Can Plants Hear?
When I was a kid, I remember reading that plants grow faster if they hear classical (Western) music. Turns out those claims “have never been substantiated by rigorous experiments,” says Richard Karban from the University of California at Davis. Ed Yong says those unscientific, yet hugely popular claims weren’t just wrong; they did damage : “They tainted the entire field of study, making scientists skeptical about the very notion of plants exchanging signals.” But now two researchers in Israel, Lilach Hadany and Yossi Yovel, have found that plants can hear the sounds of pollinators (aka bees). You may be wondering how someone could possibly know that, right? “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.” Fur...