radiolab smarty plants

They curve, sometimes they branch. And so we are under the impression or I would say the conviction that the brain is the center of the universe, and -- and if you have a brain and a nervous system you are good and you can do amazing stuff. And then someone has to count. Truth is, I think on this point she's got a -- she's right. And then when times are hard, that fungi will give me my sugar back and I can start growing again. I don't know if you're a bank or if you're an -- so it's not necessarily saying, "Give it to the new guy." So you can -- you can see this is like a game of telephone. He shoves away the leaves, he shoves away the topsoil. Oh, hunting for water. Eventually over a period of time, it'll crack the pipe like a nutcracker. And so of course, that was only the beginning. Oh, so this is, like, crucial. [ANSWERING MACHINE: To play the message, press two. They look just like mining tunnels. What is the tree giving back to the fungus? ROBERT: She took some plants, put them in a pot that restricted the roots so they could only go in one of just two directions, toward the water pipe or away from the water pipe. Well, I created these horrible contraptions. The tree will wrap its roots around that pipe. Because after dropping them 60 times, she then shook them left to right and they instantly folded up again. All in all, turns out one tree was connected to 47 other trees all around it. SUZANNE SIMARD: Yes, we don't normally ascribe intelligence to plants, and plants are not thought to have brains. ROBERT: And not too far away from this tree, underground, there is a water pipe. But also SUZANNE SIMARD: The other important thing we figured out is that, as those trees are injured and dying, they'll dump their carbon into their neighbors. And I remember it was Sunday, because I started screaming in my lab. Huh. JAD: The part where the water pipe was, the pipe was on the outside of the pot? So we are going to meet a beautiful little plant called a mimosa pudica, which is a perfectly symmetrical plant with leaves on either side of a central stem. They definitely don't have a brain. MONICA GAGLIANO: Light is obviously representing dinner. But that day with the roots is the day that she began thinking about the forest that exists underneath the forest. Are you, like, aggressively looking around for -- like, do you wake up in the morning saying, "Now what can I get a plant to do that reminds me of my dog, or reminds me of a bear, or reminds me of a bee?". Imagine towering trees to your left and to your right. So I think what she would argue is that we kind of proved her point. Well, some of them can first of all, and big deal. JAD: If the -- if the tube system is giving the trees the minerals, how is it getting it, the minerals? So maybe could you just describe it just briefly just what you did? So now, they had the radioactive particles inside their trunks and their branches. He's on the right track. JAD: And to Annie McEwen and Brenna Farrow who both produced this piece. You know, they talk about how honeybee colonies are sort of superorganisms, because each individual bee is sort of acting like it's a cell in a larger body. How do you mean? What is it? ], [LARRY UBELL: Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is produced by Soren Wheeler. But now we know, after having looked at their DNA, that fungi are actually very closely related to animals. JENNIFER FRAZER: The whole thing immediately closes up and makes it look like, "Oh, there's no plant here. What was your reaction when you saw this happen? A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. ROBERT: Yeah. We're sitting on the exposed root system, which is like -- it is like a mat. JENNIFER FRAZER: From a particular direction. ALVIN UBELL: In a tangling of spaghetti-like, almost a -- and each one of those lines of spaghetti is squeezing a little bit. It's as if the individual trees were somehow thinking ahead to the needs of the whole forest. And again. JAD: Wait. I don't know if that was the case for your plants. Just the sound of it? Plants are amazing, and this world is amazing and that living creatures have this ability for reasons we don't understand, can't comprehend yet." ROBERT: And for the meat substitute, she gave each plant little bit of food. It's now the Wood Wide Web? ROBERT: She says it was like this moment where she realizes, "Oh, my God! ROBERT: His name is Roy Halling. Hobbled, really. It's almost as if these plants -- it's almost as if they know where our pipes are. He's holding his hand maybe a foot off the ground. LARRY UBELL: That -- that would be an interesting ALVIN UBELL: Don't interrupt. ALVIN UBELL: In a tangling of spaghetti-like, almost a -- and each one of those lines of spaghetti is squeezing a little bit. ROY HALLING: Like, I say, it's early in the season. Like, from the trees perspective, how much of their sugar are they giving to the fungus? I mean, it's -- like, when a plant bends toward sunlight. