No. So he brought them some meat. Science writer Jen Frazer gave us kind of the standard story. It just kept curling. The tree will wrap its roots around that pipe. How much longer? They need light to grow. Absolutely not. [laughs]. I was like, "Oh, my God! Actually that's good advice for anyone. But once again I kind of wondered if -- since the plant doesn't have a brain or even neurons to connect the idea of light and wind or whatever, where would they put that information? It's doing like a triple double axel backflip or something into the sky. They were actually JENNIFER FRAZER: Tubes. They still did not close when she dropped them. JAD: Are you bringing the plant parade again? No, I guess that I feel kind of good to say this. They run out of energy. JENNIFER FRAZER: In the little springtail bodies there were little tubes growing inside them. And again. He's the only springtail with a trench coat and a fedora. say they're very curious, but want to see these experiments repeated. Couldn't it just be an entirely different interpretation here? So she's got her plants in the pot, and we're going to now wait to see what happens. SUZANNE SIMARD: Well, when I was a kid, my family spent every summer in the forest. ROBERT: She determined that you can pick a little computer fan and blow it on a pea plant for pretty much ever and the pea plant would be utterly indifferent to the whole thing. Today, Robert drags Jad along on a parade for the surprising feats of brainless plants. They run out of energy. ROBERT: Jennifer says that what the tubes do is they worm their way back and forth through the soil until they bump into some pebbles. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah, I know. And the idea was, she wanted to know like, once the radioactive particles were in the tree, what happens next? Add to My Podcasts. ROBERT: Well of course, there could be a whole -- any number of reasons why, you know, one tree's affected by another. Along with a home-inspection duo, a science writer, and some enterprising scientists at Princeton University, we dig into the work of evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano, who turns our. Me first. So the plants are now, you know, buckled in, minding their own business. MONICA GAGLIANO: The idea was to drop them again just to see, like, the difference between the first time you learn something and the next time. And again. Eventually over a period of time, it'll crack the pipe like a nutcracker. He was a -- what was he? This feels one of those experiments where you just abort it on humanitarian grounds, you know? It's yours." That is correct. It's like -- it's just a massive mat of intertwining exposed roots that you could walk across and never fall through. /locations/california/culver-city/5399-sepulveda-blvd-bank-atm/ JENNIFER FRAZER: And the fungus actually builds a tunnel inside the rock. What do mean, the fungi will give me my sugar back? ROBERT: All right, never mind. She's not gonna use hot water because you don't want to cook your plants, you know? They start producing chemicals that taste really bad. We pulled Jigs out and we threw him in the lake with a great deal of yelping and cursing and swearing, and Jigs was cleaned off. They somehow have a dye, and don't ask me how they know this or how they figured it out, but they have a little stain that they can put on the springtails to tell if they're alive or dead. I mean, couldn't it just be like that? 2016. That's a parade I'll show up for. I don't know. They would salivate and then eat the meat. Pics! ROBERT: And he starts digging with his rake at the base of this tree. Can Robert get Jad to join the march? Truth is, I think on this point she's got a -- she's right. Suzanne says she's not sure if the tree is running the show and saying like, you know, "Give it to the new guy." ROBERT: And her family included a dog named Jigs. So we went back to Monica. SUZANNE SIMARD: Like, nitrogen and phosphorus. This is Ashley Harding from St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. And again. It's soaks in sunshine, and it takes CO2, carbon dioxide, and it's splits it in half. It should have some. And does it change my place in the world? It's a very biased view that humans have in particular towards others. We went and looked for ourselves. These guys are actually doing it." And when you measure them, like one study we saw found up to seven miles of this little threading What is this thing? This is like metaphor is letting in the light as opposed to shutting down the blinds. MONICA GAGLIANO: So, you know, I'm in the dark. I was like, "Oh, my God! [laughs]. And she goes into that darkened room with all the pea plants. Listen to this episode from Radiolab: Viper Members on Spotify. Because if I let you go it's gonna be another 20 minutes until I get to talk. JAD: It's like every time I close my eyes, you're coming at it from a different direction. Dedicated to enhancing the lives of the citizens in the communities it serves by responding to their need to be engaged, educated, entertained & enlightened. The water is still in there. ROBERT: And she goes into that darkened room with all the pea plants. So maybe the root hairs, which are always found right at the growing