An Islamabad hiker has posted a video of a tree apparently making weird noises on his Instagram on Monday, sparking a lot of speculation among netizens about what the tree might actually be.
“Hear and see is not fake, WARNING: Disturbing audio. While shooting at trail 5 Islamabad we experienced something bizarre. The tree must’ve been a foot and a half in diameter and it had a perfect hole the size of a coin. The sound you hear is coming from inside the hole.” Ahmedaliakbarofficial said.
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Although, we cannot verify whether the video is real or not, however, we can tell you trees are living, breathing organisms and aren’t as stoic as they appear, albeit people tend to dismiss trees as inanimate features of the landscape.
Trees, it turns out, emit a wide range of sounds as they develop and react to their surroundings. Happy, regularly growing trees sound different from drought stressed trees. According to National Geographic, a group of scientists from Grenoble University in France are currently working to identify these cries for help amidst all the normal tree white noise in order to provide better, more targeted aid to trees suffering from drought.
In the case of drought, trees undergoing stress form tiny bubbles inside their trunks, NatGeo explains, which causes a unique ultrasonic noise. To slurp the remaining few drips from the bottom of your glass with a straw, you would need to exert even more pressure. This increased pressure can cause the water column in drought-stricken trees to collapse, allowing dissolved air to create bubbles that obstruct water flow.
Researchers and managers are interested in detecting warning signs that indicate a tree needs emergency watering since these breaks, known as cavitations, can ultimately result in the death of a tree.
Eventually, the researchers think this finding may lead to handheld microphones that specialize in diagnosing tree distress signals. Other contraptions could be permanently strapped to a tree, providing constant updates on the trees health and perhaps even trigger automatic watering systems in times of drought, a bit like a sprinkler system in a building released its water when licked by flames.
Whether this is a case with the aforementioned tree in the video or not, crying sound coming out of trees isn’t as strange as it may sound.