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah, I know. Because what she does next is three days later, she takes these plants back into the lab. ROBERT: Remember I told you how trees make sugar? And these acids come out and they start to dissolve the rocks. ROBERT: So you are related and you're both in the plumbing business? And then those little tubes will wrap themselves into place. So maybe the root hairs, which are always found right at the growing tips of plant roots, maybe plant roots are like little ears. Same as the Pavlov. And we can move it up, and we can drop it. The fungi needs sugar to build their bodies, the same way that we use our food to build our bodies. JAD: The plants have to keep pulling their leaves up and they just get tired. Monica thought about that and designed a different experiment. Well, okay. Now the plants if they were truly dumb they'd go 50/50. They still remembered. Wait a second. She's done three experiments, and I think if I tell you about what she has done, you -- even you -- will be provoked into thinking that plants can do stuff you didn't imagine, dream they could do. So he brought them some meat. MONICA GAGLIANO: So, you know, I'm in the dark. I gotta say, doing this story, this is the part that knocked me silly. ROBERT: Instead of eating the fungus, it turns out the fungus ate them. What happened to you didn't happen to us. ROBERT: They remembered what had happened three days before, that dropping didn't hurt, that they didn't have to fold up. We need to take a break first, but when we come back, the parade that I want you to join will come and swoop you up and carry you along in a flow of enthusiasm. 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 brain-centered worldview on its head through a series of clever experiments that show plants doing things we never would've imagined. You need the nutrients that are in the soil. ROBERT: Oh. ROBERT: After three days of this training regime, it is now time to test the plants with just the fan, no light. Science writer Jen Frazer gave us kind of the standard story. But then ROY HALLING: Finally! JAD: Yeah, and hopefully not be liquefied by the fungus beneath us. 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. Okay. [laughs] When I write a blog post, my posts that get the least traffic guaranteed are the plant posts. ], Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. ROBERT: And we dropped it once, and twice. The glass is not broken. Eventually over a period of time, it'll crack the pipe like a nutcracker. Do you have the lens? JAD: Well, okay. And after not a whole lot of drops, the plant, she noticed, stopped closing its leaves. ROBERT: Monica says what she does do is move around the world with a general feeling of ROBERT: What if? Exactly. Jad and Robert, they are split on this one. So we're really -- like this is -- we're really at the very beginning of this. PETER LANDGREN: Little seatbelt for him for the ride down. The same one that are used in computers like, you know, really tiny. No, it's far more exciting than that. And then I needed to -- the difficulty I guess, of the experiment was to find something that will be quite irrelevant and really meant nothing to the plant to start with. Like, as in the fish. We went to the Bronx, and when we went up there, we -- there was this tall man waiting for us. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah. She thinks that they somehow remembered all those drops and it never hurt, so they didn't fold up any more. Same as the Pavlov. That's what she says. Let him talk. And the classic case of this is if you go back a few centuries ago, someone noticed that plants have sex. 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. Share. If she's going to do this experiment, most likely she's going to use cold water. And not too far away from this tree, underground, there is a water pipe. But let me just -- let me give it a try. Because after dropping them 60 times, she then shook them left to right and they instantly folded up again. It's soaks in sunshine, and it takes CO2, carbon dioxide, and it's splits it in half. It would be all random. And the tree happens to be a weeping willow. LARRY UBELL: Me first. Two very different options for our plant. Because I have an appointment. Ring, meat, eat. Kind of even like, could there be a brain, or could there be ears or, you know, just sort of like going off the deep end there. To remember? by Radiolab Follow. One time, the plant literally flew out of the pot and upended with roots exposed. ROBERT: And right in the middle of the yard is a tree. ROBERT: So the beetles don't want to eat them. This way there is often more questions than answers, but that's part of the fun as well. ROBERT: Eventually, she came back after ROBERT: And they still remembered. Connecting your house to the main city water line that's in the middle of the street. 