
A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to - evo_9
https://qz.com/1116991/a-biologist-believes-that-trees-speak-a-language-we-can-learn/
======
koliber
The question I see is what do we define as language and communicating.

Do we mean that trees can relay information to each other, as well to other
species? Sure, that makes sense.

For example, you could make a case that a large tree communicates with the
saplings in the underbrush. By shading them, it is letting them know that it
is the alpha individual in this area, convincing them not to grow.

We can also say that trees release chemicals that have an effect on
surrounding life. This could also be called communication.

Finally, we could say that a loudly creaking tree is communicating to people
around it that it is growing old, getting stress fractures, and could break
off a branch that could pose a danger.

Any of the above could be considered communications.

To counter this, I could make a case that a truck tire can communicate just as
effectively. It can cast a shadow which would prevent vegetation from growing.
It could leach chemicals over time which would have an effect on the
surrounding life. Finally, it could convey a threat by making loud bumping
noises while it is bouncing towards you on a freeway.

Nature is interesting and complex. We continue to discover new and exciting
things about how it works. I think anthropomorphising these effects makes them
exciting, but does not necessarily add to how we understand them.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I think the dividing line is deliberate communication - a dog barks because it
"wants" to communicate. But then the counter-argument rejects the will, and
comes down to "aren't all our actions because of basic chemistry?". I reject
that assumption - not because there's a some sort of supernatural element, but
just because a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. There's a
massive rift between "sun makes tree grow, preventing other trees from getting
the light" and "I'm trying to sell my wares by expressing concepts of value,
numbers, and desire".

~~~
erydo
> There's a massive rift between "sun makes tree grow, preventing other trees
> from getting the light" and "I'm trying to sell my wares by expressing
> concepts of value, numbers, and desire".

Like a tree bearing bright red, juicy-looking fruits filled with sugar and
vitamins?

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Are you arguing that's communication, or somehow driven by a tree's desires?

~~~
koliber
Arguably, you could say that it is driven by evolutionary pressure. Could you
convince me that the term "evolutionary pressure" is a form of desire? I don't
know. Does desire require consciousness? Are trees conscious?

------
phyzome
This article is annoyingly fluffy. Trees absolutely do communicate with each
other, and with other creatures, and it's amazingly cool -- but you don't need
to anthropomorphize them so drastically! It's OK for them to be a bit alien.

If you want a somewhat more solid take on the subject, _The Songs of Trees_ is
a lovely book. (Mentioned in the article.) It has digressions into geology and
anthropology and politics but ties it all together, using specific trees as
focal points. I don't know exactly how much of the chemical signaling stuff it
goes into -- I'm still in chapter 2 -- but I found the chapter on ceibo to be
fascinating. I particularly liked the section this quote is from, talking
about how the natives of the area think about the forest network:

« The Western mind can perceive and understand abstractions such as ideas,
rules, processes, connections, and patterns. These are all invisible, yet we
believe them to be as real as any object. Amazonian rainforest spirits are
analogous, perhaps, to Western reality dreams such as money, time, and nation-
states. »

(I wish I had a quote with more context, but that's the best I could do on
short notice.)

------
swebs
>Trees exchange chemicals with fungus, and send seeds—essentially information
packets—with wind, birds, bats, and other visitors for delivery around the
world. Simard specializes in the underground relationships of trees. Her
research shows that below the earth are vast networks of roots working with
fungi to move water, carbon, and nutrients among trees of all species. These
complex, symbiotic networks mimic human neural and social networks. They even
have mother trees at various centers, managing information flow, and the
interconnectedness helps a slew of live things fight disease and survive
together.

>Simard argues that this exchange is communication

That's pretty much the gist of the article without the fluff. I think the term
"language" is an extreme hyperbole here, but it's interesting that rudimentary
information can be passed between different trees.

~~~
CuriouslyC
How is a molecule different from a word? How is a spatial and temporal
sequence of molecules different from a sentence?

I think language, like consciousness, is one of those things that a lot of
people have a chauvinistic definition for...

~~~
balt_s
This has been posted here before, but your comment put me in mind of
[http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/dogmaofotherness.html](http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/dogmaofotherness.html).
Might be worth a quick read.

------
harperlee
To me, there needs to be a differentiation between communicating and speaking.
If you broadcast information and another entity receives it, and uses it, that
is not dialogue - just reactions. Even if through an evolutionary game the
species reaches effective communication (predators, plagues, etc.), and
complex feedback loops emerge, resembling a dialogue, there seems to be
something lacking - perhaps the ability to query the other for specific
information would be a good litmus test for it?

~~~
ianai
I’ve had house cats ask me things plenty. They’ll ask whether they are welcome
in my lap by stopping short of stepping on my leg and looking at me for
feedback. There’s much more to communication than human spoken word.

