Scientists Say Plants Use Sound To Find Water And Ultimately Survive

Scientists are studying and confirming how plants may actually have the ability to sense sounds, like flowing water in a pipe ― or even buzzing insects.
What? Plants hear sounds? That’s an earful. But not to researchers at the University of Western Australia, whose experiments point to the possibility that some plants may actually detect sound waves.
Evolutionary 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.
In the following University of Western Australia video, Gagliano further explains 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 evolved a wide range of strategies to c...

Source: Science - The Huffington Post - May 19, 2017 Category: Science Source Type: news