Talk is cheap: rediscovering sounds made by plants
Plants emit sounds, but this does not necessarily mean that somebody is listening to them or is even interested in what they have to say. Even our joints produce acoustic emissions, and this is especially true for those of us well over our 50s. As an example, knees produce acoustic emissions that orthopedics can use as biomarkers for a quantitative assessment of joint aging and degeneration, just like plant physiologists can use plant-emitted UAEs to assess the occurrence of drought stress. Then the question is: when we hike or run in the forest, shall we worry about predators outside listening to acoustic emissions from our knees to identify an older human for an easy dinner? Possible, in principle, but still awaiting experimental demonstration.
