Next time you find yourself tending to your flower garden, you may want to stay quiet. The flowers are listening.

Israeli scientists discovered that the plants hear bees approaching and attempt to lure them in with sweeter nectar (花蜜). In several experiments, they found that playing audio recordings of buzzing bees around certain flowers will cause the sugar concentration in the nectar to rise by about 20% in less than five minutes. Such a rapid reaction by plants to sound had never previously been reported. Just to compare, the researchers also tried a higher frequency noise-like that made by a mosquito or a bat-and the flowers did not respond.

The authors point out that the behavior is actually in line with the natural order of things, considering that a plant’s ability to sense its environment and respond to it is critical for its survival. So, it would seem that plants have some sort of consciousness.

This is not the first time that plants have reacted to the sound around them. In a 2009 study, the researchers found that women’s voices help make plants grow faster. In that experiment, tomato plants were found to grow up to two inches taller when they were tended to by a female gardener.

What if we told you that a potato chip bag left on the floor of a break room could listen in on office gossip? As people were talking around the potato chip bag, they were sending tiny sound vibrations (振动) into the air. Those vibrations then hit lifeless objects around the room. Now imagine if you had a camera that was zoomed in on one of those objects extremely closely. In theory, you could actually see the object move along with the vibrations. You could then feed that video into a computer program that could translate the vibrations and you can play back the audio of the conversation that just took place.

So the next time you're at the botanical garden or in a grocery aisle, careful what you say. Someone-or something-might be listening.

Biologists in the United States are sounding an alarm about a deadly disease that has been attacking a quiet, intelligent animal: the bat. The disease, called white-nose syndrome, is an infection caused by a fungus (真菌) that attack the nose, wings, and other skin areas on the bodies of bats while they are hibernating (冬眠) in large groups in their caves. The disease was first discovered in a New York cave in the winter of 2006, and it is spreading quickly. Infected caves have been discovered in 19 states and in Canada.

Scientists have discovered that the source is a strain of a cold-loving fungus usually found in polar regions. They are not sure how the fungus kills bats. One theory is that the fungus causes discomfort. The bats began to become upset and partially wake up from hibernation. This activity causes them to burn precious stored body fat and die of starvation. Experts estimate that over 5. 5 million bats across nine species have disappeared because of the disease. Wildlife experts fear that if the infection spreads to more bat populations in the Southeast and Midwest, endangered bat species, such as the Indiana bat and Virginia big-eared bat, may be in grave danger of extinction.

Why should Americans care about the loss of these creatures? In warm months, bat fly at night, eating up to their body weight in insects. They control the populations of insects that bite, eat crops, destroy forests, and spread disease. Because of this, the United States government is getting involved. It has heard announcements from bat experts and is taking seriously their pleas (请愿) for funding to study the disease. The possibility of what one lawmaker called “an ecological and economic disaster” is very real if the deadly disease spreads further.

Every winter, Siberian cranes (白鹤) migrate from northeast Siberia in Russia to Poyang Lake in Jiangxi province, China. About 95 percent of the birds spend the season there. However, climate change has endangered the birds’ habitats.

“In some years, the Poyang Lake experiences floods, while in others, it experiences droughts. Both of these create food shortages in the cranes’ habitat,” Qian Fawen, a researcher from the National Bird Banding Center of China, told China Daily.

To help deal with the problem, the local government has built 70 hectares of lotus roots (莲藕) in Nanchang to provide food during the winter for the cranes. The birds’ population has risen from about 3,000 to more than 5,000 over the past 20 years, according to Qian.

Over the years, China has worked hard to protect migratory birds and wetlands. Known as the “Earth’s kidneys (肾脏)”, wetlands play a key role in cleaning water, preventing floods, and helping with biodiversity. The Wetlands Protection Law was introduced on June 1, 2022. It stops building work on important national wetlands and bans activities such as overgrazing (过度放牧) and giving out wastewater.

Thanks to these efforts, China has reported more birds wintering in the nation’s wetlands. In February, black-faced spoonbills (黑脸琵鹭), an endangered species, were seen wintering at Dongting Lake after disappearing for five years. Last December, Shanghai Chongming Dongtan Bird National Nature Reserve recorded more than 2,900 tundra swans up from some 1,000 seen during the winter of 2021.