Plants emit a "rather noisy" cry for help when under stress, scientists find

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 66%. (I'm a bot)

A new study found that when plants are stressed, they emit specific sounds that identify what's wrong.

Previous studies had shown that plants vibrate when under stress, but for years, scientists have debated whether those vibrations become sound waves.

By studying tomato and tobacco plants in an acoustic chamber inside a greenhouse, researchers at Tel Aviv University discovered that it's true - plants cry out for help through airborne ultrasonic sounds.

"We found that plants usually emit sounds when they are under stress and that each plant and each type of stress is associated with a specific identifiable sound," researchers said in a news release from the university.

"Unstressed plants emitted less than one sound per hour, on average," researcher Lilach Hadany said, "While the stressed plants - both dehydrated and injured - emitted dozens of sounds every hour."

"We assume that in nature the sounds emitted by plants are detected by creatures nearby, such as bats, rodents, various insects, and possibly also other plants - that can hear the high frequencies and derive relevant information."

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