37:51. Like, I don't understand -- learning, as far as I understand it, is something that involves memory and storage. ]. They're not experiencing extra changes, for example. ROBERT: And then those little tubes will wrap themselves into place. Never mind. That's okay. ROBERT: And then later, scientists finally looked at these things under much more powerful microscopes, and realized the threads weren't threads, really. Yeah. There was a healthier community when they were mixed and I wanted to figure out why. Exactly. It's like Snow White and The Seven Tubes or something. That there was a kind of a moral objection to thinking it this way. So we've done experiments, and other people in different labs around the world, they've been able to figure out that if a tree's injured ROBERT: It'll cry out in a kind of chemical way. And again. So you just did what Pavlov did to a plant. They're switched on. And it's in that little space between them that they make the exchange. Like, two percent or 0.00000001 percent? It's time -- time for us to go and lie down on the soft forest floor. Yeah, plants really like light, you know? LARRY UBELL: That -- that would be an interesting ALVIN UBELL: Don't interrupt. JENNIFER FRAZER: 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. And every day that goes by, I have less of an issue from the day before. They look just like mining tunnels. Because if I let you go it's gonna be another 20 minutes until I get to talk. I know -- I know you -- I know you don't. And then Monica would ROBERT: Just about, you know, seven or eight inches. MONICA GAGLIANO: It's a very biased view that humans have in particular towards others. And it can reach these little packets of minerals and mine them. Is it ROBERT: This is like metaphor is letting in the light as opposed to shutting down the blinds. This is Ashley Harding from St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. They can't take up CO2. JAD: And the plant still went to the place where the pipe was not even in the dirt? But the Ubells have noticed that even if a tree is 10 or 20, 30 yards away from the water pipe, for some reason the tree roots creep with uncanny regularity straight toward the water pipe. So maybe the root hairs, which are always found right at the growing tips of plant roots, maybe plant roots are like little ears. [ENRIQUE: This is Enrique Romero from the bordertown of Laredo, Texas. LARRY UBELL: We are the principals of Accurate Building Inspectors of Brooklyn, New York. [laughs] You mean, like the World Wide Web? ], This is Jennifer Frazer, and I'm a freelance science writer and blogger of The Artful Amoeba at Scientific American. You got the plant to associate the fan with food. We were so inconsistent, so clumsy, that the plants were smart to keep playing it safe and closing themselves up. It's now the Wood Wide Web? 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. ROBERT: I do want to go back, though, to -- for something like learning, like, I don't understand -- learning, as far as I understand it, is something that involves memory and storage. So he brought them some meat. There's not a leak in the glass. ROBERT: The plants would always grow towards the light. The light and the fan were always coming from the same direction. JAD: That apparently -- jury's still out. Let me just back up for a second so that you can -- to set the scene for you. ROBERT: So there is some water outside of the pipe. I thought okay, so this is just stupid. We showed one of these plants to him and to a couple of his colleagues, Sharon De La Cruz ROBERT: Because we wanted them to help us recreate Monica's next experiment. No, it's far more exciting than that. LARRY UBELL: You got somewhere to go? Because tree roots and a lot of plant roots are not actually very good at doing what you think they're doing. Yeah. Very similar to the sorts of vitamins and minerals that humans need. And this is what makes it even more gruesome. But it was originally done with -- with a dog. And she goes into that darkened room with all the pea plants. JAD: From just bears throwing fish on the ground? So you are related and you're both in the plumbing business? What -- I forgot to ask you something important. The problem is is with plants. I have even -- I can go better than even that. Very similar to the sorts of vitamins and minerals that humans need. ROBERT: So I think what she would argue is that we kind of proved her point. LARRY UBELL: I'm not giving my age. So they followed the sound of the barking and it leads