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Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

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181–188 of 188 posts

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#181
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still just physics and chemistry all the way down though. It's not clear that plants couldn't evolve something similar through a mechanism other than a nervous system.

Okay but - and I can't believe that I actually have to say this - it is pretty clear that they _haven't_.

No it isn’t

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#182
I remember hearing this back in the late 90s and I came into my high school biology class and mentioned it. The teacher was kind enough not to call me a moron but he made clear he didn't believe it, and I didn't (and don't) remember where I had heard it back then. Glad to know I wasn't completely wrong for regurgitating that factoid then.

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#184
post #30

Informative here meaning that you can deduce something about a plant's condition from faint sounds emitted by it. It's not implying that the plants use those sounds for the purpose of transmitting information. From the article: "These results demonstrate the potential in studying plant bioacoustics, suggest that plant acoustic emissions may play an important role in ecology and evolution, and may have direct implicat…

Imagine how will it be if deaf aliens, 50 metres high, were to encounter a human being. Our expressions would mean nothing to them, nor our screams. They could break us into pieces, or munch on us, never wondering what “these little things” are doing.

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#185
post #90

I am astounded that no one has mentioned "The Sound Machine" by Roald Dahl (1949), in which a scientist invents a machine that makes ultrasonic sounds audible to humans. He discovers that plants scream when cut. You can read it at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1949/09/17/the-sound-mach...

https://youtu.be/QDiUvLl3zpg was also an episode of Tales of the Unexpected

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the signal is being sent, you can be pretty sure that due to the intrinsic efficiency-maximization that biological systems perform then most likely the mechanism for detecting and acting upon it has been evolved by other organisms, especially for something as fitness-critical as stress.

I'm not sure why you can assume that without any direct evidence.

The sun doesn't shine so that we can see it. It just shines. And now we can see.

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#188
post #75

How about this claim: pieces of string when stressed emit sounds that are picked up by nearby strings. Should be investigate this claim? What does it mean that the world of string acts this way. For those that haven't witnessed it, I will describe a very easily constructed experiment to demonstrate this phenomena that I have discovered: first stretch a string tightly and then quickly flick it with your finger, stress…

I don't know if your being obtuse but it sounds that way. Presumably the plant is emitting sound from energy it gathered via photosynthesis and triggered via its nervous system. Not simply resonating due to the energy used to cause the damage.

Plants are incredibly complex yet people roll their eyes at the idea of them doing anything besides nothing. Maybe because it undermines the idea of veganism. idk, sorry lesser beings i'm hungry.

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