This morning, my six-year-old came into our bedroom and started reading a story from a book. She followed each word on the page, slowly forming full sentences. Sometimes she stumbled and asked for help with some “funny words,” but by the end of the book, she had told us a story about a bear in the snow.

Verbal communication is one of the many reasons humans have become so successful as a species. From warning each other of danger to communicating complex information, our ability to speak has been crucial.

But it’s not just humans and other animals who have developed sophisticated communication. A lot of people think of plants as passive, but they have their own way of interacting with each other. The idea has been around for a while, even inspiring Hollywood movies like “Avatar.”

However, recent science is showing plant communication systems may be more complex than we imagined.

These communication networks are sensitive and in balance. Imagine how disrupted our world would be if global network systems suddenly broke down. The recent CrowdStrike IT outages are just one example of how delicate these systems are and how important communication is—and that’s the case for plants too.

To grasp how organisms who can’t speak pass on information to each other, it’s important to understand that humans also have a non-verbal communication system. This includes our senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch.

For example, natural gas companies add a chemical called mercaptan to natural gas, giving it that distinctive “rotten egg” smell to warn us of leaks. Think also of how we have developed sign language, while many people are skilled lip readers.

In addition to these senses, we also have equilibrioception (the ability to maintain balance and body posture), proprioception (the sense of the relative position and strength of our body parts), thermoception (sense of temperature changes), and nociception (ability to sense pain). All these abilities have enabled humans to become highly sophisticated in communication and engagement with the natural world.

Other species, particularly plants, use their senses to spread information in their own way.

What are the neighbors up to?

Most of us are familiar with the smell of freshly cut grass. The volatiles, or chemical substances, released by the grass plants, which we associate with that smell, are one way they communicate to other nearby plants that a predator—or in this case a lawnmower—is present, prompting an adjustment in plant defenses. Rather than using auditory cues, plants use chemical-induced communication. However, plant communication doesn’t end with volatiles.

Recently, scientists discovered just how well-connected plants are and how efficiently they can send messages to their peers via their roots, electrical signals, a network of underground fungi and soil microbes. The nosy plant neighborhood watch was discovered.

For example, electrophysiology is a relatively new scientific discipline that studies how electrical signals in and between plants are communicated and interpreted. With major advances in technology and artificial intelligence (AI), we have seen significant accelerated growth in this area of research in the past few years.

Scientists could be on the verge of remarkable discoveries, with recent advances integrating electrical signal communication within and between plants into modern greenhouses to monitor and control crop watering or detect nutritional deficiencies.

Scientists achieve this by inserting small electrical probes, similar to acupuncture needles, to test how changes in electrical signals relate to plant performance, such as transporting water and nutrients, and converting light into important sugars.

Researchers have even influenced plant behavior by sending electrical signals from mobile phones, making them perform basic responses like opening or closing leaves in a Venus flytrap.

Soon we may be able to fully translate the language of our crops.

A great deal of plant-to-plant communication happens below ground, facilitated by large fungal networks known as the “wood-wide web.” This network of fungi connects trees and plants underground, allowing them to share resources like water, nutrients and information. Through this system, older trees can help younger ones grow, and trees can warn each other about dangers such as pests.

It’s like an underground internet for trees and plants, helping them support and communicate with each other. The network is extensive, with over 80% of plants believed to be connected, making it one of the oldest communication systems in the world.

Just as the internet enables us to connect, share ideas, knowledge and information that can influence decision-making, the “wood-wide web” allows plants to use symbiotic fungi to prepare for environmental changes.

However, disturbing the soil through chemicals, deforestation or climate change can disrupt the communication nodes through affecting water and nutrient cycles in these networks, making plants less informed and connected. Not much research has yet been carried out into the effects of disrupting these networks.

But we know that plants’ responsive behavior, such as defense responses and gene regulation, can be altered by their fungal network if they are connected to one.

So this communication-disconnect might make them more vulnerable, making it more difficult to protect and restore ecosystems around the world. There is still a lot scientists have to learn about these highly complex networks

We know it’s important to help children learn to read so that they can navigate the world around them. It is just as important as to ensure we do not disconnect plant communication. After all, we depend upon plants for our well-being and survival.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, in collaboration with the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Switzerland and the University of Vienna in Austria, investigated how young golden eagles improve their flight skills as they age.

Their results, published in eLife, show that as golden eagles improve their flying skills, they become able to explore a broader area within their range in the central European Alps. Apparently, even seemingly instinctive behaviors require at least some learning in young animals.

Golden eagles are soaring birds. They ride on upward-moving air currents with open wings, which helps them conserve energy while covering large distances. “However, locating these invisible uplifts and positioning their bodies within the uplifts to gain height is not a simple task. The eagles literally need to learn to fly, at least when it comes to using uplifts,” explains Elham Nourani, the lead author of the study.

The team used GPS tracking technology to monitor 55 juvenile golden eagles from nests in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, and Austria. The eagles were tracked for up to three years after leaving their parents’ territories, as they flew freely across the central European Alps.

Increased habitat

The team found evidence of this learning process by observing a shift in the eagles’ flight patterns. Initially, the young birds flew close to mountain ridges, where winds deflect and move upwards, creating reliably predictable soaring conditions. Over time, they increasingly dared to fly in more open areas where uplifts are less predictable.

This transition suggests that as the eagles aged, their ability to find and utilize uplifts improved, making them less dependent on mountain ridges for flight.

The researchers estimated that the flyable areas for the eagles expanded more than 2,000-fold over three years as the birds’ honed their flight skills. “Flying is an eagle’s defining behavioral trait and you would think that when they fledged they should take to it like fish to water.

“But apparently they need experience and learning to extract energy from the atmospheric flows, shaping and changing how they move and where they go,” explains Kamran Safi, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute in Konstanz.

The relationship between age and use of the landscape can have implications for wildlife management practices. “We depend on wildlife distribution and movement maps to mitigate human-wildlife conflicts” says Nourani.

“Our study suggests that such maps should be viewed as dynamic, changing across various factors, including age.” This insight will enable more accurate predictions of potential overlaps between human activities and eagle behavior, particularly their use of the landscape at different stages of their development.