Plants make ultrasonic squeals when stressed

Although it has been revealed in recent years that plants are capable of seeing, hearing and smelling, they are still usually thought of as silent. But now, for the first time, they have been recorded making airborne sounds when stressed...

Itzhak Khait and his colleagues at Tel Aviv University in Israel found that tomato and tobacco plants made sounds at frequencies humans cannot hear when stressed by a lack of water or when their stem is cut.

Microphones placed 10 centimetres from the plants picked up sounds in the ultrasonic range of 20 to 100 kilohertz, which the team says insects and some mammals would be capable of hearing and responding to from as far as 5 metres away. A moth may decide against laying eggs on a plant that sounds water-stressed, the researchers suggest. Plants could even hear that other plants are short of water and react accordingly, they speculate.

Article link
Note that these findings have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a journal, and that insect and mammals could hear plant sounds is purely speculative at present. However, is it so far-fetched to think that if plant life can see, smell, hear, and react to their environment, they might also be able to feel anguish and pain, as well as express that pain? I think not.

Here's a youtube video covering the topic...

Fast forward to about 56 seconds to bypass the intro.

Oddly enough, "Tales from the darkside" broached this topic during the 80's in an episode titled "Love hungry"...

...about a woman ordering a pair of glasses to help her lose weight.

So vegans...aren't you ashamed of the atrocities you've committed?

All living things have resonate frequencies. For example, resonant brain frequencies are detected by an electroencephalogram (EEG). It would honestly be more shocking if plants were somehow an exception and released no sort of detectable frequency.

I also wouldn't conclude that these plants are in misery when being eaten. Fruit itself desires to be eaten. When you eat, for example, a blueberry, it goes through your digestive track and you assimilate its nutrients. The seeds survive your digestion and ends up in your poop which is an ideal fertilizer to germinate a new blueberry plant.

It's a beautifully contrived system.

Yeah vegans and vegetarians. Everything wants to live and suffers when killed. You are no better than us. It's the way of the whole world. Live with it. R.I.P lettuce and friends.

a reply to: Klassified

Yeah, Ive been saying this on this site for over a decade...Chandra Bose proved plant consciousness in 1900.

Ive used it in debates with vegans, where it drives them mental wrapping their shallow idealogy around the fact that EVERYTHING is alive.

Sound track for this thread provided by The band Screaming Trees.



Cool thread S&F

originally posted by: BlueJacket
a reply to: Klassified

Yeah, Ive been saying this on this site for over a decade...Chandra Bose proved plant consciousness in 1900.

Ive used it in debates with vegans, where it drives them mental wrapping their shallow idealogy around the fact that EVERYTHING is alive.

It drives vegans mental because it's a very bad argument because ultrasonic "stress" sounds aren't the same as a human or animal pain and anxiety.

It's an arguement tat removes the complex nature of animals and humans, equating them to a tree which doesn't have the same organs and systems which are capable of suffering.

As if torturing a dog is the same as pulling the leaves off a plant. It's just a terrible argument.

This is why lawnmowers and chainsaws are supposed to be loud. It distracts the plants and covers their screams.

This doesn’t surprise me at all. All life feeds on other life, unless you are a tubeworm near a smoker vent in the deep ocean. No away around killing something else to live.

a reply to: Klassified

I thought we had known this for quite some time. I remember discussing this a couple years back with my brother who is a plant geneticist.

What I remember finding interesting is that these vocalizations can relay information regarding dangers across multiple plant species in the area. We are talking cross species communication here!

They can even be received and responded to by insect species capable of removing the threat. Think spider mite threat signal is heard by lady bugs who respond to it as a dinner bell. Some plants such as lima beans are especially adept at using multiple forms of cross species communication to call in beneficial species when threatened.

As far as the smelling you mentioned I believe the pharamones they release change due to environmental triggers such as predation or other dangers as well and have also been shown to be possibly recieved by other plant and insect species.

It is amazing how efficiently plants could be able to comunicate information cross species. Think of a dog whining we know something is wrong in general and may decide it worthy of investigation and that is great, but imagine being a lady bug or predator mite in a feild of hemp sorounded by lima beans. You could be receiving multiple forms of comunication from multiple plant species regarding the nature of very specific threats. It would be like your dog barking in the middle of the night and you knowing the difference of threat between neighbors dog is out and peeing on your lawn and an actual armed intruder by the very subtle differnces in the bark itself. It would make home security more convenient for sure.

