New Study Reveals That Plants Can Sense Sound Of Rain

Scientists have found that the plants don't just react to rain, they can "hear" it coming. A new study conducted by MIT engineers and published in Scientific Reports revealed that some seeds may come alive to the sound of rain. The study was carried out on rice seeds. The scientists found that the seeds were shaken out of a dormant state by the sound of falling droplets. Scientists suspect that not just rice, but also several other seeds might respond the same way.

The findings revealed that when a raindrop hits the surface of a puddle or the ground, it generates a sound wave that makes the surroundings vibrate, including submerged seeds.

These vibrations can be strong enough to dislodge a seed's "statoliths," which are tiny gravity-sensing organelles within certain cells of a seed.

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"What this study is saying is that seeds can sense sound in ways that can help them survive," study author Nicholas Makris, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, said as per the press release. "The energy of the rain sound is enough to accelerate a seed's growth."

The study authors suspect that the sound of rain is similar to the vibrations generated by other natural phenomena, such as wind.

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"I went back to look at work done by colleagues in the 1980s, who measured the sound of rain underwater. If you check, you'll see it's much greater than in the air," Makris said.

"It has to do with the fact that water is denser than air, so the same drop makes larger pressure waves underwater. So if you're a seed that's within a few centimetres of a raindrop's impact, the kind of sound pressures that you would experience in water or in the ground are equivalent to what you'd be subject to within a few meters of a jet engine in the air."