Animals & nature · 2023
Do tomato and tobacco plants emit ultrasound when dried out or cut?
Yes. Researchers recorded airborne ultrasound from stressed tomato and tobacco plants in acoustic chambers and greenhouses. Computer models could distinguish dry, cut, and intact plant conditions from the sounds alone, but this does not establish that plants feel pain or deliberately communicate.
Details
Stress can change a plant’s color, smell, and shape. This experiment investigated whether plants also release sounds into the air. Researchers recorded ultrasound—sound above the range of human hearing—from tomato and tobacco plants, measuring about 65 decibels at a distance of 10 centimeters.
Machine-learning models distinguished plant sounds from general noise and identified whether plants were dry, cut, or intact using only the recordings. The abstract does not report classification accuracy, so it does not show how reliably this approach would work in broader use.
The authors suggest that some organisms might detect these sounds from several meters away and potentially gain information about a plant’s condition. That is a proposed implication, not a demonstration that animals or other plants actually listen or respond. The findings concern recorded sounds from these two plant species under the tested conditions, not proof of pain or intentional conversation.
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