tips of plant roots, maybe plant roots are like little ears. And to me, here are three more reasons that you can say, "No, really! Fan, light, lean. Now, it turns out that they're networked, and together they're capable of doing things, of behaviors, forestrial behaviors, that are deeply new. The thing I don't get is in animals, the hairs in our ear are sending the signals to a brain and that is what chooses what to do. So the deer's like, "Oh, well. I mean again, it's a tree. All right, that's it, I think. She's not gonna use hot water because you don't want to cook your plants, you know? No, I -- we kept switching rooms because we weren't sure whether you want it to be in the high light or weak light or some light or no light. The glass is not broken. So she takes the plants, she puts them into the parachute drop, she drops them. What the team found is the food ends up very often with trees that are new in the forest and better at surviving global warming. JENNIFER FRAZER: With when they actually saw and smelled and ate meat. So just give me some birds. So they might remember even for a much longer time than 28 days. JAD: Are you bringing the plant parade again? We're sitting on the exposed root system, which is like -- it is like a mat. Peering down at the plants under the red glow of her headlamp. You got the plant to associate the fan with food. Five, four, three, two, one, drop! They definitely don't have a brain. Now, you might think that the plant sends out roots in every direction. Like, how can a plant -- how does a plant do that? Or maybe slower? Now, can you -- can you imagine what we did wrong? Fan, light, lean. That apparently -- jury's still out. On our knees with our noses in the ground, and we can't see anything. Seasonally. Again, if you imagine that the pot, my experimental pot. [laughs] When I write a blog post, my posts that get the least traffic guaranteed are the plant posts. And I'm wondering whether Monica is gonna run into, as she tries to make plants more animal-like, whether she's just going to run into this malice from the scientific -- I'm just wondering, do you share any of that? ROBERT: She determined that you can pick a little computer fan and blow it on a pea plant for pretty much ever and the pea plant would be utterly indifferent to the whole thing. JAD: Is it just pulling it from the soil? ROBERT: But the drop was just shocking and sudden enough for the little plant to ROBERT: Then Monica hoists the plant back up again and drops it again. Thud. Does it threaten my sense of myself or my place as a human that a plant can do this? The water is still in there. Nothing happened at all. She's not gonna use hot water because you don't want to cook your plants, you know? Fan first, light after. MONICA GAGLIANO: Picasso, enough of that now. And his idea was to see if he could condition these dogs to associate that food would be coming from the sound of a bell. One time, the plant literally flew out of the pot and upended with roots exposed. One of the spookiest examples of this Suzanne mentioned, is an experiment that she and her team did where they discovered that if a forest is warming up, which is happening all over the world, temperatures are rising, you have trees in this forest that are hurting. And it was almost like, let's see how much I have to stretch it here before you forget. LINCOLN TAIZ: It's a very interesting experiment, and I really want to see whether it's correct or not. So otherwise they can't photosynthesize. Science writer Jen Frazer gave us the kind of the standard story. Isn't -- doesn't -- don't professors begin to start falling out of chairs when that word gets used regarding plants? ROBERT: And then she waited a few more days and came back. This way there is often more questions than answers, but that's part of the fun as well. They remembered what had happened three days before, that dropping didn't hurt, that they didn't have to fold up. Me first. Can you make your own food? And the fungus actually builds a tunnel inside the rock. JAD: What exchange would that be, Robert? ROBERT: And the idea was, she wanted to know like, once the radioactive particles were in the tree, what happens next? Take it. And I do that in my brain. And lignin is full of nitrogen, but also compounds like nitrogen is important in DNA, right? Along with a home-inspection duo, a science writer, and some enterprising scientists at Princeton University, wedig into the work of evolutionaryecologist Monica Gagliano, who turns ourbrain-centered worldview on its head through a series of clever experiments that show plants doing things we never would've imagined. So what do we have in our ears that we use to hear sound? They designed from scratch a towering parachute drop in blue translucent Lego pieces. But maybe it makes her sort of more open-minded than -- than someone who's just looking at a notebook. They have to -- have to edit in this together. ROBERT: But once again I kind of wondered if -- since the plant doesn't have a brain or even neurons to connect the idea of light and wind or whatever, where would they put that information? He uses it to train his border www.npr.org Before you begin to think that this is weird science, stop. Yeah, absolutely. Like, from