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Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

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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> What mechanism do plants have to "hear" sounds?

Mechanoreceptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanoreceptors_(in_plants)

The examples there are for direct contact - feeling not hearing.

What do you think hearing is? It _is_ direct contact. Sound is pressure waves directly contacting you and it is why there is no sound in a vacuum. Ear drums are tuned to a particular frequency range. But you can feel a deep bass in your chest, and that is why deaf people often enjoy deep bass music.

Sound waves in air are generally very weak and couple poorly to solids due to impedance mismatch. That's why ears have ear drums and other clever mechanisms to detect them.

Plants don't have ear drums and you can't feel a an insect buzz in your chest.

You don't need an ear drum to hear, your hearing comes from tiny hairs connected to mechanoreceptors.

Guess what we've found in plants? Tiny hairs (trichomes) connected to mechanoreceptors.

So plants have the nearly the same physical structures that animals use for hearing, but not only that, they also have similar mechanosensitive ion channels too.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5685652/

of course I can feel an insect buzz in my chest. Cicadas are amazing in full bloom. I don't find it unpalatable that plant mechanoreceptors could pick up sounds that I cannot.

isn't sound vibration?

aren't plants well suited with all their small and moving parts to some-what percieve that from their envirorment, even if its not literal hearing?

The way I see it, it's just a matter of terminology: When we detect vibrations through the air (“sound waves”) we call it hearing, and humans have dedicated organs to accomplish the task. When vibrations are detected (i.e., felt) in solid stuff, they're just called vibrations.

Even regarding hearing it's not that clear, for example hearing a "noise" under water or bone conduction.

Plants definitely can sense pressure and motion to some extent, that's what Venus flytraps do, and how creeping vines find and follow surfaces.

Hearing pollinators does seem somewhat unlikely but still plausible.

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