Listening to trees
All living things communicate in their own way to survive. Who’s to say one form of thinking, behaving or communicating operates at a higher order of magnitude? For instance you need to learn how to communicate in another language to understand what a person from any particular country is saying. With the advent of AI, this technology is providing opportunities for researchers to understand the language animals use to communicate, for example, whales.
Trees have existed for a long time, way before humanity arrived. Over the last few years, there have been and are conversations about whether trees communicate with one another on the wood wide web. Books have been written based on scientific research, along with documentaries. Despite the criticism directed at experts leading this debate, I think everyone should think of the possibilities out there instead of crushing the conversation with a defeatist attitude. Nothing would ever have been achieved or discovered with a narrow minded point of view. If trees do communicate, scientific evidence shows that it’s obviously on a very different level to our way of talking and thinking. So does that make it wrong or non existent? I enjoy walking through forests and appreciate every good thing about trees. If they do talk, and we can crack the code of their language through research or using AI, I have all the time in the world to listen to trees.
Story & photo by Gabrielle Ahern