~~~
koliber
Agreed.

I've had dogs communicate with me by angrily running towards me and barking.
This conveyed danger and told me to get out of the way.

I've once had a small avalanche do the same as well.

People would call me looney though if I told them that the mountains
communicate with me, and I listen.

~~~
mod
The dog conveyed to you its intent to harm you (even if it was being
deceitful).

The mountain communicated nothing to you.

If you were hunted and killed by a mountain lion, it would be akin to the
avalanche. It did not intend to send you any message, even if you managed to
spot it before it attacked you.

The dog fully intended for you to know.

~~~
koliber
According to one definition of communication, you are absolutely right. There
are other ways of defining it.

You define it as requiring intent. Fair.

I can formulate just as valid of a definition of communication without intent.
The way you dress communicates certain things about you, whether you intend to
do so or not. My pheromones communicate a lot of things about me, even though
I don't intend them to do so.

Again, it's not so simple unless you use a single narrow definition and
forcefully ignore all other ones (some of which are easier to accept than
others).

------
kulu2002
Jagadish Chandra Bose[1] was one of the earliest Indian scientist who proved
Plant perception[2] experimentally

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose#Plant_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose#Plant_research)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(paranormal)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_\(paranormal\))

~~~
GuiA
Did you perhaps mean to link to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(physiology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_\(physiology\))
?

~~~
kulu2002
In fact paranormal link is more relevant in context of above article.

------
mirceal
I guess a better way of putting this is that trees are communicating / fungus
and other things that live in symbiosis with trees relay certain types of
info.

Language and speaking not so much and it does seem s little far-fetched.

------
sdrothrock
Makes me think of Wittgenstein saying "if a lion could speak, we could not
understand him."

Coincidentally enough, there was a comic about this yesterday:
[https://existentialcomics.com/comic/245](https://existentialcomics.com/comic/245)

------
sjclemmy
I was thinking about communication the other day and came up with an aphorism:

“We can’t even understand other people when we speak the same language - what
hope do we have of communicating with an alien life?”

By which I mean we wouldn’t even recognise the nature of the intelligence
presented to us, never mind work out how to exchange information.

~~~
vinchuco
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken
place" -GBS

It's a bit sad we can't yet fully communicate with other life here
effectively. I wonder what ethical implications it would have if we ever got
there. An analogy to the current state may be that of a man from another
language trying to ask for directions to an autistic kid.

What does it mean to understand?

------
jeandejean
These theories of humanizing trees become more and more popular lately. But it
seems based on observation and speculation only, which is almost certainly
completely biased against what people would like to hear: that trees are like
the lord of the rings ents. How cool!

Not to mention that Waorani just evidently lack abstraction in their language,
which is at the root of understanding the world, not missing some obviously
networked nature of trees.

I'm disappointed that such nonscientific articles are published in hacker
news.

~~~
veddox
Yes, and this is even worse:

> Haskell points out that throughout literary and musical history there are
> references to the songs of trees, and the way they speak: whispering pines,
> falling branches, crackling leaves, the steady hum buzzing through the
> forest. Human artists have always known on a fundamental level that trees
> talk, even if they don’t quite say they have a “language.”

All of these "songs of trees" are purely physical phenomena, which don't have
any connection even to the biological communication of trees, let alone any
mystic "language". This kind of argumentation is incredibly unscientific.
("Proving" biology from poetry? As in seriously?!)

------
leoreeves
Recommend this incredibly interesting article on plant communication and
intelligence by Michael Pollan.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-
intelligen...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-
plant)

------
vinayms
Even before I opened the link I had an inkling that this would be Michio Kaku
level good for a documentary kind of sensationalism filled piece. I was not
wrong.

While glancing through, I didn't come across any mention of "intent to
communicate". Not sure if any of the links have. It seems like too much is
made out of the act of "dropping off things", and perceived as communication.
While it is something that we all have done in high school (or at work,
sheesh) while analysing the actions of our crush to check for signals, I am
pretty sure it has no place in science.

~~~
modzu
its a horribly lazy click-bait article with no references.

------
ssijak
Often on Ayahuasca I feel extreme empathy for plants and feel like I
communicate with them without spoken sounds. Sometimes I wish that it would
work that way in real life, it is really wonderful and humbling feeling.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Paul Stamets would argue that IS real life, just with that channel amplified
so you can finally hear it over the other channels jamming it.

------
rbosinger
This is what alien life will be like. We will decide it is alive but not
understand fully what that means.