them to an outhouse. MONICA GAGLIANO: Picasso! And Basically expanding it from a kind of a column of a pit to something that's -- we could actually grab onto his front legs and pull him out. ROBERT: Truth is, I think on this point she's got a -- she's right. Give it to the new -- well, that's what she saying. On one side, instead of the pipe with water, she attaches an MP3 player with a little speaker playing a recording of ROBERT: And then on the other side, Monica has another MP3 player with a speaker. But it was originally done with -- with a dog. I go out and I thought there's no one here on Sunday afternoon. It just kept curling and curling. Why waste hot water? Because tree roots and a lot of plant roots are not actually very good at doing what you think they're doing. Landing very comfortably onto a padded base made of foam. So no plants were actually hurt in this experiment. ROBERT: There's -- they have found salmon in tree rings. Monica thought about that and designed a different experiment. But it didn't happen. We're carefully examining the roots of this oak tree. JAD: Wait a second. MONICA GAGLIANO: Like for example, my plants were all in environment-controlled rooms, which is not a minor detail. Enough of that! So he brought them some meat. And so we, you know, we've identified these as kind of like hubs in the network. I mean, I think there's something to that. Wilderness Radio. And so why is that? Is that what -- is that what this? In my brain. So I'd seal the plant, the tree in a plastic bag, and then I would inject gas, so tagged with a -- with an isotope, which is radioactive. It seems like a no-brainer to me (pardon the unintentional pun) that they would have some very different ways of doing things similar to what animals do. They designed from scratch a towering parachute drop in blue translucent Lego pieces. The problem is is with plants. And we can move it up, and we can drop it. ROBERT: I don't think Monica knows the answer to that, but she does believe that, you know, that we humans MONICA GAGLIANO: We are a little obsessed with the brain. MONICA GAGLIANO: Exactly. I mean, to say that a plant is choosing a direction, I don't know. Oh, one more thing. And so I was really excited. ROBERT: But that scientist I mentioned MONICA GAGLIANO: My name is Monica Gagliano. He was a, not a wiener dog. JAD: So you couldn't replicate what she saw. Like a human would. There's not a leak in the glass. And when you measure them, like one study we saw found up to seven miles of this little threading What is this thing? If you look at a root under a microscope, what you see is all these thousands of feelers like hairs on your head looking for water. JAD: So today we have a triptych of experiments about plants. You know, it goes back to anthropomorphizing plant behaviors. The fungi, you know, after it's rained and snowed and the carcass has seeped down into the soil a bit, the fungi then go and they drink the salmon carcass down and then send it off to the tree. And she wondered whether that was true. Well, it depends on who you ask. Just a boring set of twigs. Now that's a very, you know, animals do this experiment, but it got Monica thinking. It's condensation. I'm a research associate professor at the University of Sydney. And if you go to too many rock concerts, you can break these hairs and that leads to permanent hearing loss, which is bad. JENNIFER FRAZER: So what do we have in our ears that we use to hear sound? SUZANNE SIMARD: You know, I don't completely understand. And it begins to look a lot like an airline flight map, but even more dense. So they might remember even for a much longer time than 28 days. say they're very curious, but want to see these experiments repeated. Each one an ounce, an ounce, an ounce, an ounce, an ounce. ROBERT: So that voice belongs to Aatish Bhatia, who is with Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. What do mean, the fungi will give me my sugar back? Can you make your own food? Can you -- will you soften your roots so that I can invade your root system?" ROBERT: The Ubells see this happening all the time. A tree needs something else. ROBERT: Nothing happened at all. The problem is is with plants. Picture one of those parachute drops that they have at the -- at state fairs or amusement parks where you're hoisted up to the top. ROBERT: So you are related and you're both in the plumbing business? She's not gonna use hot water because you don't want to cook your plants, you know? So you can get -- anybody can get one of these plants, and we did. Her use of metaphor. . I mean, I think there's something to that. Okay? It was like, Oh, I might disturb my plants!" I thought -- I thought tree roots just sort of did -- like, I thought -- I always imagined tree roots were kind of like straws. JENNIFER