A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

https://qz.com/1116991/a-biologist-believes-that-trees-speak-a-language-we-can-learn/

by evo_9 • 8 years ago

308 219 8 years ago

qz.com

guardian5x• 8 years ago

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

Quequau• 8 years ago

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

cerealizer• 8 years ago

Literally mentioned in the article…

hinkley• 8 years ago

He’s mentioned about halfway down.

ckastner• 8 years ago

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...

veddox4• 8 years ago

Absolutely. I study ecology, and I have to say this article sounds like quite a lot of hogwash to me.

Of course, trees do communicate - but obsessively trying to frame mindless chemical ecological processes in such extreme anthropomorphic terms is dangerously close to the border between extreme oversimplification and rank pseudoscience.

CuriouslyC3• 8 years ago

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.

veddox4• 8 years ago

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.

mirceal• 8 years ago

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.

chris_wot3• 8 years ago

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

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

dang5• 8 years ago

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

petecox• 8 years ago

Steady on, it's mentioned in the article.

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

sAbakumoff• 8 years ago

The title is funny. lOl.

dang5• 8 years ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

kulu20025• 8 years ago

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... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(paranormal)

GuiA• 8 years ago

Did you perhaps mean to link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(physiology) ?

kulu20025• 8 years ago

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

theNewMicrosoft2• 8 years ago

r/plantneurobiology

DEADBEEFC0FFEE• 8 years ago

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.

dang5• 8 years ago

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

rbosinger2• 8 years ago

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

fifnir5• 8 years ago

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 ? ? ?

CuriouslyC3• 8 years ago

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.

jonnydubowsky2• 8 years ago

I'm really enjoying this comment section conversation. I had to look up "Panspermia": the theory that life on Earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

rbosinger2• 8 years ago

It means all of that. We find something we've never seen before. There's something about it that seems "alive". It's an instinctual feeling. We have to decide how "alive" that is. Is it alive like a human, a tree, bacteria, AI? I'm being general on purpose here. It's just neat that this conversation is still so relevant here on Earth. It's kind of like how alien the deep ocean still is to us.

yosito2• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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.

yosito2• 8 years ago

Anything with DNA shares information.

king_nothing• 8 years ago

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

adityapurwa• 8 years ago

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.

jonnydubowsky2• 8 years ago

This reminds me of Masaru Emoto's "The Secret Life Of Water" <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto> where he exposed water to intensely positive and negative words and sounds and photographed the crystals of frozen water from each state. A beautiful book, but also seems to have been debunked as lacking any scientific evidence, as it was more an art project then a peer reviewed experiment. <http://www.beliefnet.com/news/science-religion/2006/03/sensi...

notahacker• 8 years ago

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...

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

some_account• 8 years ago

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.

kranner• 8 years ago

Relevant short story from Ted Chiang et al: http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/the-great-silence/

kpnbg2• 8 years ago

I too enjoy watching the perfect harmony of a lion eating a live impala

mpfundstein2• 8 years ago

The huge difference is that lions dont put impalas into huge factories, where they feed them afwul food, rob them of any dignitiy, slaughter them by the masses, ship them across the globe in order to throw half of it away because it didnt hit the market’s taste of the month!

kulu20025• 8 years ago

I found the book "Beyond Words - What Animals think and feel" pretty interesting in this case

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150714-animal-do...

jpttsn• 8 years ago

Cats, birds, and pigs are in turn happy to eat humans when convenient.

close045• 8 years ago

I think he mean the main difference would be that animals mostly kill (probably applies to most of their other actions) out of need (protection, food). Humans destroy things because they can many times. Sometimes it's not about needs... unless for example you consider greed to be a need.

arketyp2• 8 years ago

I think you can be more empathetic with humans too, interpret me right. One could object that you are anthropomorphizing the natural world, meaning your sentiment is still in the end just rooted in the human experience. But I think that's fair to do. I'd just like to add, as the Swedish dramatist Stringberg once wrote: "Human beings are to be pitied!"

TeMPOraL4• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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?

sametmax• 8 years ago

Have you seen a pack of animals or plants jointly deciding to voluntarily forgo extra food

Actually, the only animals I know to become obese are humans, and animals that are attached to humans.

