Can Trees TALK?
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- Опубліковано 10 тра 2024
- DON'T BUY FROM ESTABLISHED TITLES WITHOUT DOING YOUR OWN RESEARCH FIRST. They only use a fraction of a fraction of the money they make towards actual tree-planting or environmental work, and DO NOT make you a Lord/Lady officially.
Weird video for this channel but it was fun to make.
Thanks to my patrons!!
Patreon: www.patreon.com/user?u=73482298
Sources:
Curwood, S. (Host). (2018). "The Hidden Life of Trees". Living on Earth, 17/08/2018.
Gagliano, M., Vyazovskiy, V., Borbély, A. et al. (2016). "Learning by Association in Plants". Sci Rep 6, 38427.
Grant, R. (2018). "Do Trees Talk to Each Other?". Smithsonian Magazine.
Haskell, D. (2017). The Songs of Trees. Viking Penguin.
Hathaway, M. (2022). What a Mushroom Lives For. Princeton University Press.
Hinchliffe, J. (2018). "Plants hate green thumbs - science backs hands-off gardening approach". The Sydney Morning Herald.
Mannix, L. (2019). "Can trees learn? The plants are listening in, scientists say". The Sydney Morning Herald.
McClenaghan, B. (2019). "Talking Trees: How do Trees Communicate?". Let’s Talk Science.
NOTES
[Note 1] - Note the use of the passive voice here for the tree, as opposed to active for the dog.
[Note 2] - This is specifically about the conception in scientific literature, where an “objective” and “non-sensational” view has been emphasised for a long time. In the popular culture of nations around the world, trees have often been considered “beings”, as is argued in detail in Haskell (2017).
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:37 - Trees Can Talk
3:24 - Debate
4:43 - Conclusion & Credits
Written and created by me
Art & photography by kvd102
Music & additional graphics by me.
Translations:
Leeuwe van den Heuvel - Dutch
Wand_Platte - German
Momos - Italian
Heber Martínez Garay - Spanish
#trees #language #linguistics
1:04 I am both flattered and slightly upset that you’ve leaked my credit card information
Linguistics UA-cam drama
Isn’t established titles scam
It can't be your credit card because established titles is a scam and the "official" title means nothing legaly and couldn't be on a credit card.
@@Izzythemaker127 yes it could be on a credit card cause a credit card isn't a legal document. My Dad literally had a credit card where the name was "Assbiter"
You cannot even begin to fathom the memes that trees share via the fungal network
forget reddit,,, i wanna be on treedit
@@david_rocky_road what are the three commas for?
It gives you time to,,, forget
The wise mystical human 💀
@@cerebrummaximus3762 it’s a new hot take on ellipses,,,
the best thing about this is that a dude called "well living" when his name is translated into english discovered a tree stump that was well alive
and Peter means "stone" as well, so it should be "stone well living". seems suspiciously apt
@@gisopolis77 Damn. Nominative determinism at it again
The feature of language to be able to express meaningful nonsense is actually one of Hockett's design features that distinguishes (human) language from animal communication. Being able to produce false or meaningless statements is part of a feature called "prevarication", which is the ability to lie.
very cool!!
What makes us human? We can LIE >:)
I've seen this experiment where two pigs were put in a maze, but one of them knew where the bucket of food was ahead of time. It convinced the other pig to follow it and went somewhere else and once it was sufficiently distracted, ran over to where the food really was. The pig had a model of what others know or don't know. Humans don't even learn that until they're 3-5. Well after they have learned to form sentences.
I will concede though that this is not the same as meaningless statements or nonsense. "More people have been to Russia than I have," or "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
Monkeys can lie, but they can’t talk nonsense
This channel is such a gem. It fills the hole left by Xidnaf but better tbh
thank you so much, that's so nice lol
Ikr, K Klein is like my rum to fill the hole Xidnaf left after he "retired".
I really love his videos (he still makes videos on his secret channel, but many feel out of place, and far from "classic Xidnaf") - K Klein now fills the hole Xidnaf left.
I think K. Klein is better than Xidnaf, but yeah. It is kinda sad that he stopped uploading a while back
@@cerebrummaximus3762 'secret channel'?
@@allsoover Yeah, after he stopped uploading, because it was too much work, he created a second "secret channel" to explain his situation. He then started uploading occasional videos, based on things that interest him, but not too much effort to deserve to be on his original channel, but most are no longer on Linguistics anymore. Not sure if he even does that anymore.
