Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. Hi Mamie Barton. And I'm trace Kerr and it's time for a brainstorm. So I want to preface this first off by saying that this story has been reported in national geographic and the Smithsonian magazine, but as of January, 2019 the study has not been peer reviewed, so it's been looked at by a lot of scientists and they're like, yeah, it's probably true and it's just too cool not to talk about. Excellent. Okay, so flowers here, buzzing bees,
Speaker 1 00:36 flowers. Where's
Speaker 0 00:37 here? Buzzing bees. And they respond to the buzzing by getting sweeter. What is the flower version of an end? Moot. Okay. That is what's happening here. Yeah. So Tel Aviv researcher, dr <inaudible>, hadn't he wondered if bees make sounds, because we hear bees, right? Yup. Why wouldn't flowers have evolved some way to hear them think about the shape of pedals and flowers. Oh, they're rounded. They're kind of like ears. Almost like a bowl or a satellite dish. Yeah. Well they did research on evening primroses, which is a little wild flower. And they, they did five different kinds of sound on the flowers. One went into a jar and it got the silent treatment, uh, and they checked the sugar content of the nectar and it just kind of stayed the same. Okay. Then they did high frequency sounds, broadcasting them at the flowers and mid range and nothing.
Speaker 0 01:31 There wasn't even a vibration in the pedals. Wow. Well, when they exposed the flowers to recordings of bees for three minutes, sugar in the plant went from 12 to 17% to 20%. Oh wow. Yeah. And that doesn't sound like a lot, but apparently bees can detect like half of percentage points sweeter. So sweeter plants attract more bees. More bees mean more pollination. That at that is just amazing, huh? Yeah. And as a control, they, they pulled all the pedals off of the flower and then they did all these different sounds and it made no change at all. So they really need the pedals there to, to experience the vibration. Wow. That is amazing. I'm really articulate when we have something super brilliant that's mind bending like this. I know. So when you're outside in the summer, which we are not right now in the summer, but some day when there's flowers again, I'm like a B.
Speaker 0 02:30 yeah. Just think about that be sound and the fact that it's probably changing the way the flower produces sugar. That is remarkable. It just makes me wonder what else in nature, we aren't aware of how we affected the way it interacts with the world around it. I think we might be breaking things because we don't understand. Yes. You know how complicated it is. Yeah. It's still magic. Yes. Love the science magic. Me too. I want to talk to the flowers more often. I know anytime you need another dose of random facts tacularness ask your smart speaker to play brain junk podcast. You can also find us on Twitter as at my brain junk and we're on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcast trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored.
