Dr. Samarth

Unfortunately, no.

In my garden, I don't have any speakers installed because I'm currently also renting.

So I haven't got that opportunity, but maybe in the future, surely.

But if not in my garden, but I do try to play some music to plants in my lab.

How do we know that plants can hear?

So there are a bunch of experiments that have been done by scientists previously stating that when you expose plants to different sound vibrations, whether different frequencies or for different longer versions or different amplitude, they do induce certain physiological changes.

And that's how it was perceived that they do respond in one way.

But then researchers started looking at

the molecular changes that happen when you expose the plants to sound compared to plants which haven't received any sound.

And they saw there was, particularly when you expose plants to really sort of sound waves, which are ultrasonic, they tend to perceive it as sort of a stress signal and they start to produce compounds that fight against that stress.

Right.

Those could be perceived in a different way.

For example, there's a paper published in 2014 showing that plants, when they were exposed to sounds of water, without having any flow of water, the roots actually started moving towards that sound.

Then there's another study where Applencroft showed that plants that were exposed to sounds of caterpillar chewing

So when herbivores start eating the plant, the plants start to produce more defense compounds to deter those pests and pathogens and herbivores.

Yes, yes, exactly.

So it accumulates certain compounds that does not allow the herbivores to come and chew them.

So it interferes with the herbivores, with the pests that they can't really digest or they have something wrong with their digestion or produce compounds that affects their metabolism as well.

Yes, absolutely.

So those are all physiological responses that you can see from those natural sounds.