let's do it! You need the nutrients that are in the soil. Her use of metaphor. 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. I go out and I thought there's no one here on Sunday afternoon. Right? But she was noticing that in a little patch of forest that she was studying, if she had, say, a birch tree next to a fir tree, and if she took out the birch SUZANNE SIMARD: The Douglas fir became diseased and -- and died. 2018. So I don't have a problem. All in all, turns out one tree was connected to 47 other trees all around it. I think there are some cases where romanticizing something could possibly lead you to some interesting results. The problem is is with plants. ROBERT: Well, let us say you have a yard in front of your house. [ENRIQUE: This is Enrique Romero from the bordertown of Laredo, Texas. Both aiming at the pea plant from the same direction, and the pea plant leans toward them. I mean, I think there's something to that. ], With help from Alexandra Leigh Young, Jackson Roach and Charu Sinha. All right. Along with a home-inspection duo, a science writer, and some enterprising scientists at Princeton University, wedig into the work of evolutionaryecologist Monica Gagliano, who turns ourbrain-centered worldview on its head through a series of clever experiments that show plants doing things we never would've imagined. JAD: So they just went right for the MP3 fake water, not even the actual water? So I don't have an issue with that. ROBERT: So the plants are now, you know, buckled in, minding their own business. So that voice belongs to Aatish Bhatia, who is with Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. Which has, you know, for dogs has nothing to do with meat. But we are in the home inspection business. They're switched on. That is definitely cool. It should have some. ROBERT: So the deer's like, "Oh, well. Unfortunately, right at that point Suzanne basically ran off to another meeting. But We did catch up with her a few weeks later. The fungus were literally sucking the nitrogen out of the springtails, and it was too late to get away. SUZANNE SIMARD: We had a Geiger counter out there. They learned something. ROBERT: And you can actually see this happen. ROBERT: Then she placed the fan right next to the light so that MONICA GAGLIANO: The light and the fan were always coming from the same direction. That there was a kind of a moral objection to thinking this way. I mean, I see the dirt. JENNIFER FRAZER: The fungi needs sugar to build their bodies, the same way that we use our food to build our bodies. But it didn't happen. ROBERT: The plants would always grow towards the light. Was it possible that maybe the plants correctly responded by not opening, because something really mad was happening around it and it's like, "This place is not safe.". Then she takes the little light and the little fan and moves them to the other side of the plant. It's time -- time for us to go and lie down on the soft forest floor. SUZANNE SIMARD: Jigs emerged. Like what she saw in the outhouse? It's definitely crazy. Never mind. What do you mean? Well, I have one thing just out of curiosity As we were winding up with our home inspectors, Alvin and Larry Ubell, we thought maybe we should run this metaphor idea by them. An expert. 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. They need light to grow. ROBERT: So that voice belongs to Aatish Bhatia, who is with Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. Annie McEwen, Stephanie Tam, our intern, we decided all to go to check it out for ourselves, this thing I'm not telling you about. Let him talk. Because what she does next is three days later, she takes these plants back into the lab. But they do have root hairs. And she goes on to argue that had we been a little bit more steady and a little bit more consistent, the plants would have learned and would have remembered the lesson. He's holding his hand maybe a foot off the ground. Like, how can a plant -- how does a plant do that? MONICA GAGLIANO: Landing very comfortably onto a padded base made of foam. Remember that the roots of these plants can either go one direction towards the sound of water in a pipe, or the other direction to the sound of silence. RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH: It's the equivalent of a human being jumping over the Eiffel Tower. Exactly. And the tree gets the message, and it sends a message back and says, "Yeah, I can do that.". I mean, I see the dirt. 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? Thud. Okay? LARRY UBELL: Or it's just the vibration of the pipe that's making it go toward it. They play with sound and story in a way that's incredibly intriguing, I was instantly hooked with More Perfect. ROBERT: She determined that you can pick a little computer fan and blow it on a pea plant for pretty much ever and the pea plant would be utterly indifferent to the whole thing. I found a little water! 526; 4 years ago; Smarty Plants by Radiolab. ROBERT: No, no, no, no, no. Jennifer told Latif and I about another role that these fungi play. Pics! ROBERT: And the salivation equivalent was the tilt of the plant? ROBERT: She found that the one stimulus that would be perfect was MONICA GAGLIANO: A little fan. Have you hugged your houseplant today? I know -- I know you -- I know you don't. Pics! I know. That's what she says. Every one of them. 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. And so I don't have a problem with that. And therefore she might, in the end, see something that no one else would see. ROBERT: And right in the middle of the yard is a tree. Our store also offers Grooming, Training, Adoptions, Veterinary and Curbside Pickup. So no plants were actually hurt in this experiment. [laughs]. You mean you got down on all fours and just And so my mom always talks about how she had to constantly be giving me worm medicine because I was -- I always had worms. It was magic for me. ROBERT: So you think that that this -- you think this is a hubris corrector? Start of message. Oh, one more thing. Oh, well that's a miracle. JAD: So we're up to experiment two now, are we not? And is it as dramatic in the opposite direction? No boink anymore. Pics! So we know that Douglas fir will take -- a dying Douglas fir will send carbon to a neighboring Ponderosa pine. So let's go to the first. ROBERT: All right, that's it, I think. And so now we're down there. And then she waited a few more days and came back. He's the only springtail with a trench coat and a fedora. Ring, meat, eat. It's almost as if these plants -- it's almost as if they know where our pipes are. For this part of our broadcast, I'd like to begin by imagining a tall, dark, dense, green forest. The tree has a lot of sugar. ROBERT: Like, would they figure it out faster this time? ROBERT: But then, scientists did an experiment where they gave some springtails some fungus to eat. Gone. ROBERT: So for three days, three times a day, she would shine these little blue lights on the plants. Take it. ROBERT: This is very like if you had a little helmet with a light on it. ROBERT: So I think what she would argue is that we kind of proved her point. Maybe each root is -- is like a little ear for the plant. You just used a very interesting word. ROBERT: But that scientist I mentioned MONICA GAGLIANO: My name is Monica Gagliano. Nothing delicious at all. Jigs emerged. ROBERT: Of the tree's sugar goes down to the mushroom team? ROBERT: A little while back, I had a rather boisterous conversation with these two guys. I've always loved Radiolab. JENNIFER FRAZER: Yes, in a lot of cases it is the fungus. Monica says what she does do is move around the world with a general feeling of What if? Now the plants if they were truly dumb, they'd go 50/50. We're just learning about them now, and they're so interesting. 