Tomatoes and tobacco click when in danger

At Tel Aviv University, botanists have discovered an unusual ability of plants to communicate with each other in danger. For example, tomatoes and tobacco under stress emit a sharp clicking sound with a frequency of up to fifty per hour.

When the surrounding conditions were normal, the sounds were never recorded. Both species clicked only when they lacked moisture or had their leaves pruned.

The principle of generating such a sound signal in the described cultures has not yet been established. It is probably based on air bubbles that burst in the vessels of plants and cause the shoots to vibrate. But this theory has no evidence yet. The assumption that with the help of sound, flora transmits information to her fellow humans remains only a hypothesis.

However, the very existence of such a phenomenon indicates a more subtle and complex interaction between flora and the environment than previously thought.