DW: And before you get all up in arms, this is NOT a spoiler for HBO's The Last of Us. Boy that little girl got a mouth on her, whew! My momma would have slapped her silly.
Turns out plants can scream...we just can't hear them. A new study suggests that not only do plants give off a distress call when they’re thirsty, but they also produce an “alarm sound” after being cut. Researchers believe these sounds can even be heard by animals with sharp hearing like mice and moths up to 16 feet away. What do they sound like? Apparently, the answer is popcorn. Researchers found that tomato plants produce this frantic noise after not being watered for five days, which occurs about every two minutes. And when they were cut, the tomato plants made an alarm sound around every two and a half minutes.
And it’s not just tomatoes that are talkative. The study finds that wheat, corn, grapevines, and cactus plants also make noises when they’re thirsty or cut. So exactly which critters might find this noise useful? Experts suspect these sounds might help moths, which lay larvae on plants. This way, with a little heads up, they’ll be able to steer clear of dehydrated plants.
Source: Daily Mail