Plants may be able to distinguish between the sounds of running water and the sounds of gnawing insects
Ostensibly scientific claims that music helps plants grow have been heard for decades, although they are supported by shaky evidence at best. Still, new research suggests that some plants may be able to sense sounds such as the gurgling of water in a pipe or the buzzing of insects.
In a recent study, they assumed Monica Galliano, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Western Australia and her colleagues, pea seeds in pots that are shaped like an inverted Y shape. One leg of each pot was in a tub of water or wrapped in a plastic tube with water flowing through it, while the other leg was in dry soil. The roots grew in the direction of the foot that had liquid around it, both when it was accessible and when it was inside a pipe. "They just knew there was water there, even when the only thing they could feel was the sound of the water running inside the pipe," Galliano says. But when the seedlings were given a choice between the water pipe and moist soil, their roots preferred the soil. She hypothesized that these plants detect water from a distance using sound waves, but follow the changing humidity to reach their target when it is relatively close.
This study, described this year inOecology, is not the first to suggest that plants can detect and interpret sounds. A 2014 study showed that the rock plant, Arabidopsis, differentiates between the sounds of a chewing caterpillar and the sounds of wind - the plant produced more chemical toxins after it "heard" a recording of eating insects. "We tend to underestimate the abilities of plants because their reactions are usually less visible to the eye. But it turns out that leaves are extremely sensitive vibration sensors," says Heidi M. Apple, an environmental scientist at the University of Toledo, who led the same study.
Another clue that plants hear is a phenomenon called "buzzing pollination" (buzz pollination), and in it, it was demonstrated, the buzzing of a bee at a certain frequency stimulates the plant to release pollen.
Michael Schoener, a biologist at the University of Greifswald in Germany, who was not involved in the research, believes that plants may have organs that can pick up noise. "Sound vibrations can trigger a reaction of the plant through mechanical receptors, which can be thin and hairy structures, anything that can act like an eardrum," he says.
The study raises the question of whether noise nuisances affect plants and not just animals. According to Galliano, "the noise may be blocking channels of information transmission between plants, for example, when they need to warn each other about insects." So the next time you run a leaf blower or a pruning machine in your garden, think about the roses.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
2 תגובות
I think it would be more correct to say that the plants (perhaps, if the research is really reliable) react to vibrations in the air, after all they don't have a brain and they don't have a central nervous system, they are not really able to "hear".
For all types of claims:
What will you say now? Will you ignore the cries of the plants or will you finally understand that the plants like the animals also suffer? And when a banana is harvested and the fruit is brutally peeled, they strip it of the skin and bite into it, doesn't the banana hurt? into boiling soup.
The cry of the plants is not heard, therefore I will cry out: - Let the fruits live!
I'm going to eat,
Please respond gently
Yehuda