~~~
fifnir
> We will decide it is alive but not understand fully what that means.

I don't understand fully what this comment means.

If alien life has DNA (chemistry) like ours, we learn that life as we know it
either started somewhere and spread or was re-invented.

If it doesn't, but is obviously alive (move on its own will, hunts, i dont
know) we learn that life can exist with different chemistries.

If it's not obviously alive but we determine anyway, whichever way we do that,
we've learned of a new aspect of life.

what does "what that means" mean ? ? ?

~~~
CuriouslyC
The odds that alien life would reinvent DNA are basically nil. If we find DNA
based life elsewhere that is a slam-dunk for panspermia.

~~~
fifnir
I agree, but I'm not too sure about that, but I also don't know enough
chemistry to convincingly argue for the opposite..

Are there many varieties of self-replicating molecules? (which I understand is
needed to start life) Maaaaybe there's only so many ways that this can get
started and RNA is the "only" way to do it. In a similar way that we have a
hard time imagining non-carbon life since no other element behaves in the ways
that carbon does

------
yosito
If by "speak a language" you mean "have unique ways of sharing information",
then of course trees speak a language and of course we can learn about it.

~~~
fipple
It's not "of course" obvious that trees "share information." That's pretty
cool if true and not something that all or even most plants are known to do.

~~~
yosito
Anything with DNA shares information.

------
vinchuco
Here is also slime mold 'communicating' their knowledge to other slime mold
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17491547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17491547)
.

For anyone that is fascinated by nature studies and would like to be exposed
to more of them rather than the article about the article I can't recommend
PNAS enough. Part of what motivated me to continue graduate studies.

~~~
sakopov
Here is an article from 2010 about slime mold building a network which is a
more efficient version of the Tokyo subway system [1]. This is absolutely
fascinating.

[1]
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/01/22/brainle...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/01/22/brainless-
slime-mold-builds-a-replica-tokyo-subway/#.W0dZeHNMF-E)

------
adityapurwa
I remember there was some experiments on plants that were treated differently.
Both receives the same physical treatment (water, sunlight, etc). The
difference was the other plant used to get yelled at, or cursed at. While the
others is treated with kindness, talk positive in front of it. The result was,
the plant who got cursed died. I forgot where I found this, would be helpful
if anyone else encountered such researches.

~~~
notahacker
You're probably referring to this story which got a bit of buzz earlier in the
year. [https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/ikea-bullied-a-
potted...](https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/ikea-bullied-a-potted-plant-
while-encouraging-another-then-showed-schoolkids-the-impact/)

Since it was conceived by an ad agency to promote anti-bullying (and furniture
giant IKEA) there's a fair chance it wasn't the most scientifically valid
experiment ever conducted.

Mythbusters ran their own test in the past and found that both insulting and
being kind to plants stimulated them more than allowing them to grow in
silence, but they liked death metal even more (their conclusion was that the
basic theory of sound vibrations mildly stimulating growth was plausible).
There's more serious research going on into plant bioacoustics: the theory
some plants have evolved to respond to specific sound stimuli

------
everdev
There's another great book about this subject called The Secret Life of Trees.
The basic premise is that in response to physical conditions trees will
produce certain chemicals that when received through the root system by other
trees cause a similar, pre-emptive response in those trees, mainly for things
like fighting off diseases and bugs.

~~~
mindthegap
Yes, I liked that book as well. Especially because it has a lot of references
to actual studies and research done at a university.

------
raadore
This is to the admin and mods: it appears to me that my comment got removed
from the conversation. Is that correct or am I simply not seeing the entire
thread of comments? Or does the system automatically remove comments that get
negative points? Please advise so I understand how the commenting system
works. Thank you.

------
jdlyga
Just set up Wireshark in their fungal network system and capture the packets
being sent around.

------
hiisukun
I once listened to a great radio show [1] on trees communicating (in a way)
and sharing resources through a network of fungus that connects their roots in
a forest. I can recommend listening if that interests you more than reading a
related wiki page [2], but both are cool.

[1] [https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/from-tree-to-shining-
tree/](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/from-tree-to-shining-tree/) [2]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network)