You may say it's because they don't have an unlimited supply of food, but actually, many animals do, or used to have before we destroyed it.

Of course, they don't really forgo extra food, they use it to multiply their number instead of providing more to an individual. So it's not real restrain.

pygy_2• 8 years ago

Restrain is all over the place in nature. Unconstrained growth followed by starvation is the hallmark of primitive processes like fire and basic life forms.

Most individuals grow up to a genetically predetermined size. Colonies adapt their size to the amount of resources they have available, optimizing for long term perenniality.

The human economy behaves like a primitive life form, at the moment.

Ecosystems are usually resilient to such threats, but the fact we've been able to tap into fossil fuel gives us too large an advantage for them to strike back.

Joakal• 8 years ago

There's fed sharks at aquariums and there's tigers with human trainers. When well fed, predators don't care about the potential food presented.

For nature? There's reports of predators in wild ignoring humans, possibly because they ate already. One obvious example are snakes.

usrusr4• 8 years ago

Many species have finely tuned territorial instincts that have evolved to do exactly that: restrain growth to sustainable numbers. Individuals who fail to dominate sufficient territory won't breed at all. Just yesterday I observed two swans in busy border negotiations, a quiet "dance" that has more similarities with a proof of work algorithm than with an actual fight.

On a macro level, sure, it was unconstrained growth and the resulting hardship that caused these patterns to evolve, but that evolution has happened many times.

Pamar• 8 years ago

Maybe you should qualify this as "planned restraint" o "deliberate restraint". In most animals "restraint" is a largely automated mechanism. E.g.: if the food is scarce, fertility decreases (and/or post-birth mortality increases).

saiya-jin• 8 years ago

have you ever seen a jaguar let caught gazelle go, just because it's full? llamas restraining pooping only on specific spots to not ruin grasslands (maybe not direct example but I saw it recently all over Bolivia, pretty impressive environmental protection).

you can find abundance of examples of both restraint and greed/cruelty in animal kingdom, although it seems to me restraint is far more prevalent. Just like among humans

grasshopperpurp• 8 years ago

You're very right, and I don't like the way the OP framed the argument. The problem is 1) even though we're capable, as you note, we're terrible at utilizing it, and 2) we're so much more powerful than any other species, so when we do lack restraint, we cause much more damage.

superasn• 8 years ago

"Humans are the most unique creatures on Earth. Well…not really. Yes we have developed technology, language, society, and have a great capacity for abstract thought. But if you look at our genetics, at our biology, we find that we may not be that unique after all. Primates share a vast majority of our genes and have organized their families into something akin to a social structure. Dolphins and whales communicate with diverse types of language using their larynx in ways similar to how we make sounds." - Carl sagan, pale blue dot

rimliu• 8 years ago

One of the most awful trait in humans I observe is disdain fo the own species in favour of other. There is no harmony in the nature, just an equilibrium. We are the nature as is everything else.

chicob• 8 years ago

I agree. If we're speaking about an understanding of the deep connection between all species in this planet, and how it all relates to extinct species and old ecosystems, the human being is the only species in all of Earth's history that ever became aware of it.

People often seem to assume non-human species partake of some universal wisdom that humans have left behind. This is a pretty shallow narrative of "lost innocence", that ignores what other species are and how they relate to each other.

If there is an animal that does care, that is Homo sapiens.

usrusr4• 8 years ago

We are definitely not part of any equilibrium right now.

TangoTrotFox2• 8 years ago

I think you are misunderstanding the equilibrium of nature. There's no great and beautiful mutually orchestrated harmony. What happens invariably is a predator hunts a prey to the point of scarcity. At this point, assuming that prey was the predator's primary diet, the predators begin to literally starve to death which lowers their population. This, in turn, gives the prey a chance to increase their population with fewer predators. Over time this results in a dynamic equilibrium that gives the illusion of harmony - though it's really just controlled by starvation. At times, this equilibrium is never reached and one species or another ends up completely dying off (or getting killed off). And if that species that died off had not spread elsewhere, we get an extinction. Something that's been happening for millions and likely billions of years. Long before humanity entered onto the scene in any case.

