A study of tomato and tobacco plants suggests they emit ultrasonic popping sounds when dehydrated or physically damaged.
When deprived of water or snipped with scissors, plants emit a flurry of staccato"screams" that are too high-frequency for humans to hear, a study suggests. When lowered into a range that human ears can detect, these stress-induced pops sound like someone furiously tap dancing across a field of bubble wrap.
In the future, humans could harness recording devices and artificial intelligence to monitor crops for these signs of dehydration or disease, the scientists suggest. On average, healthy plants let out less than one pop per hour, but the stressed plants emitted about 11 to 35, depending on the plant species and stressor. Drought-stressed tomato plants were noisiest, with some plants emitting more than 40 pops per hour.
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