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 And those chemicals will then move through the network and warn neighboring trees or seedlings. Monica thought about that and designed a different experiment. I'm sorry? JAD: Where would the -- a little plant even store a memory? It just kept curling and curling. And we can move it up, and we can drop it. Again. 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. She thinks that they somehow remembered all those drops and it never hurt, so they didn't fold up any more. So he brought them some meat. So you can -- you can see this is like a game of telephone. That's what she says. I don't know yet. This way there is often more questions than answers, but that's part of the fun as well. JAD: And the plant still went to the place where the pipe was not even in the dirt? Yeah. They're called feeder roots. JAD: We've all seen houseplants do that, right? Or even learn? JAD: Coming up on the Plant Parade, we get to the heart -- or better yet, the root -- of a very specific type of plant. ROBERT: But the drop was just shocking and sudden enough for the little plant to ROBERT: Then Monica hoists the plant back up again and drops it again. ], [JENNIFER FRAZER: This is Jennifer Frazer, and I'm a freelance science writer and blogger of The Artful Amoeba at Scientific American. They designed from scratch a towering parachute drop in blue translucent Lego pieces. 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. No, I actually, like even this morning it's already like poof! On the outside of the pipe. Sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh. And again. One tree goes "Uh-oh." And moved around, but always matched in the same way together. I mean, I think there's something to that. It's a -- it's a three-pronged answer. She determined that you can pick a little computer fan and blow it on a pea plant for pretty much ever and the pea plant would be utterly indifferent to the whole thing. Because if I let you go it's gonna be another 20 minutes until I get to talk. You give me -- like, I want wind, birds, chipmunks JAD: Like, I'm not, like, your sound puppet here. I gotta say, doing this story, this is the part that knocked me silly. ROBERT: When we last left off, I'm just saying you just said intelligence. Artificial Plants Aquarium Substrate Backgrounds Gravel, Sand & Stones Live Plants Ornaments Plant Food & Fertilizers Heating & Lighting Heaters Hoods & Glass Canopies Heating & Lighting Accessories Lights Live Fish Goldfish, Betta & More Starter Kits bird Bird Shops Food & Treats Pet Bird Food Treats I think there are some cases where romanticizing something could possibly lead you to some interesting results. Can Robert get Jad to join the march? JAD: That apparently -- jury's still out -- are going to make me rethink my stance on plants. 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. Yeah. Because after dropping them 60 times, she then shook them left to right and they instantly folded up again. 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. Is it, like -- is it a plant? ROBERT: Connecting your house to the main city water line that's in the middle of the street. ROBERT: But once again I kind of wondered if -- since the plant doesn't have a brain or even neurons to connect the idea of light and wind or whatever, where would they put that information? JENNIFER FRAZER: This all has a history, of course. And so the whole family and uncles and aunts and cousins, we all rush up there. Well, I asked Suzanne about that. ANNIE: But I wonder if her using these metaphors ANNIE: 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. And I remember it was Sunday, because I started screaming in my lab. I thought okay, so this is just stupid. It's time -- time for us to go and lie down on the soft forest floor. 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. They're all out in the forest. I mean, I think there's something to that. And the tubes branch and sometimes they reconnect. If a plant doesn't have a brain what is choosing where to go? And the -- I'm gonna mix metaphors here, the webs it weaves. Apparently, bears park themselves in places and grab fish out of the water, and then, you know, take a bite and then throw the carcass down on the ground. But she had a kind of, maybe call it a Jigs-ian recollection. SUZANNE SIMARD: So we know that Douglas fir will take -- a dying Douglas fir will send carbon to a neighboring Ponderosa pine. ROBERT: And she goes into that darkened room with all the pea plants. ], [ROY HALLING: Matt Kielty, Robert Krulwich, Annie McEwen, Andy Mills, Latif Nasser, Malissa O'Donnell. Okay. Or it's just the vibration of the pipe that's making it go toward it. So she's saying they remembered for almost a month? Sorry! That's amazing and fantastic. ROBERT: And this? It's a very interesting experiment, and I really want to see whether it's correct or not. I mean, couldn't it just be like that? And so we're digging away, and Jigs was, you know, looking up with his paws, you know, and looking at us, waiting. 2018. 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. Like trees of different species are supposed to fight each other for sunshine, right? On one side, instead of the pipe with water, she attaches an MP3 player with a little speaker playing a recording of And then on the other side, Monica has another MP3 player with a speaker. 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. I found a little water! If you get too wrapped up in your poetic metaphor, you're very likely to be misled and to over-interpret the data. And does it change my place in the world? So you just did what Pavlov did to a plant. I just listened to this Radiolab episode called "Smarty Plants". This is Ashley Harding from St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. 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