I think humans today are, by far, the most harmonious creature on this planet. We have the ability to hunt absolutely anything to the point of extinction if we so desired. And while on occasion we do end up doing just that, for the most part we manage to create an artificial balance by restraining ourselves, diversifying our diet, and artificially multiplying the numbers of the species that we prefer to eat the most to ensure their sustainability.

And as another aside here, even in modern times with extinctions related to human activity you'll often find that while we did play a role, it's often also driven by other animals. For instance it's often said that the Dodo was hunted to extinction. That's entirely true, but it wasn't just by humans. The other animals introduced to the Mauritius also had a taste for the Dodo and its eggs in particular. A human might begin to take note of a population becoming more and more scarce. Another animal isn't going to think twice of it until they start starving for lack of their prey.

And also I do not think people just ignore the personalities of animals when choosing to eat them. If you've ever known anybody who's raised goats or even pigs. They're incredible critters that are friendly, cute, playful and in the case of pigs - even quite intelligent. Nobody, for the most part, enjoys slaughtering these guys, but meat is something our bodies have evolved to consume and is still the most straight forward means of living a healthy life. Hunting is a different story, but in many ways that's even more humane. An animal killed on a hunt undoubtedly lived a life magnitudes more free and pleasant than the conditions of many in the farms that produce the food you buy at the grocer or restaurant. In any case you'll find a strong overlap both in modern times, and premodern times, of hunters and animal conservationists. The circle of life is something those closest to it tend to understand all too well.

novia3• 8 years ago

The other animals introduced to the Mauritius also had a taste for the Dodo and its eggs in particular.

Which species introduced the other animals to the Mauritius?

dmos62• 8 years ago

I agree and emphathise with all your points.

I have an alternative perspective on the question of how harmonious we are with our surroundings. I'm not peddling a wordview here, but I think this is an interesting thought exercise. What if we are in harmony with nature? Yes, taking into account all our seemingly disharmonious traits, greed, self-obsesssion, social and environmental irresponsibility.

Conceptually, it's simpler (or more elegant?) to consider that we are in harmony with nature, like every other of its elements, but our definition of harmony, in other words it's our perception that is lacking.

If nature, as in life on earth, is a fractal of ecosystems, when we perceive that one fails, we change our focus by one level to the containing or a contained ecosystem and repeat the process of perceiving whether or not it is failing. The most basic example is a sickly animal that is then fed upon by predators, or medium-height plantlife withering due to expanding tree canopy. If it's failing, we again step to the next ecosystem; if we perceive that it's ok, then we consider the previous ecosystems to be ok too. As an extreme case, we could keep going this way, if we thought that everything on earth is failing, until we got to the "top-level" ecosystem of life on earth -- the earth itself. We could then just generalize the definition of nature to the cosmos as well, and the process would continue.

To come back to humans, while it's true that we are killing life on earth, we don't have to step far in terms of the cosmos to find harmony in it. In this view, the deeper point is that harmony is a property of perception, not the universe. Or in other words, the universe is universally harmonious.

Yetanfou• 8 years ago

I assume you have - or have had - a cat? Which you watered and fed, provided with shelter and a modicum of social interaction?

...and then the cat goes out and catches a mouse. Not because it is hungry, only because it saw the mouse and just had to catch it. After discarding the mouse - it wasn't hungry, you see, just having stuffed itself with KittyPro (tm) (with Bull Elk, Nearly Extinct Herbivore and Baby Seal) - and goes on to catch a few birds which were happily hopping around, unaware of the presence of a killer in their midst.

Can you blame the cat? No, not really. Cats are hunters, being hunters they are playful - play being a way to keep their hunting skills sharpened - and they just have to strike when the opportunity arises.

Can you blame the human? No, not really. If the human would not water and feed the cat and provide it with a modicum of social interaction the cat would walk, simple as that.

Does this mean the cat 'lives in harmony with other species'? Of course is doesn't, that cat acts like a trophy hunter in a safari park.

Ever seen a chicken coop raided by a weasel? We lost 16 chickens in one night once, all of them killed by some nasty critter which had managed to wriggle its way into the chicken's safe space. All of them bitten in the neck and left to bleed out.