~~~
trhway
>trees communicating (in a way) and sharing resources through a network of
fungus

when i listened to that (or similar) show i was wondering - whether it is
trees communicating through fungus or whether it is the fungus managing and
herding the trees like say we do with cattle.

~~~
hiisukun
Yes, I felt the same way! It is extraordinary to consider that the fungus is
able to convince the trees to trade with it, seeming almost like it has plans
to facilitate many such relationships over a network of exchange - like an
underground market runner.

------
anonytrary
Obfuscation via personification. It's funny how chemical communication can be
sugar coated to such an extent. There's an old rule for teaching quantum
mechanics -- avoid low-hanging "honey-pot" analogies, you'll just lead people
to a false, but easy misunderstanding. Does that apply here? Is
personification really useful here?

------
torstenvl
I recently read _The Hidden Life of Trees_ and found it fascinating, even if I
left not entirely convinced. There are certainly characteristics of some tree
species that look like pro-sociality. I'll be interested to watch where the
research goes.

------
mullikine
Language is found everywhere in nature. Personally, I'm looking forward to
when google translate can do cat language

~~~
vinchuco
"My hovercraft is full of eels"

~~~
mullikine
If you were to ask what is human language, it would be the superset of sign
language, spoken language, body language, etc. If you take that kind of
approach when deciphering the language of cats, just as convnets can decipher
the hidden logic of recognising faces, I'd imagine a rudimentary form would be
a mixture of visual and auditory signals designed to "trick" the cat into
responding.

~~~
vinchuco
Cats are smart enough to communicate with humans, I have no doubt of that.
N=2, but once I had a cat that woke me up at night to point out a possum had
entered the house and was hiding under a piece of furniture, and once I had
one which (different house) gestured me to follow him in the chase after
shooing away the intruder cat that kept stealing its food.

~~~
mullikine
touche. ah yes, the mind of a cat no doubt is a very strange place

------
mar77i
Reminds me of "Once upon a forest". A great mixture of scientific facts and
research scaled against the cultural hearsay and mysticism around forests from
various cultures.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG1vwxFmwME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG1vwxFmwME)

------
Quequau
Reminds me of Peter Wohlleben and his book "The Secret Lives of Trees".

~~~
cerealizer
Literally mentioned in the article…

------
powerapple
what's the definition of language? You can communicate emotion through
sound/voice, is it considered as language? Language is what makes human
superior intelligently. It is the software makes us a computer rather than
calculator. Language is where we store knowledge. A language needs to be able
to store logic as well as data, and it needs to have a written form so that
the knowledge can be stored for a very long time. I wouldn't call any signal
language.

~~~
arketyp
This is how a title like this fails to make impact. Whether it's information
theory, semiotics or grammatology, language is soon reduced to the merest
coding of information, implicit or explicit, as any medium of sense (or non-
sense). I could argue an algorithm is, by virtue of its operation, a language
exchange. The universe too.

One should perhaps ask if there is something akin to grammatical structures in
this system of roots and fungi.

------
some_account
Humans can't perceive a lot of things, and on top of that, we have egos that
makes us feel superior even though in reality, we are the only ones on the
planet who can't live in harmony with other species.

If you ever had a cat and really observed it and communicated with it, you
know it has feelings and emotions. Birds have it also, so does pigs, horses...
But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to eat them.

I'm not a big fan of humanity. We are pretty awful.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _we are the only ones on the planet who can 't live in harmony with other
> species._

This "harmony" is really just interlocking loops of unconstrained growth,
followed by running out of resources, and starvation while the food supply
regenerates. It only looks pretty if you ain't looking very carefully.

In fact, human beings seem to be the only ones observed with a capability for
_restraint_. We're not very good at practicing it, but we are at least capable
of it. Have you seen a pack of animals or plants jointly deciding to
voluntarily forgo extra food, so that they don't exceed carrying capacity of
the place they live in?

~~~
wild_preference
Your definition of restraint seems based on that one example.

What about when my cat restrains from eating all of its treats at once? Or the
restraint any animal takes through a farming process like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid#Ant_mutualism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid#Ant_mutualism)?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, your cat will also likely be very cruel if it ever caches a mouse or a
bird, so I'll raise you that for harmony :). And I'm a cat owner. RE ants, I'm
not a biologist so I won't speculate how exactly that relationship came to be,
but it doesn't seem to me that there was any meeting of minds involved - I
would guess evolutionary feedback loops again.

I made a pretty generalized argument, but the point is, what we observe as
harmony in nature - the balance between predator and prey, the various species
of animals and plants (and bacteria and viruses) living next to each other -
is a dynamic process that involves lots of blood, death and starvation. The
order in nature isn't negotiated - it's an aggregate of countless number of
conflicts.

