This is not the first time plants have been discovered “hearing” or at least sensing vibrations in their environment.<\/p>\n
A paper published in 2014<\/a> found that when plants were exposed to the sound of caterpillars chewing, they produced more bitter compounds in their leaves.\u00a0<\/p>\n And plants like tomatoes and blueberries also respond to what’s known as “buzz pollination”, when bees move their wings rapidly and produce a sound and associated vibration that shakes pollen lose.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, according to the researchers, this is the first time that “hearing” has been seen in seeds and seedlings.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat this study is saying is that seeds can sense sound in ways that can help them survive,\u201d study author Nicholas Makris, a mechanical engineer at MIT, said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe energy of the rain sound is enough to accelerate a seed\u2019s growth.\u201d<\/p>\n Submitting rice seeds to “plunk” sounds<\/p>\n To test the effect of rain sounds, the researchers took seeds from the rice plant Oryza sativa, and placed them in puddles of shallow water.<\/p>\n They submitted some of the seed-filled puddles to steady streams of rain-like water droplets.<\/p>\n While water is important for many seeds to start to grow, rice seeds were picked by the researchers because they can germinate underwater. This meant that the seeds were always exposed to enough water, and the researchers could isolate whether the water droplets made a difference to germination.<\/p>\n Growing the seeds in water ensured that even those not exposed to raindrops had enough. (Unsplash: Zainal Abidin)<\/p>\n Looking at thousands of seeds, the team found that those that were at the ideal position in the puddle, and in light to moderate rain conditions, germinated 24 per cent faster compared to those with no rainfall.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the team undertook the research in rice seeds, they suggested the mechanism might also occur in a number of other plant species.\u00a0<\/p>\n So what was going on?<\/p>\n While you might imagine that being a seed in a puddle in the rain would be a quiet, meditative experience, the researchers found something quite different.<\/p>\n A rain drop hitting the surface “makes a sound like ‘plunk'”, Professor Makris told the ABC.<\/p>\n But under the surface, that “plunk” can be extremely loud.<\/p>\n The study found that the peak underwater sound pressure in a shallow puddle was “extremely high” by human hearing standards, suggesting it would be the equivalent for the rice seed of being “within a few metres of operating jet aircraft engines.”<\/p>\n Sound waves from rain drops are dramatic enough to shake the tiny statoliths in seeds. (Rice seeds<\/a>\/International Rice Research Institute<\/a>\/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n While it might be counterintuitive to think that seeds can “hear” anything at all, sound is a type of vibration.<\/p>\n Professor Makris said the vibrations could be detected by small structures in the seeds known as statoliths, which vibrate at the same frequency as the ‘plunk’. \u00a0<\/p>\n “What’s going on with the seeds and rain is very much the same as somebody speaking close to your ear,” he said.<\/p>\n “The sound source is near the eardrum. The vibrations from the sound waves in the air move the eardrum at the frequencies of the sound.”<\/p>\n Harvey Millar, a plant biologist at the University of Western Australia, said statoliths help the plant sense gravity, keep the plant orientated and ensure that roots grow into the ground.<\/p>\n “These [statoliths] are little starch balls that sit in cells,” Professor Millar, who wasn’t involved in the research, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “They have some weight … so they naturally fall to the bottom of a cell because of gravity.”<\/p>\n Can plants hear their surroundings?<\/p>\n According to Professor Millar, plants have a myriad of ways that they can respond to the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n “They have mechano-sensing capabilities, which means that they can respond to mechanical stimulation from the environment. Touch, gravity, wind, pressure \u2014 these sorts of things.”<\/p>\n This is what it sounds like when your pot plant screams for water<\/a><\/p>\n Plants make sounds outside human earshot in response to stress from being cut or lack of water\u00a0that can be heard up to five metres away. Are they talking to each other?<\/p>\n “The researchers focus on this gravity signal, but there are other ways [to experience the world].”<\/p>\n While he believed the researchers’ results were “plausible”, Professor Millar pointed out the results carried amounts of uncertainty.<\/p>\n He also suggested it was possible that something other than sound, like pressure or extra material from the raindrops, could be prompting the seeds’ response.<\/p>\n “Dropping water on a tub of water is probably slightly aerating the solution,” he noted.\u00a0<\/p>\n There could be several other mechanisms at play that prompted the seedlings to grow, but more biological research could narrow down the effect of sound. (Young Rice Plants<\/a>\/Aaron Rentfrew<\/a>\/Wikimedia<\/a>\/CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n But he believed the “interesting” research warranted further investigation, particularly by looking at the biology of the plants.<\/p>\n “They’re seeing some germination changes. The question is underlying: is this mechanisms that we know about, or is it something new? And I don’t think that’s really resolved.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plant seeds may be able to “hear” the sound of rain, and use it to time when to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,65239,302837,101406,92593,268111,160277,14160,15157,128,149039,52397,191632],"class_list":["post-625130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-botany","tag-can-seeds-sense-sound","tag-drops","tag-grow","tag-hear","tag-plant-science","tag-plants","tag-rain","tag-science","tag-seeds","tag-sound","tag-vibrations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Closeup](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/764b2f86ea1c5dc6d7e9e51efeb864bf.jpeg\")
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