Can you blame the weasel who clearly killed far more than it could ever hope to eat, let alone the fact that it even could not get any of the chickens through the keyhole it used to enter the coop in the first place? Can you blame the human who thought to protect the chickens against just such mayhem but failed?

Does that mean the weasel 'lives in harmony with other species'? Of course is doesn't, that weasel acted like one of Stalin's henchmen, killing everything in sight.

Humans are intelligent primates and as such are capable of bigger feats. Bigger in both ways, from the human equivalent of what those cats and weasels are doing to, say, a group of humans cooperating to get a beached whale back into the sea.

xd• 8 years ago

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

Self loathing of the human race needs to stop, there are an incredible number of hard working people making the world a better place one step at a time. Our impact on the world barely registers to past extinction level events. Humanity has just as much right to exist and be as any other species. If you don't like what we are doing, work to improve things.

Are you aware how many countless people have and do work to improve your quality of life, protect you, make sure you are fed and watered and provided with distractions like HN to complain about how awful we are.

msiyer2• 8 years ago

"Self loathing of the human race needs to stop"

I completely agree.

"Humanity has just as much right to exist and be as any other species"

I completely agree.

"Are you aware how many countless people have and do work to improve your quality of life, protect you, make sure you are fed and watered and provided with distractions like HN to complain about how awful we are."

It is a symbiosis. You make it sound like a parasitic relationship.

ioulian• 8 years ago

I completely agree with your first paragraph, but I have some things about the second one:

"Are you aware how many countless people have and do work to improve your quality of life"

Aren't most people do it for selfish reasons? (Money, feel good about yourself, ...)

Police protects us, for the money they get. Agriculture delivers us food, for the money they get. Water stations deliver us water, for the money they get. Touristic attractions give us joy, for the money. PETA, "saves animals", for the money. Youtube provides fun and education, for the money.

If these organisations didn't receive our money, will they still provide us with those things?

The only noble profession these days is a fireman, which don't get as much money as they are worth to the society!

Of course there are people that are genuine "good", that will help others just because they want it to, but most of the people do something, wanting something in return.

I don't agree with the parent poster that we should hate ourselves, but we aren't angels too ;)

What if money didn't exist, where would we be right now as a civilization?

mockingbirdy2• 8 years ago

But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to eat them.

I don't necessarily agree with your misanthropy (I don't see the broader point of it - "my plan for humanity: let's self-annihilate, we suck"?).

But I'm interested in psychology. And there are studies that show that people perceive cows as dumb while eating them. When they get asked before and after eating meat, the same people said that cows are intelligent beings.

So there are cognitive processes in place to make it possible that we eat meat despite the fact that we normally know about the human-like qualities of the animals we eat.

I think we can learn a lot about the difference between humans and other animals when we focus our efforts on understanding the excuses and biases that we develop using our cerebral parts of our brains and the prefrontal neocortex.

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

Bear with us and have a little bit of compassion. I'm glad every time a human being is able to be positive despite the fact that every human has the potential to destroy other lives.

Swizec• 8 years ago

I would love to read some of those studies. That sounds fascinating!

despite the fact that we normally know about the human-like qualities of the animals we eat.

Didn't there used to be whole cultures (like the Aztec, I think) where cannibalism was a mostly normal part of life? That seems like a pretty extreme version of this cognitive dissonance.

"You're human but you're tasty and I'm hungry soooo ..."

Confusion• 8 years ago

  Humans can't perceive a lot of things

More things than any other organism. Already more than most organisms using our biological sense organs. Our sight and hearing are pretty good, even by animal standards. But then we developed tools to transcode signals not directly observable by our biological sense organs. We perceive more than all other organisms combined.

  we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species.

We are the only ones that partially attempt to live in harmony with other species and partially succeed. All others care nothing for any other species than their own. And often not even that.

  We are pretty awful.

We are awesome and can become even more amazing.

stared• 8 years ago

In that vein there is "The Great Silence" - a short, beautiful and sad story by Ted Chiang: http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/the-great-silence/.

coldtea3• 8 years ago

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.

