If you find this interesting, I strongly recommend the book _The Light Eaters_ by Zoë Schlanger [0]. She discusses this finding as well as other sense-abilities of plants. Recent science has found pretty amazing things.
If I recall correctly: flowers are often shaped like dish antennas to collect sound vibration, and plants can distinguish the frequency of wing beats of their preferred pollinator from frequencies of other insects, and will act only for their pollinators.
Flower visitors, including pollinators, produce characteristic sounds through flapping wing movements during flight. Recent research underscores the value of studying these acoustic signals to develop non-invasive, efficient tools for monitoring pollinator communities. Additionally, these sounds may provide key information to flowering plants, potentially influencing their resource allocation to attract pollinators, thus impacting their fitness. In this study, we investigated the acoustic properties of airborne sounds generated by recording different flying visitors to Antirrhinum flowers in the field. The audio recordings were annotated according to the observed flying behaviors and analyzed using nonlinear time-series analysis. We also conducted playback experiments to evaluate how plants respond to the buzzing sounds of insects. Our results reveal that distinct flying behaviors, such as hovering, landing, and takeoff, produce unique acoustic signatures. Furthermore, plants exhibit reactions to the vibroacoustic stimuli from pollinators, suggesting potentially adaptive responses. These findings provide valuable insight for developing passive acoustic monitoring tools for flying insects and may inspire further research in the field of plant–pollinator interaction.
I never really thought of plants as responding to sound like this. I always imagined them reacting to light, chemicals, or maybe touch, but the idea of them picking up vibrations from specific insects is kind of mind blowing.
It makes me wonder how many other forms of input plants might be sensing that we simply don’t recognize yet. Nature keeps surprising me the more I read about this kind of stuff.
srameshc
I never thought about it, but it is pretty surprising to learn that nature has evolved this system. I'm amazed by how this scientist was able to find a correlation and tell how things work in this instance. There is so much synch in the nature that is't hard to notice how connected everything is.
IshKebab
This sounds somewhat implausible. What mechanism do plants have to "hear" sounds? And to respond differently to the sounds of different insects? Hmm.
I would definitely wait for a peer reviewed article before paying any attention to this. People love "plants can hear things" stories.
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ramijames
I've been listening to Quirks and Quarks for more than 20 years now. What an absolutely amazing show. If you haven't, and like science podcasts, you're really missing out.
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altruios
If plants make decisions, and have preferences. Then ethically, are we not bound to consider those preferences?
Then again: nothing wants to be eaten...
Lab grown meat can't come fast enough: ethical flesh to consume.
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csours
Daft Punk is pollinating at my house! (My House!)
cjbenedikt
Link to study?
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lutusp
> Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nectar in response
This is called "anthropomorphizing," the assignment of human traits to non-human entities without evidence. Assigning human traits to non-human processes tends to distort evidence to fit a preconceived narrative.
Look at the title. The terms "hear," "produce," and "in response" all imply human motivations to a process that may instead be an unsentimental evolutionary process in which nature blindly selects an outcome based only on fitness.
This is why Charles Darwin was reluctant to publish his theory -- it implied that nature blindly created outcomes solely based on fitness, not recognizable human qualities as this article suggests. Darwin believed people would reject his theory because it was unsentimental, unromantic, sometimes cruel. And he was right -- people accepted natural selection only after evidence prevailed over sentiment.
This doesn't imply that nature isn't beautiful, it only argues that nature isn't modeled after people. And those who think nature has no sense of humor ... haven't heard about the Platypus.
If you find this interesting, I strongly recommend the book _The Light Eaters_ by Zoë Schlanger [0]. She discusses this finding as well as other sense-abilities of plants. Recent science has found pretty amazing things.
If I recall correctly: flowers are often shaped like dish antennas to collect sound vibration, and plants can distinguish the frequency of wing beats of their preferred pollinator from frequencies of other insects, and will act only for their pollinators.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Light-Eaters-Unseen-Intelligence-Unde...
What most surprised me in this interview is, not only do plants increase sugar for 'efficient' pollinators, but:
>In contrast they respond to the sound of nectar-stealing non-pollinators by cutting back on sugar.
So there is some discrimination in their hearing.
Seems like there is no paper yet. Best I could find:
https://acousticalsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Pro... (page 194):
Link should be this: https://phys.org/news/2025-05-nectar-production-response-pol...I never really thought of plants as responding to sound like this. I always imagined them reacting to light, chemicals, or maybe touch, but the idea of them picking up vibrations from specific insects is kind of mind blowing.
It makes me wonder how many other forms of input plants might be sensing that we simply don’t recognize yet. Nature keeps surprising me the more I read about this kind of stuff.
I never thought about it, but it is pretty surprising to learn that nature has evolved this system. I'm amazed by how this scientist was able to find a correlation and tell how things work in this instance. There is so much synch in the nature that is't hard to notice how connected everything is.
This sounds somewhat implausible. What mechanism do plants have to "hear" sounds? And to respond differently to the sounds of different insects? Hmm.
I would definitely wait for a peer reviewed article before paying any attention to this. People love "plants can hear things" stories.
I've been listening to Quirks and Quarks for more than 20 years now. What an absolutely amazing show. If you haven't, and like science podcasts, you're really missing out.
If plants make decisions, and have preferences. Then ethically, are we not bound to consider those preferences?
Then again: nothing wants to be eaten...
Lab grown meat can't come fast enough: ethical flesh to consume.
Daft Punk is pollinating at my house! (My House!)
Link to study?
> Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nectar in response
This is called "anthropomorphizing," the assignment of human traits to non-human entities without evidence. Assigning human traits to non-human processes tends to distort evidence to fit a preconceived narrative.
Look at the title. The terms "hear," "produce," and "in response" all imply human motivations to a process that may instead be an unsentimental evolutionary process in which nature blindly selects an outcome based only on fitness.
This is why Charles Darwin was reluctant to publish his theory -- it implied that nature blindly created outcomes solely based on fitness, not recognizable human qualities as this article suggests. Darwin believed people would reject his theory because it was unsentimental, unromantic, sometimes cruel. And he was right -- people accepted natural selection only after evidence prevailed over sentiment.
This doesn't imply that nature isn't beautiful, it only argues that nature isn't modeled after people. And those who think nature has no sense of humor ... haven't heard about the Platypus.