FRAZER: Oh, yeah. OUR PODCASTSSUPPORT US Smarty Plants LISTEN Download February 13, 2018 ( Robert Krulwich JAD: What exchange would that be, Robert? Let him talk. Tubes. Today, Robert drags Jad along on a parade for the surprising feats of brainless plants. Like for example, my plants were all in environment-controlled rooms, which is not a minor detail. A plant that is quite far away from the actual pipe. SUZANNE SIMARD: Basically expanding it from a kind of a column of a pit to something that's -- we could actually grab onto his front legs and pull him out. So what do we have in our ears that we use to hear sound? But they do have root hairs. It didn't seem to be learning anything. Or it's just the vibration of the pipe that's making it go toward it. ROBERT: All right, that's it, I think. So there seemed to be, under the ground, this fungal freeway system connecting one tree to the next to the next to the next. She's not gonna use hot water because you don't want to cook your plants, you know? Or maybe it's the fungus under the ground is kind of like a broker and decides who gets what. So I don't have an issue with that. But white, translucent and hairy, sort of. We went and looked for ourselves. To remember? JENNIFER FRAZER: If you look at these particles under the microscope, you can see the little tunnels. JENNIFER FRAZER: Right? No. MONICA GAGLIANO: Pretty much like the concept of Pavlov with his dog applied. However, if that's all they had was carbon ROBERT: That's Roy again. Unfortunately, right at that point Suzanne basically ran off to another meeting. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. They're father and son. I guess you could call it a mimosa plant drop box. JENNIFER FRAZER: Apparently, she built some sort of apparatus. The fungi, you know, after it's rained and snowed and the carcass has seeped down into the soil a bit, the fungi then go and they drink the salmon carcass down and then send it off to the tree. I mean, to say that a plant is choosing a direction, I don't know. Of Accurate Building Inspectors. ROBERT: Yeah. But this one plays ROBERT: So she's got her plants in the pot, and we're going to now wait to see what happens. What do you mean? I spoke to her with our producer Latif Nasser, and she told us that this -- this network has developed a kind of -- a nice, punny sort of name. On the outside of the pipe. Because this peculiar plant has a -- has a surprising little skill. But it didn't happen. And the -- I'm gonna mix metaphors here, the webs it weaves. If you get too wrapped up in your poetic metaphor, you're very likely to be misled and to over-interpret the data. So the roots can go either left or to the right. The little threads just wrapping themselves around the tree roots. [laughs]. ROBERT: But that scientist I mentioned MONICA GAGLIANO: My name is Monica Gagliano. So she decided to conduct her experiment. This is the plant and pipe mystery. WHRO is Hampton Roads' local NPR / PBS Station. He's holding his hand maybe a foot off the ground. And so on. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah. 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. So for three days, three times a day, she would shine these little blue lights on the plants. Thud. There's -- they have found salmon in tree rings. Annie McWen or McEwen ], Latif Nasser, Malissa O'Donnell, Arianne Wack ], With help from Amanda Aronczyk, Shima Oliaee ], Niles Hughes, Jake Arlow, Nigar Fatali ], And lastly, a friendly reminder. And again. Truth is, I think on this point she's got a -- she's right. Actually, Monica's dog leads perfectly into her third experiment, which again will be with a plant. Do you really need a brain to sense the world around you? 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. 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. That is cool. So just give me some birds. And not too far away from this tree, underground, there is a water pipe. To remember? And if you don't have one, by default you can't do much in general. It's a family business. Well, it depends on who you ask. ROBERT: So light is -- if you shine light on a plant you're, like, feeding it? Well, 25 percent of it ended up in the tree. It's doing like a triple double axel backflip or something into the sky. ROBERT: She says we now know that trees give each other loans. Enough of that! Fan, light, lean. But instead of dogs, she had pea plants in a dark room. Big thanks to Aatish Bhatia, to Sharon De La Cruz and to Peter Landgren at Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. ROBERT: That there was a kind of a moral objection to thinking it this way. Both aiming at the pea plant from the same direction, and the pea plant leans toward them. They're not experiencing extra changes, for example. So otherwise they can't photosynthesize. I'm a research associate professor at the University of Sydney. MONICA GAGLIANO: And it's good it was Sunday. And so I designed this experiment to figure that out. ROBERT: Like, would they figure it out faster this time? And if you don't have one, by default you can't do much in general. These guys are actually doing it." JAD: And is it as dramatic in the opposite direction? Yeah, mimosa has been one of the pet plants, I guess, for many scientists for, like, centuries. Whatever. In my brain. No question there. But what I do know is that the fact that the plant doesn't have a brain doesn't -- doesn't a priori says that the plants can't do something. Just for example. