Scientists are studying and confirming that plants may actually have the ability to sense sounds, like flowing water in a pipe ― or even buzzing insects.
Researchers at the University of Western Australia have conducted experiments which point to the possibility that some plants may actually detect sound waves. Biologist Monica Gagliano and her colleagues worked with pea seedlings, which they inserted into pots that looked like an upside-down “Y.”
According to Scientific American: One arm of each pot was placed in either a tray of water or a coiled plastic tube through which water flowed; the other arm had only soil. The roots grew toward the arm of the pipe with the fluid, regardless of whether it was easily accessible or hidden inside the tubing.
“They just knew the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the sound of it flowing inside the pipe,” Gagliano says.
She suggests that the plants can use sound waves to identify water from a distance. This University of Western Australia video (above) shows Gagliano further explaining their research.
Gagliano’s investigations are reported in the May 2017 issue of Oecologia, an international peer-reviewed English-language journal. In the paper, titled “Tuned in: plant roots use sound to locate water,” Gagliano writes:
Because water is essential to life, organisms have a wide range of strategies to cope with water limitations, including actively searching for their preferred moisture levels to avoid dehydration.
Plants use moisture gradients to direct their roots through the soil once a water source is detected, but how they first detect the source is unknown. We found that roots were able to locate a water source by sensing the vibrations generated by water moving inside pipes, even in the absence of substrate moisture.
Our results also showed that the presence of noise affected the abilities of roots to perceive and respond correctly to the surrounding soundscape.
Source: huffingtonpost.com