Do not look at the silence of the plants that we worry about when watering and to which we sometimes pour out our hearts. Plants have been discovered to make sounds when picked or watered, but this is nothing like the sounds you make, as we do.

Research shows that plants scream when we hurt them, but we’ve never heard of it. Because the frequencies they emit during intense stress are in a range that the human ear cannot hear.

The sounds that plants make, even though we can’t hear them, are one of the ways they express their stress.

Even in what we think is the quietest area, there are sounds with frequencies that the human ear cannot hear. Tel Aviv University biologist Lilac Hadany said there are animals that can hear these sounds, but they are nearly impossible for humans to hear. It must be one of the ways living things in nature interact with each other.

Organisms that interact with plants, insects and other animals, such as other living things. They often use their voice to communicate with the creatures around them. Especially under stress, plants do not remain as passive as we think. They change color and shape and emit strong odors around them.

These physiological changes made by plants can be considered as a kind of defense mechanism.

It was stated that this change of plants is for self-protection and defense. However, in addition to physiological changes, it was discovered that plants can make sounds. Lilach Hadany and her colleagues discovered that plants can detect sounds. To find out exactly that, they used tomato and tobacco plants as test subjects.

The first group of subjects consisted of watered and uncut plants. They first conducted this experiment in a stress-free environment, i.e. in a soundproof room, and then in a greenhouse environment, to gain basic knowledge. The second group of subjects consisted of cut and dehydrated plants. They also observed these plants in a soundproof room and then in a greenhouse.

Plants in a stress environment have been observed to create sound waves with a radius of more than 1 meter in frequency ranges that the human ear cannot hear. We can think of this sound as an explosion or a clicking sound. Plants emitting an average of 40 clicks per hour amplified this sound as the stress continued. Plants that were not exposed to stress did not react at all and continued their normal processes.

With the algorithm they used, Hadany and his colleagues discovered that not only tomato and tobacco plants, but also other plants (wheat, corn, grapes, cacti, etc.) make different sounds.

There are, of course, incomplete aspects of this exciting research. At the moment, the source of the sounds that plants make is not yet clear. The effects of other stress environments (extreme heat and other adverse conditions) on plants are still under investigation.