Harmony is just the result of a struggle + emerging balances.

Left to their own devices, even cats could eradicate entire species of birds, diseases could exterminate whole populations of animals, and so on. And of course a big rock from space could end life on earth in its entirety.

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.

Well, there's no rule that something with feelings shouldn't be eaten.

In fact animals (who you said "live in balance") eat other animals all the time.

Besides, we hurt people's feelings all the time. An employee might not want to flip burgers for 10 hours every day and little pay , but we don't care about their feelings, we take advantage of their life's circumstances and need to pay the rent and have them do it.

With animals, we go a step beyond, and also eat them.

Besides, isn't the main story of the article that trees have a sort of language and a sort of feelings too? Which means that the "has feelings, we shouldn't eat" theory would leave us with nothing to it, since plants now have feelings too.

wruza2• 8 years ago

Maybe crops and vegetables don’t feel like trees, still something. As for fruit trees, we eat only their specific reproduction phases, who I believe can’t talk to each other anyway and have no parental connections.

Angostura2• 8 years ago

Humans have lots of failings, its true - in terms of perception in particular. On the other hand, we're also horribly prone to anthropomorphism.

0xTJ2• 8 years ago

How do other species live in harmony? Ever listed to the into scene in lion king? We're just animals who got smarter. It's part of the "harmony" you speak of for animals to eat other animal.

msiyer2• 8 years ago

Humans cannot perceive a lot of things. However, given the right conditions (post-apocalyptic world?), it would not take a lot of time before humans become perceptive again. A lot many will be wiped out, but as a species we will find a way.

I have a couple of dogs and I know what you mean. With the level of intelligence we possess, we should have achieved more. Technological achievements mean nothing when 70+% human population of the world struggles to survive. I think we use too much of our left brain and too little of the right. A balance is what is needed. Understanding this needs intelligence.

738472527784• 8 years ago

we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species.

Oh boy, this is a very naive and emotionally involved perception of things. A tendency to restore ecological equilibria is not the same as harmony. There is no trend for stability or perfection, that's only an illusion based on the short lifespan of humans. That's not what science and archaeology tells us.

For most species there is no resting in appreciation of creation, no moment of weakness, no mercy. Most everything wants you dead. Wants your air, your food, your space, your niche. You fall, you stumble and there is already mold growing between your toes. In the eyes of a human there might be a fiction, a notion of meaning and beauty. For everything else there is just thermodynamics.

whatshisface• 8 years ago

Especially in light of the Great Oxygenation Event, we really seem more like the only species to ever have the option of creating a global ecosystem collapse and also the option of maybe not! Those early photosynthetic microbes had no choice and no idea what they were doing.

threatofrain• 8 years ago

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.

But isn't nature so metal?

Through all its self-judgment, I view mankind as a way out of local maxima. A complete death might happen with or without humans, but I put my chips in humanity.

paidleaf• 8 years ago

we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species.

That's not true. Every species can't live in harmony with other species. Go read about what happened to native species on pacific islands when rats, cats, snakes, etc were introduced. They wiped out entire ecosystems of islands.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/0725/How-New-Zeal...

Go read about ants.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3352483/

They won't live in harmony with each other. A single ant colony has wiped out much of the world's ant population.

Even fish like the european carp in a span of a few hundred years wiped out much of other fish in the US and now dominate pretty much every lake and river in a continent.

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.

Cats, birds, pigs and even horses eat other animals. As a matter of facts, cats are devastating ecosystems around the world and causing many birds and mammals to go extincts.

https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

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

You are the one putting humans on a pedestal. Humans are animals just like cats, horses, etc. We are no more awful than any other animals.

Actually, you could argue humans are less awful than other animals because we actually consciously decided to save some species. A cat or a wolf or a pig would never do that. They will consume/kill until there isn't an animal left.

jjeaff• 8 years ago

Umm, no, more like humans are a lot more like other animals than we care to admit.

