade which causes growth/elongation on the opposite side of the vine. 

There are a number of processes at work, almost all of which are poorly understood and heavily researched. They also vary between organisms that exhibit the process.

If you're interested in diving down the rabbit hole Google "circumnutation" or "helical growth in plants".