Laura Belloff is a professor of art at Aalto University in Finland. Just like other artists, she likes to do "deviant" things, such as listening to plants "talk".
In the flowerpot in her room, there is a plant. She connected the plant's root system to a contact microphone to detect faint sounds in the soil. Since the frequencies of these sounds are beyond the range of human hearing, she uses a software to reduce their frequencies so that people can hear them.
When she was working at her desk, there was a clicking sound from the device next to her. The weirdest thing is that when someone came to her room, the clicking stopped. Only when the person leaves does the sound come back. It's as if the plant just wants to talk privately with Belloff.
Belloff has been researching plant sounds on and off for more than two years. She's still not sure what happened. She couldn't rule out the possibility that "the plants were talking to her". And it is this seemingly remote possibility that fascinates Belov.
Can plants communicate through sound?
We still have a lot of blind spots in our knowledge about plants and their lives. There are constantly new discoveries that show the complexity and surprising capabilities of plants. Belloff came up with the idea of listening to plants after learning about experiments by Australian scientist Monica Galliano and other researchers.
Over the past decade, Galliano has published a series of papers showing that plants are able to communicate, learn and remember through sound.
In 2012, she and her colleagues reported that they used a laser vibrometer to detect the clicking noises from the roots of plants. When they played the click to the plants with a similar frequency, they also observed that the plant roots responded by changing the direction of growth.
In the 2017 study, they also demonstrated that plants can sense vibrations of water sound through their roots, which may help them locate groundwater.
Galliano is convinced that plants can communicate through sound. For a long time, she has been calling for scientists to pay more attention to the fact that plants can transmit and receive information through sound. She also spoke with certainty, claiming to have heard the plant speak to her on multiple occasions.
New findings on the relationship between plants and sound
Believe it or not, several teams of researchers have recently discovered a link between plants and sound.
In 2019, researchers in Israel found that sugars in nectar increased when plants were in the hum of bees; moreover, sugars in nectar increased only when exposed to bee sounds or sounds of the same frequency. Plants may do this to reward bees for helping pollinate them when they gather nectar.
Other studies have uncovered multiple ways in which sound affects plants. For example, play the sound of caterpillars gnawing on leaves to plants, and when those plants encounter real caterpillars later, they will produce more chemicals to deal with the caterpillars. Scientists at the China Physical Agricultural Engineering Research Center have even designed a special device that broadcasts sounds to crops, which makers say could increase crop yields and reduce fertilizer requirements.
Sound can also help plants and other living things develop mutually beneficial relationships. In Kalimantan, the back wall of the cage of the carnivorous plant Nepenthes can attract bats to rest in the cage by reflecting the bat's ultrasonic waves, and leave excrement to nourish the plants. But a pitcher plant, which is related to the above plants, does not have a surface that reflects bat ultrasonic waves because it does not rely on bat excrement for nourishment.
Do plants have intelligence?
Although the exact mechanisms by which plants perceive or sense sound are unclear, these studies demonstrate the importance of sound for plants.
However, most scientists say that while plants respond to sound stimuli intriguingly, it would be an exaggeration to say that they can communicate through sound. Because language involves intelligence, and intelligence is largely the exclusive ability of animals. Animal brains have neurons that can transmit information, while plants do not have neurons.
But Tony Trevavers of the University of Edinburgh in the UK disagrees. He argues that, under a broader definition, plants can be considered intelligent.
He gave an example. "When we see a zebra running away from a lion, we naturally think it's an intellectual response," he said. But why can't we admit that it's also an act of intelligence when we see plants wilting a small piece of their leaf so quickly to avoid the caterpillar eggs hatching on it?
Trivavers also points out that while plants don't have neurons, they can also communicate through chemical signals or the web of relationships established by microbes in the soil. It may also be a different form of intelligence than ours.
In short, he believed that all life possesses intelligence, because without intelligence, they cannot live in the world. Survival is evidence of intelligence.
Although the words of a family, this view is thought-provoking. If plants have intelligence, the idea that they can communicate through sound is less bizarre.
But even so, how can one speak to the plant or decode the plant "word"? It's still a mystery.
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