Even though they're not the most exciting things in the world, plants have fascinated us ever since the days of early humans. They may not do any tricks or greet us when we come home at night like a dog would, but that doesn't mean they're any less interesting than animals.
However, just when we thought we knew everything we could about them, a recent study found that plants may possess a secret ability that's gone unnoticed all this time. According to the study by Australian biologist Monica Gagliano, published in the journal Oecologia, plants may be able to hear sounds.
To come to this conclusion, Gagliano and her team planted pea seedlings in a pair of different Y-shaped pots with two arms. The first pot's arms led to fresh water, while the other's led to either dry soil or a sealed plastic tube containing flowing water.
Naturally, the first pot's seedlings grew toward the water. What's surprising, however, is that the second pot's seedlings grew toward the sealed water supply and not the soil.
They just knew the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the sound of it flowing inside the pipe, Gagliano told Scientific American. Gagliano believes that plants are able to use their leaves to detect sound waves, which make tiny vibrations (振动) as they're produced.
This could explain why so many people believe that singing or playing music to their plants helps them grow.
I had a plant that I used to wash the leaves once a week and sing to it, plant lover Heather Goodall told BBC News. It grew from being about 2 feet tall to 7 feet tall in just a couple of years.
So, does this mean we should start treating our plants like pets? Not necessarily, although perhaps it does mean we should give them more respect. I would like to see plants acknowledged more as the amazing, interesting, exotic living beings they are, and less as a mere source of human nutrition, Fatima Cvrckova, a scientist at Charles University in the Czech Republic, told BBC News.