Now imagine a farmer being able to walk his field with a small listening and sniffing device that could allow his crop to report exact diagnoses similar to what a mechanic would use for your car. Instead of reading error codes the farmer could have access to much more in depth and geographically targeted information regarding the health of his crop and targeted remedies. Such tech would be a game changer in crop yield, land and resource use efficiency and so much more.

If we can crack the code to dolphin and wale vocolizations as far as we have since the 70's, imagine what could be possible in this field no pun intended within our lifetimes. Great thread topic klassified! The implications of these phenomena if proven and studied further could change our understanding of earths entire biome and maybe even help us become better stewards of its gifts and resources.

a reply to: Hecate666

So desperate to equate all suffering as the same in order to brush aside any suffering at all as significant.

I guess that's the difference between sociopaths and people with empathy.

And again, the fact that all life is alive and active does not somehow dissolve the complex nature of various forms of suffering.

That's it... I think we need to only eat dirt now...

a reply to: Klassified

So does my Mrs.

a reply to: blueman12

As if torturing a dog is the same as pulling the leaves off a plant. It's just a terrible argument.

Honestly, I think that remains to be seen. Few thought we would find out what we know about plant life to so far. Eventually, we may find that you're right, but then again we may find out there's more to plant life than we ever imagined possible.

originally posted by: blueman12
And again, the fact that all life is alive and active does not somehow dissolve the complex nature of various forms of suffering.

I think "suffering" can be a very complex word to use correctly as we tend to wide brush "human suffering" across all life in general.

originally posted by: cooperton
All living things have resonate frequencies. For example, resonant brain frequencies are detected by an electroencephalogram (EEG). It would honestly be more shocking if plants were somehow an exception and released no sort of detectable frequency.

I also wouldn't conclude that these plants are in misery when being eaten. Fruit itself desires to be eaten. When you eat, for example, a blueberry, it goes through your digestive track and you assimilate its nutrients. The seeds survive your digestion and ends up in your poop which is an ideal fertilizer to germinate a new blueberry plant.

It's a beautifully contrived system.

Exactly.. not only do many plants desire to be eaten but this whole arguement that plants experience "misery" or "pain" in the same sense as animals or humans has no basis in anything.

a reply to: Klassified

They don't have the same systems for our understanding of suffering so they are incapable of it in that animal or human sense...

Im sure we will find out more suprising things but this desperate attempt by anti-vegans to equate plant communication as suffering is only doing harm to people understanding plants.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Exactly and it's a complex issue of how humans and animals share similair "suffering " which provides the basis for many moral arguments to why harming animals is wrong. And throwing plants into that argument has no justification or scientific basis to equate any of these sufferings as the same "stresses or sufferings " of plants.

a reply to: Stevenmonet

I thought we had known this for quite some time.

I'm sure research has been ongoing for decades, but according to the article, there is much speculation yet on what it all means.

originally posted by: blueman12
Exactly and it's a complex issue of how humans and animals share similair "suffering " which provides the basis for many moral arguments to why harming animals is wrong. And throwing plants into that argument has no justification or scientific basis to equate any of these sufferings as the same "stresses or sufferings " of plants.

I agree but harming and eating can be two different things...

If you talk to plants nicely, they seem to grow better, it is more than just CO2 we breathe out. I think that plants have consciousness and I feel they can send out signals that we may not hear but we can understand to some point. Someone who works with plants a lot tend to know what the plants need, I do not think that it is all knowledge, I think somehow they learn to interpret the signals the plants put out. A person would need to interpret what the signals mean, meaning that even though we do get their signals, we do not automatically know what the signals mean, we have to learn to interpret their silent language. Experience is golden.

a reply to: Klassified

If this interested you, you should check out the multi part videos "the secret life of plants" on YouTube. Cleve Backster claimed he did experiments by hooking plants up to lie detector machines with interesting results.

The videos should be taken with a grain of salt, as many criticize the experiments that to my knowledge are not peer reviewed.

Still an interesting watch though.