If you hurt a plant, it screams

in the anecdote sound machineAnd Roald Dahl It is considered incisive when telling children, “If you hurt a plant, it screams.” The Children’s Tale was published in 1949, but scholars at Tel Aviv University in Israel have recently been able to say that Dahl was right. Plants can “scream,” but in a different way: They make popping sounds at ultrasonic frequencies far beyond the range of human hearing.

Lilac Hadani, a biologist at the Israeli University, said: “Even in a quiet place, there are sounds that we don’t hear, and these sounds carry information. There are animals that can hear these sounds, so there is a potential for a lot of vocal interaction.” The scientist also said that given the interaction between plants and animals, “it would be very ideal if plants did not use any sound.”

As Roald Dahl predicted, plants under stress cry out the most. But the reality is a little different from the reality of children’s tales. As scientists have shown, plants produce noise at frequencies that are inaudible to humans. They analyzed plants of tobacco, tomato, wheat, maize, grapes and cactus in order to investigate the dynamics of healthy interaction of plants with the environment. All plants were caught making noise.

Hadani added, “Now that we know plants make sounds, the next question is ‘Who might be listening?'” “We are currently investigating the responses of other organisms, animals and plants to these sounds, and we are also exploring our ability to identify and interpret sounds in completely natural environments.” The full research has been published in the scientific journal cell.