THERE are some who believe talking to their plants will help them grow better. While naysayers may scoff at that, some studies appear to indicate that there is some truth to the claim. However, a more interesting question is if you can actually get a response.
So is it true that plants can scream?
Verdict:
TRUE
It may sound like the title of a B-grade horror flick, but a recent study by researchers at Tel Aviv University indicates that plants are indeed capable of "screaming".
It appears that plants can emit a sound that is as loud as a human voice, with the loudest sound recorded at 65 decibels. However, the sounds are emitted at the 40kHz to 80kHz frequency range.
This is way above the threshold of human hearing, which only goes up to 20kHz. This means it is too high-pitched for humans to hear (but not necessarily for other animals).
In the study, they looked at healthy plants, plants that needed water and plants where they cut the stems.
What they found was that healthy plants would only make one noise per hour. Whereas unhealthy plants or those under stress made dozens of sounds per hour.
What this means is that if while you were walking around outside and you saw someone trimming a hedge, those plants would be "screaming" but you wouldn't be able to hear it – although your cat may.
But why do plants make these noises? Researchers remain unsure but they made a few hypotheses.
One was that some animals are able to hear it so the sounds could be to scare off potential threats or to attract beneficial animals.
Another hypothesis is that other plants near them might be able to 'hear' the sounds and somehow provide aid to the afflicted plant.
Either way, the researchers said the discovery could be a boon to horticulturalists and farmers, especially those who grow plants in greenhouses.
The researchers had trained an AI to recognise individual plants by the noises they made as well as to be able to distinguish between the sounds of a healthy plant and a plant that was under stress.
With this system, future farmers would be able to identify which plant in their garden or greenhouse was under stress and diagnose the problem using sound alone.
References:
1. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00262-3
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4152196/
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4066516/