We have some oppossums ND raccoons that constantly try to break in to our chicken coop. If successful, they will, without fail, kill every single chicken they can get their hands on. They'll only be able to eat one or so. But they will kill all of them. Either out of greed or just for the fun of it.

mullikine3• 8 years ago

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

vinchuco4• 8 years ago

"My hovercraft is full of eels"

mullikine3• 8 years ago

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.

mar77i• 8 years ago

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

sjclemmy• 8 years ago

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.

kulu20025• 8 years ago

Thats why we think something like this;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17389842

vinchuco4• 8 years ago

"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?

powerapple• 8 years ago

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.

arketyp2• 8 years ago

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.

sdrothrock• 8 years ago

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

hiisukun2• 8 years ago

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/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network

trhway• 8 years ago

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.

hiisukun2• 8 years ago

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.

ssijak• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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.

sakopov2• 8 years ago

One thing I find rather interesting is that a lot of people who trip on mushrooms mention that they see the world around them much more vivid and alive, especially when being out in nature. I've always wondered if this was something beyond some kind of chemical reaction in our body.

harperlee• 8 years ago

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?

fifnir5• 8 years ago

perhaps the ability to query the other for specific information would be a good litmus test for it?

Do you know of Alex the grey parrot? It seems to be the only animal that we have recorded actually asking questions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)

ianai2• 8 years ago

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.

koliber7• 8 years ago

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.

vinchuco4• 8 years ago

Here is also slime mold 'communicating' their knowledge to other slime mold 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.

sakopov2• 8 years ago

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...

scoom• 8 years ago

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

swebs2• 8 years ago

I was thinking Avatar.

leoreeves• 8 years ago

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

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligen...

jeandejean• 8 years ago

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.

veddox4• 8 years ago

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?!)

blueboo• 8 years ago

Varelse.

swebs2• 8 years ago

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.

veddox4• 8 years ago

I think the article goes beyond hyperbole, this is approaching the realms of esoteric pseudoscience.

The actual phenomenon of intra- and interspecies communications in the plant kingdom is absolutely fascinating - unfortunately, not much actual science shines through in this writeup.

CuriouslyC3• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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

mikro2nd• 8 years ago

I think the term "language" is hyperbole in the context of computer algorithm notations. I'm willing to bet that tree communications far surpass computation notations in sophistication, complexity and subtlety.

geophile• 8 years ago

I keep coming across popular discussions of this research. Each time, I am struck with the emphasis on trees "speaking", scientists understanding their "language". It's gotten to the point that it seems unlikely this is a journalist getting it wrong, or trying too hard to communicate scientific ideas. It strikes me as clickbait. This looks like the creation of intentionally overwrought analogies to fool the rubes and garner attention.

Trees emitting various molecules in reaction to environmental conditions? Sure, completely believable. Other trees picking up on those molecules, and reacting to them? Very interesting, and I can see why it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. But to use terms like "speaking" and "language" is to conjure up ideas of consciousness, intelligence, and mental states that obviously don't apply.

koliber7• 8 years ago

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.

SketchySeaBeast2• 8 years ago

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".

bobmichael• 8 years ago

I think the level of complexity is so different between these two examples that we perceive them as conceptually separate, but it is still possible that in absolute terms the same laws are being applied.

It could be that as humans we do not have enough intellectual power to understand the second example in terms of these laws. But then it could be argued that this is exactly what makes these two examples fundamentally different, since all human knowledge is limited by our intellectual capabilities.

erydo• 8 years ago

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?

abhishekjha• 8 years ago

One observation about communicating would be : the information transfer should be voluntary. Trees should be able to kind of shut up and speak up without threatening their own existence.

phyzome3• 8 years ago

One way to differentiate "communication" is whether it is possible to avoid a behavior. The tree can't avoid shading the saplings.

Another aspect to look at (or possibly this is two, tangled up together) is whether the behavior directly induces changes in the target in a generic fashion, rather than via a reception channel that receives the information and transmutes it into an effect. Allelopathic chemical release that kills off competitors is not communication. Tightly interconnected symbiotic associations of bacteria "communicate" chemically, but it's so optimized down and the feedback loops are so tight that it's more like they're a single organism. (Are hormone releases inside your own body communication?) Jumping at someone and waving your arms is communication, but it's similarly borderline, because you're probably invoking an instinctual reaction to move away from sudden large movements.