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah, tested it in my lab. He's not a huge fan of. ROBERT: All right, never mind. And she says this time they relaxed almost immediately. I think there are some cases where romanticizing something could possibly lead you to some interesting results. Landing very comfortably onto a padded base made of foam. Yeah, and I have done inspections where roots were coming up through the pipe into the house. If there was only the fan, would the plant After three days of this training regime, it is now time to test the plants with just the fan, no light. But we are in the home inspection business. ALVIN UBELL: Testing one, two. ROBERT: Peering down at the plants under the red glow of her headlamp. Ring, meat, eat. SUZANNE SIMARD: We're sitting on the exposed root system, which is like -- it is like a mat. ], [ALVIN UBELL: And Alvin Ubell. And she goes into that darkened room with all the pea plants. Right? I mean, couldn't it just be like that? Yes, we are related. I mean, I think there's something to that. On the outside of the pipe. Yeah, I know. JENNIFER FRAZER: And he would repeat this. Douglas fir, birch and cedar. JAD: That is cool. ROBERT: Smaller than an eyelash. Or at the time actually, she was a very little girl who loved the outdoors. And it can reach these little packets of minerals and mine them. A little while back, I had a rather boisterous conversation with these two guys. For this part of our broadcast, I'd like to begin by imagining a tall, dark, dense, green forest. So there is some water outside of the pipe. Me first. The roots of this tree of course can go any way they want to go. ROBERT: And the classic case of this is if you go back a few centuries ago, someone noticed that plants have sex. And the tree gets the message, and it sends a message back and says, "Yeah, I can do that.". Let us say you have a yard in front of your house. Same as the Pavlov. Because after dropping them 60 times, she then shook them left to right and they instantly folded up again. I'm 84. We dropped. Fan, light, lean. This is Roy Halling, researcher specializing in fungi at the New York Botanical Garden. I can scream my head off if I want to. I'm a professor emeritus of plant biology at UC Santa Cruz. They all went closed. SUZANNE SIMARD: It's just this incredible communications network that, you know, people had no idea about in the past, because we couldn't -- didn't know how to look. ROBERT: And Monica wondered in the plant's case MONICA GAGLIANO: If there was only the fan, would the plant ROBERT: Anticipate the light and lean toward it? Pics! I mean again, it's a tree. So Pavlov started by getting some dogs and some meat and a bell. That was my reaction. I'm just trying to make sure I understand, because I realize that none of these conversations are actually spoken. ROBERT: Okay. In the state of California, a medicinal marijuana cultivation license allows for the cultivation of up to 99 plants. ROBERT: 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. I mean, what? ALVIN UBELL: And the tree happens to be a weeping willow. If you look at a root under a microscope, what you see is all these thousands of feelers like hairs on your head looking for water. Fan, light, lean. Yeah, plants really like light, you know? And we saw this in the Bronx. I think if I move on to the next experiment from Monica, you're going to find it a little bit harder to object to it. ROBERT: Again, science writer Jennifer Frazer. But I wonder if her using these metaphors is perhaps a very creative way of looking at -- looking at a plant, and therefore leads her to make -- make up these experiments that those who wouldn't think the way she would would ever make up. He's the only springtail with a trench coat and a fedora. So they didn't. ROBERT: The Ubells see this happening all the time. I mean, can you remember what you were doing a month ago? JAD: So we're up to experiment two now, are we not? Here's the water.". And it's good it was Sunday. It's time -- time for us to go and lie down on the soft forest floor.

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