Stressed plants make audible sounds that can be heard many feet away, and the type of sound corresponds with the kind of bad day they are having. The results were published [March 30] in the journal Cell.
To be clear, the sounds made by harried plants are not the same as the anxious mumbling you might utter if you have a big deadline at work. The researchers suspect the nervous, popping noise is instead a byproduct of cavitation, when tiny bubbles burst and produce mini-shock waves inside the plant’s vascular system, not unlike what happens in your joints when you crack your knuckles.
“Cavitation is the most likely explanation, at least for most of the sounds,” said Lilach Hadany, a biologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
Dr. Hadany’s group previously showed in a 2019 paper that some flowers respond to the sound of approaching pollinators by making more nectar. Finding out whether any other organisms respond to the noises made by stressed-out plants, as well as potentially using the information such noises suggest about the plants’ conditions, is an important next step.
