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 . ROBERT: Oh, so it says to the newer, the healthier trees, "Here's my food. You need the nutrients that are in the soil. JAD: So we're up to experiment two now, are we not? And I do that in my brain. Today, Robert drags Jad along on a parade for the surprising feats of brainless plants. And what she discovered is that all these trees, all these trees that were of totally different species were sharing their food underground. She says we now know that trees give each other loans. Never mind.". That is actually a clue in what turns out to be a deep, deep mystery. So the deer's like, "Oh, well. And the tree happens to be a weeping willow. Which has, you know, for dogs has nothing to do with meat. Because the only reason why the experiment turned out to be 28 days is because I ran out of time. So the plants are now, you know, buckled in, minding their own business. ROBERT: And this? Picasso! ROBERT: Let us say you have a yard in front of your house. I guess you could call it a mimosa plant drop box. 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. And so on. Nothing delicious at all.". In this case, a little blue LED light. MONICA GAGLIANO: And it's good it was Sunday. They may have this intelligence, maybe we're just not smart enough yet to figure it out. Do you really need a brain to sense the world around you? Actually that's good advice for anyone. I have even -- I can go better than even that. And does it change my place in the world? Yes. I think there are some cases where romanticizing something could possibly lead you to some interesting results. And after not a whole lot of drops the plant, she noticed, stopped closing its leaves. Like, as in the fish. We dropped. In 1997, a couple of scientists wrote a paper which describes how fungi Jennifer says that what the tubes do is they worm their way back and forth through the soil until they bump into some pebbles. It's a very biased view that humans have in particular towards others. And we were all like, "Oh, my goodness! And on this particular day, she's with the whole family. Jun 3, 2019 - In our Animal Minds episode, we met a group of divers who rescued a humpback whale, then shared a really incredible moment.a moment in which the divers are convinced that the whale . 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? ROBERT: So that voice belongs to Aatish Bhatia, who is with Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. Because after dropping them 60 times, she then shook them left to right and they instantly folded up again. 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. SUZANNE SIMARD: You do. Or at the time actually, she was a very little girl who loved the outdoors. Then of course because it's the BBC, they take a picture of it. Finally, one time he did not bring the meat, but he rang the bell. I mean, to say that a plant is choosing a direction, I don't know. Isn't that what you do? But it was originally done with -- with a dog. And so we, you know, we've identified these as kind of like hubs in the network. Back and forth. ROBERT: So now, they had the radioactive particles inside their trunks and their branches. ROBERT: I know -- I know you -- I know you don't. No question there. That there was a kind of a moral objection to thinking this way. Why waste hot water? Maybe not with the helmet, but yeah. And I do that in my brain. He's looking up at us quite scared and very unhappy that he was covered in SUZANNE SIMARD: And toilet paper. They're father and son. And I mean, like, really loved the outdoors. ROBERT: And I wanted to talk to them because, as building inspectors they -- there's something they see over and over and over. You give me -- like, I want wind, birds, chipmunks Like, I'm not, like, your sound puppet here. So they can't move. LATIF: It's like a bank? It's almost as if these plants -- it's almost as if they know where our pipes are. If she's going to do this experiment, most likely she's going to use cold water. Connecting your house to the main city water line that's in the middle of the street. And so of course, that was only the beginning. Like for example, my plants were all in environment-controlled rooms, which is not a minor detail. In my brain. 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. And these acids come out and they start to dissolve the rocks. Let us say you have a yard in front of your house. And remember, if you're a springtail, don't talk to strange mushrooms. We are the principals of Accurate Building Inspectors of Brooklyn, New York. Yeah, and I have done inspections where roots were coming up through the pipe into the house. And, you know, my job was to track how these new plantations would grow. There's not a leak in the glass. Because the only reason why the experiment turned out to be 28 days is because I ran out of time. 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 curve, sometimes they branch. ROBERT: This final thought. Liquid rocks. 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, you're out there in the forest and you see all these trees, and you think they're individuals just like animals, right? Enough of that! Maybe just a tenth the width of your eyelash. 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. I've always loved Radiolab. JENNIFER FRAZER: And the fungus actually builds a tunnel inside the rock. And then what happens? And the -- I'm gonna mix metaphors here, the webs it weaves. 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. This is the headphones? You know, it goes back to anthropomorphizing plant behaviors. Pics! LARRY UBELL: Me first. Why is this network even there? I'm not making this up. ROBERT: So they followed the sound of the barking and it leads them to an outhouse. ROBERT: Inspector Tail is his name. Or even learn? Monica thought about that and designed a different experiment. He's the only springtail with a trench coat and a fedora. JAD: Wait. Oh, one more thing. MONICA GAGLIANO: Or would just be going random? Me first. Like, two percent or 0.00000001 percent? Yeah, it might run out of fuel. Or No. ROBERT: The plants would always grow towards the light. I mean, I -- it's a kind of Romanticism, I think. 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.". And then they do stuff. ROBERT: They're sort of flea-sized and they spend lots of time munching leaves on the forest floor. And not too far away from this tree, underground, there is a water pipe. Little seatbelt for him for the ride down. And the tree gets the message, and it sends a message back and says, "Yeah, I can do that.". And it's more expensive. And if you go to too many rock concerts, you can break these hairs and that leads to permanent hearing loss, which is bad. LINCOLN TAIZ: It's a very interesting experiment, and I really want to see whether it's correct or not. Well, I asked Suzanne about that. Listen to Radiolab: "Smarty Plants" on Pandora - Do you really need a brain to sense the world around you? ROBERT: So what they're saying is even if she's totally sealed the pipe so there's no leak at all, the difference in temperature will create some condensation on the outside. Close. And so I designed this experiment to figure that out. JAD: Yes. To remember? Join free & follow Radiolab. JENNIFER FRAZER: Yes, in a lot of cases it is the fungus. That was my reaction. Like trees of different species are supposed to fight each other for sunshine, right? ROBERT: And for the meat substitute, she gave each plant little bit of food. This way there is often more questions than answers, but that's part of the fun as well. 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. JAD: Couldn't it just be an entirely different interpretation here? But it didn't happen. ROBERT: She says what will happen under the ground is that the fungal tubes will stretch up toward the tree roots, and then they'll tell the tree SUZANNE SIMARD: With their chemical language. JAD: Are you bringing the plant parade again? So you think that that this -- you think this is a hubris corrector? Fan first, light after. ROBERT: And the idea was, she wanted to know like, once the radioactive particles were in the tree, what happens next? 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. You know, it goes back to anthropomorphizing plant behaviors. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah. Wait a second. The fact that humans do it in a particular way, it doesn't mean that everyone needs to do it in that way to be able to do it in the first place. JENNIFER FRAZER: I am the blogger of The Artful Amoeba at Scientific American. And it was almost like, let's see how much I have to stretch it here before you forget. Jad and Robert, they are spli SUZANNE SIMARD: So we know that Douglas fir will take -- a dying Douglas fir will send carbon to a neighboring Ponderosa pine. ROBERT: And not too far away from this tree, underground, there is a water pipe. Like, how can a plant -- how does a plant do that? Like the bell for the dog. They designed from scratch a towering parachute drop in blue translucent Lego pieces. 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