in fairy tale the sound machine, Roald Dahl is categorical when he tells children: “If you hurt a plant, it will scream”. The children’s story was published in 1949, but recently scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel can say that Dahl was right. Plants can “scream,” but in a different way: they emit popping sounds at ultrasonic frequencies well beyond the range of human hearing.
Lilach Hadany, a biologist at Israel University, said: “Even in a quiet field, there are actually sounds that we don’t hear, and those sounds carry information. There are animals that can hear these sounds, so there’s a chance that a lot of acoustic interactions are happening.” The scientist also said that because of the interaction between plants and animals, “if plants didn’t use sound, it would be far below ideal” .
As Roald Dahl predicted, plants scream more when they are stressed. But the reality is a little different than in children’s fairy tales. As scientists have shown, plants produce sounds at frequencies inaudible to humans. They analyzed tobacco, tomato, wheat, corn, grape and cactus plants to study the dynamics of healthy interactions of plants with the environment. And all the plants were caught making noise.
Hadany added, “Now that we know plants make sounds, the next question is, ‘Who might be listening?’ We are currently studying the responses of other organisms, animals and plants to these sounds, and we are also exploring our ability to identify and interpret the sounds in entirely natural environments.” The full research paper has been published in the scientific journal cell.