Microphones capture ultrasonic crackles from plants that are water-deprived or injured
Plants do not suffer in silence. Instead, when thirsty or stressed, plants make “airborne sounds,” according to a study published today in Cell.
The reason you have probably never heard a thirsty plant make noise is that the sounds are ultrasonic — about 20–100 kilohertz. That means they are so high-pitched that very few humans could hear them. Some animals, however, probably can. Bats, mice and moths could potentially live in a world filled with the sounds of plants, and previous work by the same team has found that plants respond to sounds made by animals, too.
The team produced a machine-learning model to deduce whether a plant had been cut or was water stressed from the sounds it made, with about 70% accuracy. This result suggests a possible role for the audio monitoring of plants in farming and horticulture. Chattering grasses? Previously, Hadany’s team has also studied whether plants can ‘hear’ sounds, and found that beach evening-primoses release sweeter nectar when exposed to the sound of a flying bee.
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