Communication should also involve some sort of feedback loop. What does the tree "expect" the results of the sound of a creaking branch to be, either consciously, or in that anthropomorphizing way we discuss fitness and evolution? Without an answer to that, I think we can file it away as "not communication".

---

All that said, many trees absolutely do communicate with chemical signals. Famously, they may release warning chemicals during herbivore activity, and surrounding trees (conspecifics, but IIRC this can cross species boundaries) will ramp up production of defense chemicals.

Other plants use chemical signaling to attract predators of the herbivores that are munching on them.

And I believe I recall some process by which trees advertise themselves to mycorrhizal fungi that they would like to establish partnerships with, but I could be mistaken.

koliber7• 8 years ago

Some trees can avoid shading each other. See (1).

Your progression of thought makes a lot of sense. The question of whether any of this is deliberate, or a behavior encoded into genes and/or physical and chemical processes that can not be avoided. That being said, some people make an argument that our consciousness is also a chain chemical reaction with lots of feedback loops, and that our consciousness is just an illusionary byproduct.

I know that I presented multiple examples and all or not on the same level, no matter along which axis you evaluate them. The point is that deciding whether anyone/anything communicates is not an easy question to answer.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_shyness

tekno45• 8 years ago

Doesn't communication require intent?

The truck example is weird, cause it isn't trying to communicate. The person who made it may be trying to communicate something, but the truck would be a use of language, not using a language itself.

koliber7• 8 years ago

I don't think so. I get angry occasionally. I don't intend to, nor do I like it. However, my anger is communicated to those around me.

This is just an example off the top of my head.

This is a really interesting conversation and I think we will find that the true definition will elude a simple answer with solid boundaries.

vincvinc• 8 years ago

Linguist here - in the field of biology, the word communication is also used to describe signals that are being sent out by organisms, and received as information by others, regardless of the intent of the 'sender'. This has confused me a few times as well.

pishpash• 8 years ago

The bar for communication isn't whether a message is decoded, but whether any given arbitrary message can be encoded, that is, you are looking for signs of encoder capability. Though I can't prove that trees do encode, I can at least prove that they can encode, and that tires cannot, because tires don't have free energy.

Also disagree about the last statement, and not specifically in this case, but generally. It isn't necessarily about anthropomorphizing, but about using abstract and compact representation of what you're talking about. Humans emit sound waves, but we abstract that to segments, time-frequency descriptions, then phonemes, morphemes, ..., and finally language. You get the point. It's easier to reason about that way.

koliber7• 8 years ago

I really like this discussion! I'm loving all these different points of looking at the situation. Thank you.

A tire bouncing along at 65 mph seems to have a lot of free energy (kinetic), as does one stuck on an icy slanted roof (potential) :). I may be unaware of the concept of "free energy" you are using here though. Can you point me to where I can find out more?

I absolutely agree that abstractions are necessary to efficiently convey concepts in a discussion. I also understand that abstractions are never perfect. What I wanted to really say is that I would be much more inclined to agree with the first and less with the second of these two statements:

Trees can transfer information to each other, and we have the ability to understand these mechanisms. Trees speak to each other in a language, and we can listen in.

It's a matter of phrasing, nuance, and insinuation. Different listeners may form different ideas when they read the above two statements.

nikki932• 8 years ago

I think it can add to behaving with them well because we can use the tools of empathy, which is natural for us, to decide how to work with things we deem capable of empathy (often to some extent by anthropomorphising). This is why we create a story of “ownership,” say, for pointers in Rust, to provide some empathizable account of how they work, by attributing names as being capable of owning references to other names, such that our intuitions of how those dynamics play out among people and the lifetimes of things they own help us intuit about lifetimes of pointers / their use concurrently.

I think being clear that we are using a narrative where we empathize with something by imagining its features in terms that seem familiar to our own features (somewhat overlapping with “anthropomorphising”) is ok if done mindfully.

vinayms• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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

everdev• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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

jdlyga• 8 years ago

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

phyzome3• 8 years ago

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.)

anonytrary• 8 years ago

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?

raadore• 8 years ago

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.

torstenvl• 8 years ago

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.

A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

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