Listen Up! Your Plants Are Talking To Each Other!
Although there’s many movies about animal and robot uprisings that end up in world domination, there’s only a few (though not decent) movies about plants doing the same. While it’s quite easy to picture an ape being smart enough to lead an army, when it comes to something like a marigold having the brains, well that’s a bit more of a stretch.
Though your plant has probably been there for you when you’re sad and you’ve carried on a one sided conversation or two, hopefully it hasn’t spoken back — that we knew of. Research has revealed that plants can and are communicating with each other!
Although folks might have previously sworn that their plants needed the radio while they were out of the home, they hadn’t shown any real reaction to sound. Light sure, sound nada. Professor Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol decided to find out for himself once and for all if plants were truly responsive to sound.
His findings revealed that they do in fact respond to sound, but not the ones humans make. They emit a sound of their own that can best be described as a clicking noise that can be used to communicate with one another. Here’s what Inhabitat had to say:
“Through a series of experiments, Dr Gagliano and her team found that the roots of young corn plants made regular clicking noises. They also found that when the roots were suspended in water, they ‘leaned’ towards the source of any sound that was ‘emitted in the region of 220Hz’. Interestingly, this is within the frequency range that the roots themselves emit.”
Although they probably aren’t talking about who got kicked off the Bachlorette they do have the ability to warn one another when gardeners are approaching or when they feel like clicking about the weather. Crazy right?
You can read more about these findings over at Inhabitat.
(Image: The Geffen Company)
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