the trees perspective, how much of their sugar are they giving to the fungus? Each one an ounce, an ounce, an ounce, an ounce, an ounce. ROBERT: Had indeed turned and moved toward the fan, stretching up their little leaves as if they were sure that at any moment now light would arrive. The tree has a lot of sugar. Also thanks to Christy Melville and to Emerald O'Brien and to Andres O'Hara and to Summer Rayne. Once you understand that the trees are all connected to each other, they're all signaling each other, sending food and resources to each other, it has the feel, the flavor, of something very similar. It was magic for me. A little while back, I had a rather boisterous conversation with these two guys. ROBERT: And some of them, this is Lincoln Taiz LINCOLN TAIZ: I'm a professor emeritus of plant biology at UC Santa Cruz. I don't know where you were that day. Can the tree feel you ripping the roots out like that? Or even learn? And if you don't have one, by default you can't do much in general. So if all a tree could do was split air to get carbon, you'd have a tree the size of a tulip. I wanted to talk to them because, as building inspectors they -- there's something they see over and over and over. Are you bringing the plant parade again? And on this particular day, she's with the whole family. ROBERT: There's -- they have found salmon in tree rings. ROBERT: But she's got a little red headlamp on. JAD: This -- this actually happened to me. So I don't have a problem. And these acids come out and they start to dissolve the rocks. Where we've all been, you know, doing our daily business. MONICA GAGLIANO: My reaction was, "Oh ****!" SUZANNE SIMARD: And so I designed this experiment to figure that out. Pics! So I think what she would argue is that we kind of proved her point. [laughs]. No, I actually, like even this morning it's already like poof! MONICA GAGLIANO: Like a defensive mechanism. ROBERT: All right, that's it, I think. That was my reaction. They still remembered. And what we found was that the trees that were the biggest and the oldest were the most highly connected. LARRY UBELL: It's kind of like a cold glass sitting on your desk, and there's always a puddle at the bottom. One of the roots just happens to bump into a water pipe and says -- sends a signal to all the others, "Come over here. ROBERT: Truth is, I think on this point she's got a -- she's right. So what does the tree do? Pics! Where would the -- a little plant even store a memory? ROBERT: And then those little tubes will wrap themselves into place. ROBERT: And we saw this in the Bronx. Nothing delicious at all.". Maybe just a tenth the width of your eyelash. Pics! All in all, turns out one tree was connected to 47 other trees all around it. ROBERT: So maybe could you just describe it just briefly just what you did? Her use of metaphor. And then what happens? On the fifth day, they take a look and discover most of the roots, a majority of the roots were heading toward the sound of water. Then she takes the little light and the little fan and moves them to the other side of the plant. LINCOLN TAIZ: Yes. No, it's far more exciting than that. JAD: Couldn't it just be an entirely different interpretation here? She took that notion out of the garden into her laboratory. So she decided to conduct her experiment. Walker Wolff. They learned something. No, Summer is a real person and her last name happens to be spelled R-A-Y-N-E. Which has, you know, for dogs has nothing to do with meat. So maybe the root hairs, which are always found right at the growing tips of plant roots, maybe plant roots are like little ears. There's not a leak in the glass. What was your reaction when you saw this happen? ROBERT: So you're like a metaphor cop with a melty heart. Me first. ROBERT: His name is Roy Halling. It's gone. And it's that little, little bit of moisture that the plant will somehow sense. So we figured look, if it's this easy and this matter of fact, we should be able to do this ourselves and see it for ourselves. MONICA GAGLIANO: Like for example, my plants were all in environment-controlled rooms, which is not a minor detail. ], [JENNIFER FRAZER: Our fact-checkers are Eva Dasher and Michelle Harris. So it wasn't touching the dirt at all. And so now we're down there. Whatever. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. ROBERT: So that's what the tree gives the fungus. And so we're up there in this -- in this old forest with this guy. These sensitive hairs he argues, would probably be able to feel that tiny difference. I think there is something like a nervous system in the forest, because it's the same sort of large network of nodes sending signals to one another. SUZANNE SIMARD: I know. Like, from the trees perspective, how much of their sugar are they giving to the fungus? They just don't like to hear words like "mind" or "hear" or "see" or "taste" for a plant, because it's too animal and too human. It was like -- it was like a huge network. Well, so what's the end of the story? So they didn't. And the classic case of this is if you go back a few centuries ago, someone noticed that plants have sex. And Roy by the way, comes out with this strange -- it's like a rake. But we are in the home inspection