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Plants Can Hear Animals Using Their Flowers (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Atlantic: The latest experiments in this niche but increasingly vocal field come from Lilach Hadany and Yossi Yovel at Tel Aviv University. In one set, they showed that some plants can hear the sounds of animal pollinators and react by rapidly sweetening their nectar. In a second set, they found that other plants make high-pitched noises that lie beyond the scope of human hearing but can nonetheless be detected some distance away. After the team released early copies of two papers describing their work, not yet published in a scientific journal, I ran them past several independent researchers. Some of these researchers have argued that plants are surprisingly communicative; others have doubted the idea. Their views on the new studies, however, didn't fall along obvious partisan lines. Almost unanimously, they loved the paper asserting that plants can hear and were skeptical about the one reporting that plants make noise. Those opposite responses to work done by the same team underscore how controversial this line of research still is, and how hard it is to study the sensory worlds of organisms that are so different from us.
First, two team members, Marine Veits and Itzhak Khait, checked whether beach evening primroses could hear. In both lab experiments and outdoor trials, they found that the plants would react to recordings of a bee's wingbeats by increasing the concentration of sugar in their nectar by about 20 percent. They did so in response only to the wingbeats and low frequency, pollinator-like sounds, not to those of higher pitch. And they reacted very quickly, sweetening their nectar in less than three minutes. That's probably fast enough to affect a visiting bee, but even if that insect flies away too quickly, the plant is ready to better entice the next visitor. After all, the presence of one pollinator almost always means that there are more around. But if plants can hear, what are their ears? The team's answer is surprising, yet tidy: It's the flowers themselves. They used lasers to show that the primrose's petals vibrate when hit by the sounds of a bee's wingbeats. If they covered the blooms with glass jars, those vibrations never happened, and the nectar never sweetened. The flower, then, could act like the fleshy folds of our outer ears, channeling sound further into the plant. (Where? No one knows yet!)
First, two team members, Marine Veits and Itzhak Khait, checked whether beach evening primroses could hear. In both lab experiments and outdoor trials, they found that the plants would react to recordings of a bee's wingbeats by increasing the concentration of sugar in their nectar by about 20 percent. They did so in response only to the wingbeats and low frequency, pollinator-like sounds, not to those of higher pitch. And they reacted very quickly, sweetening their nectar in less than three minutes. That's probably fast enough to affect a visiting bee, but even if that insect flies away too quickly, the plant is ready to better entice the next visitor. After all, the presence of one pollinator almost always means that there are more around. But if plants can hear, what are their ears? The team's answer is surprising, yet tidy: It's the flowers themselves. They used lasers to show that the primrose's petals vibrate when hit by the sounds of a bee's wingbeats. If they covered the blooms with glass jars, those vibrations never happened, and the nectar never sweetened. The flower, then, could act like the fleshy folds of our outer ears, channeling sound further into the plant. (Where? No one knows yet!)
As I recall, Mythbusters did a test of the effect of sounds on plants. When their data surprisingly DID clearly show an effect, they reminded viewers that their experiment wasn't rigorously scientific, and the results could have been caused by some experimental error. It was pretty clear they were not expecting that result, and didn't quite believe it.
... and yet they are unable to stop the brutal massacres that follow when those herbivores mutilate and maul them alive. Shame on you, Vegans!
They have evolved chemical reactions that are linked to vibrations of a certain pattern but they aren't hearing. The difference is that hearing implies cognition which plants lack.
This may seem pendant but it's like saying your stairs feel you walking up them because they squeak when you step on them.
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Interesting if true indeed. It certainly seems a whole lot more plausible that the conclusions of this study. [PDF alert]
TL/DR: First, consider the author: Cleve Baxter of Baxter Research Foundation, Inc. Maybe he has an academic pedigree, but it's not obvious from his affiliation. Second, consider the publication: International Journal of Parapsychology.
The "money shot" in the paper is that the author claims to have observed a sudden change in the resistance of a plant's leaf as a result of him merely thinking about harming it. I have to take that conclusion with more than enough salt to cover the plant and him.
Paraphrasing something james Randi said once: it's important to keep an open mind -- open, but not gaping.
[I heard about this paper a long time ago. It seemed worth sharing in this discussion.]
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