Related, recently on HN, "Trillions of Viruses Fall from the Sky Each Day":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636).
The money quote from the article is mentioned here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16840575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16840575).

"One study estimated that viruses in the ocean cause a trillion trillion
infections every second, destroying some 20 percent of all bacterial cells in
the sea daily."

That's nature's harmony at work.

~~~
vidarh
> Well, your cat will also likely be very cruel if it ever caches a mouse or a
> bird, so I'll raise you that for harmony :)

We had a cat once who, we found out, liked to sit in the berry bushes in the
garden, wait for a bird to land, and then kill them. She didn't didn't eat
them - she much preferred the cat food she got. She just murdered bird after
bird and left them to rot.

Cats certainly are not the best examples of harmony.

~~~
mft_
Are (aren't?) cats the only animal that kills for fun, rather than food?

(Apart from the scum that are some humans...)

~~~
coldtea
> _Are (aren 't?) cats the only animal that kills for fun, rather than food?_

Obviously not. All kinds of animals kill. Also it's not "for fun" in the way
we're having fun. They don't plan on entertaining themselves that way,
weighing and ignoring the moral impact, etc.

It's an instinct they have. It's training to hone their hunting skills --
which they need evolutionary to survive -- even if they we take there of them
for the last 5-10.000 years (which is very little in evolutionary terms)

------
blueboo
Varelse.

------
ckastner
> _Because they relate to the trees as live beings with intimate ties to
> surrounding people and other creatures, the Waorani aren’t alarmed by the
> notion that a tree might scream when cut, or surprised that harming a tree
> should cause trouble for humans._

That sounds like textbook anthropomorphizing, and the article seems to follow
down that path as well...

~~~
CuriouslyC
I always wondered, why is anthropomorphizing looked upon with such disdain? To
me, that attitude smacks of the idea that humans are "special." Additionally,
if it really is wrong to generalize from human internal experience to that of
animals, logic implies that it is wrong to generalize from a specific human's
internal experience to that of any other human. Since we don't seem to want to
give up on making sweeping generalizations about humans, we should probably
also stop making such a stink about anthropomorphizing.

Finally, anthropormophizing is a useful metaphorical aid to help people
understand. I don't think it's a big deal as long as you avoid making absolute
teleological claims.

~~~
veddox
> anthropormophizing is a useful metaphorical aid to help people understand

Absolutely. So does simplification. Simplifying things to make them
understandable to non-experts is an incredibly important skill - ask any
teacher (or their students, for that matter). The problem comes with
oversimplification, simplifying explanations to a degree when they are just
dead wrong. At that point, the simplification doesn't only not help with the
understanding, it can actively hinder future understanding by suggesting that
you have already understood (when in fact you haven't).

This article over-anthropomorphizes.

------
guardian5x
If you want to say that trees can talk, you just have to redefine language.

------
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
The title is misleading, the article is says "...a language we can learn to
listen to", the title says "...a language we can learn", big difference.

~~~
dang
OK, we've added that phrase to the title.

------
king_nothing
Anthropocentric behavior typical precludes respect of life unless it’s cute
and usually a tetrapod.

------
chris_wot
"help, help I'm being cut down!"

If we learned how to speak to trees, it could be terrifying.

~~~
dang
If you keep posting unsubstantive comments, we're going to have to rate-limit
your account again.

~~~
petecox
Steady on, it's mentioned in the article.

"the Waorani aren’t alarmed by the notion that a tree might scream when cut"

~~~
dang
That's not the issue.

~~~
chris_wot
What is the point, dang?

It was a whimsical comment, and you are being overly critical. And I was
considering the way man affects our environment. And yes, it is mentioned in
the article.

Your hair trigger response says far more about you than me. I literally have
made one whimsical comment in literally hundreds of comments, and you decide
to threaten me.

~~~
dang
The issue is that you have a long history of posting borderline comments and
creating drama on the site as well as in abusive emails. This was a problem.
We took the rate limit off your account out of courtesy to you, but that's
provisional on the problem not starting up again. Since multiple unsubstantive
comments were starting to show up again from your account, I thought I'd
better say something.

~~~
chris_wot
I posted a response, then thought better of it and deleted it.

------
sAbakumoff
The title is funny. lOl.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

------
scoom
This guy seems to have copied his thesis from an M. Night Sham movie

~~~
swebs
I was thinking Avatar.