business. ROBERT: So what they're saying is even if she's totally sealed the pipe so there's no leak at all, the difference in temperature will create some condensation on the outside. I mean, I see the dirt. These guys are actually doing it." It's time -- time for us to go and lie down on the soft forest floor. This is the plant and pipe mystery. No. MONICA GAGLIANO: So after the first few, the plants already realized that that was not necessary. ROBERT: Like, would they figure it out faster this time? ROBERT: So after much trial and error with click and hums and buzzes MONICA GAGLIANO: All sorts of randomness. And she goes on to argue that had we been a little bit more steady and a little bit more consistent, the plants would have learned and would have remembered the lesson. So just give me some birds. They definitely don't have a brain. My reaction was, "Oh ****!" ROBERT: And it's in that little space between them that they make the exchange. And then Monica would Just about, you know, seven or eight inches. So I don't have an issue with that. And it's that little, little bit of moisture that the plant will somehow sense. I mean, I see the dirt. And then I would cover them in plastic bags. Can you -- will you soften your roots so that I can invade your root system?" MONICA GAGLIANO: A plant that is quite far away from the actual pipe. It was a simple little experiment. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of Science and Technology in the modern world. Had indeed turned and moved toward the fan, stretching up their little leaves as if they were sure that at any moment now light would arrive. And the -- I'm gonna mix metaphors here, the webs it weaves. And then they do stuff. Are going to make me rethink my stance on plants. It's a very interesting experiment, and I really want to see whether it's correct or not. Two very different options for our plant. The water is still in there. JAD: And the plant still went to the place where the pipe was not even in the dirt? ROBERT: Oh, well that's a miracle. So it's predicting something to arrive. The water is still in there. The bell, the meat and the salivation. But what I do know is that the fact that the plant doesn't have a brain doesn't -- doesn't a priori say that the plants can't do something. MONICA GAGLIANO: Exactly, which is pretty amazing. JAD: The part where the water pipe was, the pipe was on the outside of the pot? [ROY HALLING: This is Roy Halling, researcher specializing in fungi at the New York Botanical Garden. Well, I have one thing just out of curiosity ROBERT: As we were winding up with our home inspectors, Alvin and Larry Ubell, we thought maybe we should run this metaphor idea by them. My name is Monica Gagliano. Yours is back of your house, but let's make it in the front. If a nosy deer happens to bump into it, the mimosa plant Curls all its leaves up against its stem. ROBERT: Is your dog objecting to my analysis? And then when times are hard, that fungi will give me my sugar back and I can start growing again. Liquid rocks. Here's the water.". . ROBERT: I wanted to talk to them because, as building inspectors they -- there's something they see over and over and over. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah. How much longer? And we can move it up, and we can drop it. SUZANNE SIMARD: You know, I don't completely understand. Can you -- will you soften your roots so that I can invade your root system?" So they just went right for the MP3 fake water, not even the actual water? Well, okay. JENNIFER FRAZER: That something bad is happening. JAD: Wait a second. Tagged #science #technology #philosophy #education #radiolab. ROBERT: [laughs] You mean, like the World Wide Web? And look, and beyond that there are forests, there are trees that the scientists have found where up to 75 percent of the nitrogen in the tree turns out to be fish food. Plants are really underrated. No, I don't because she may come up against it, people who think that intelligence is unique to humans. Favorite 46 Add to Repost 7. This -- this actually happened to me. JENNIFER FRAZER: So what do we have in our ears that we use to hear sound? ROBERT: Now, you might think that the plant sends out roots in every direction. But after five days, she found that 80% of the time, the plants went -- or maybe chose -- to head toward the dry pipe that has water in it. ROBERT: And when you measure them, like one study we saw found up to seven miles of this little threading JAD: What is this thing? SUZANNE SIMARD: This is getting so interesting, but I have ROBERT: Unfortunately, right at that point Suzanne basically ran off to another meeting. best compliment for interior designer, kitchenaid color of the year 2023, I mean, could n't it just be like that 's just a mat! Little red headlamp on let you go back a few centuries ago, someone that. Blog post, my experimental pot melty heart spelled R-A-Y-N-E this -- in this -- this. Get the least traffic guaranteed are the plant will somehow sense use hear... Well, when I write a blog post, my family spent every Summer in the world Web... That radiolab smarty plants plant that is quite far away from the trees perspective, how much their! 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