“Huh? I can’t hear you. Hey, can the rest of you blabbermouths please keep it down?”

We know that plants are light-sensitive, can “feel” wind and “smell” certain chemicals that might make them react in a certain way, but now scientists are wondering if plants can hear sounds as well.

Or maybe “hearing” isn’t the right word to use, just the best we’ve got, currently. Perhaps they’re utilizing an entirely different sort of sensory perception that we’ve just not yet discovered?

From New Scientist:

A team led by Monica Gagliano at the University of Western Australia in Crawley placed the seeds of chilli peppers (Capsicum annuum) into eight Petri dishes arranged in a circle around a potted sweet fennel plant (Foeniculum vulgare).

Sweet fennel releases chemicals into the air and soil that slow other plants’ growth. In some set-ups the fennel was enclosed in a box, blocking its chemicals from reaching the seeds. Other experiments had the box, but no fennel plant inside. In each case, the entire set-up was sealed in a soundproof box to prevent outside signals from interfering.

As expected, chilli seeds exposed to the fennel germinated more slowly than when there was no fennel. The surprise came when the fennel was present but sealed away: those seeds sprouted fastest of all.

Gagliano repeated the experiment with 2400 chilli seeds in 15 boxes and consistently got the same result, suggesting the seeds were responding to a signal of some sort. She believes this signal makes the chilli seeds anticipate the arrival of chemicals that slow their growth. In preparation, they undergo a growth spurt. The box surrounding the fennel would have blocked chemical signals, and Gagliano suggests sound may be involved.

Here’s where it gets really wild:

In a separate experiment, chilli seeds growing next to a sealed-off chilli plant also consistently grew differently to seeds growing on their own, suggesting some form of signalling between the two.

Doesn’t all of this imply some level of sentience as well?

Below, Walon Green’s pioneering 1979 science documentary, The Secret Life of Plants, with a soundtrack by Stevie Wonder.