Plants can ‘scream’ when stressed

Perhaps we would never have thought that plants could consciously generate some kind of sound; however, research shows that they do when under stress.

Israeli researchers publish in the journal Cell that stressed tomato and tobacco plants -due to dehydration or due to the fact that its stems withered- make sounds loudness comparable to normal human conversation.

Experts note that the frequency of these noises, which looks like burst bubble wrap- too loud for our ears, but probably insects, other mammals and possibly other plants can hear it.

“Even in a quiet field, there are sounds that we do not hear and that contain information”says Lilah Hadani, an evolutionary biologist and theorist at Tel Aviv University. “There are animals that can hear these sounds.so there is potential for a lot of acoustic interaction,” he adds.

Although ultrasonic vibrations have already been registered in plants, this This is the first evidence that they are transmitted through the air., a fact that makes them more relevant to other organisms in the environment. “Plants are constantly interacting with insects and other animals, and many of these organisms use sound to communicate, so it would be highly suboptimal if plants didn’t use sound at all,” Hadani says.

That’s how they listened to plants

To listen to plants researchers used microphones to record healthy and stressed plants. tomatoes and tobacco, first in a soundproof acoustic chamber and then in a more noisy greenhouse.

They stressed plants in two ways: do not water them for several days and cut the stems. After recording the plants, the researchers trained a machine learning algorithm to distinguish between stress-free plants, thirsty plants, and cut plants.

The team found that Stressed plants make more sounds than unstressed ones.. the sound of the plant sounds like a click, and a single stressed plant makes 30 to 50 such clicks per hour at seemingly random intervals, but unstressed plants make far fewer sounds. “When tomatoes are not stressed, they are very quiet,” Hadani says.

the types of sounds produced differed depending on the cause of the stress. The machine learning algorithm was able to accurately distinguish between dehydration and cutting stress, and was also able to determine whether the sounds were coming from a tomato or tobacco plant.

The research team also registered other plant species. “We have found that many plants, such as corn, wheat, grapes, and cacti, make sounds. when they are stressed,” Hadani explains.