Search it up on YT, if you can't find it, I might link it if you'd like
“meaningful nonsense” is a great description for a lot of human activities
Established Titles as far as i heard is mostly a scam. A good Alternative though is highland titles, which also are way cheaper, have a less predetory website and are a registered company.
And a smaller marketing overhead, clearly.
still a scame though.
i can see why the yanks fall for it but if youre british youve no excuse
@@BUSHCRAPPING He changed it
Please don't take sponsorships from established titles they are a well known scam. Becoming a lord is actually a very specific and difficult thing to do
They don’t really plant trees?
Is there any reading to do there about established titles? I would like to know about this scam.
If you do some googling you will see a some articles about this
+ excerpt I found just now:
"“Established Titles” is a scam that will sell you a piece of paper “proclaiming” that you are a Lord/Lady of somewhere. There are a number of companies that do this.
They skirt around Scottish (and British) law by not actually claiming (but implying) that this is a real landed title, similar to Baronet (the highest non-noble title in Britain). “Landed” being used loosely, as it’s probably something like 1 sq centimeter or something similar."
I'm sorry to tell you this, but I don't think anyone buying from Established Titles really thinks that they are, legally, whatever that means, lord or lady afterwards. It's just a funny gimmick to hang on your wall.
I think it makes more sense to think of the fungi as re-distributing resources and sending messages between its hosts. Fungi practice tree husbandry.
Ooh, That's an interesting take.
I think one of the main distinguishing features between human and animal language is the ability to meta analyse what we say. We don't need to communicate only about our environment, we can communicate about how we communicate, which I think is a pretty interesting feature that it's likely few other organisms are capable of.
Definitely enjoyed the point about whether we objectify plants too much and remove "agency", possibly making them a bit too passive in our vocabulary and hindering us from understanding the active nature of an ecosystem. But I think equally there's some danger in anthropomorphizing too much which could prevent us from understanding the underlying mechanisms behind communication.
all really good points !
I've only lived in northern California for a few years, but my father's favorite redwood he watches has curved one of its branches over 10 feet away from where it was when I moved here because a sapling wasn't getting enough sun.
Trees is smart man.
Trees is grow towards sunlight in the same way that your skin gets darker when exposed to the sun. No brain required, which IMO is a more elegant solution.
Yes they is. There is a deciduous tree outside my mom's apartment complex that I'm pretty sure is leaning more and more eastward every year. It's doing that because the west wind there can be pretty savage at times. I have seen other, straighter, trees in the same area get snapped to death by the same wind.
Or as Jojen Reed put it in "A Clash of Kings," "There is a power in living wood, a power as strong as fire."
i like this style with a background
I know, I think my artist did a good job on it, I might stick to this kind of thing in the future
@@kklein its just 3 colours with moving blur on it
@@kklein so real
@@privacypolicy123 🤓🤓🤓
Damn can't believe the Mythical Wise Tree is real
real
if you are 25 and have a computer
You must play this game!
You see? No reason to abandon religion or "primitive faiths" because of science.There is a grain of truth in all these, from a certain way of thinking....🤔
If you're over 25 and live in Southnorthern New York City, California you need to come to this forest!
They're telling each other that If You're Over 25 and Own a Computer, This Game Is a Must-Have, as all wise mythical trees do
wise mystical tree!
Can colourless green ideas sleep furiously?
but do they use grammatical gender?
Very interesting ideas presented here. Would be cool if trees could communicate. Might not be good if they communicated like humans, though. No lumberjack would be safe. Ooo, idea for a horror movie!
I've always wondered if anything happened if you hug a tree. I feel better, but does the tree feel anything?
I regularly talk with my trees in the garden.
:) Very interesting conversations.
Or I am crazy and should go to psychiatry :D
crazy
crazy
you are normal
Talking to yourself is not considered unhealthy. If you actually believe that trees can understand you, that would be a delusion, but I'm pretty sure it's harmless to talk to trees.
@@PlatinumAltaria I think it was meant as a joke, but you got a point there
If a tree falls down and no human is there to hear it, do its friends cry?
With minimal actual research and mostly basing everything off of what I already know, I've grown to like the idea that all living things communicate and possess some level of intelligence. Humans are unique for being able to talk about things that don't exist, but anything that moves of its own will is capable of adapting and learning to some extent. Humans really aren't *that* special, and it can be good to think of yourself like an animal sometimes to assess your thoughts with less "human bias".
The vast majority of organisms possess no intelligence at all and don't communicate. In fact the vast majority of everything in the universe gets by just fine. Only (some) animals bother with intelligence, and only some of those bother with communication.
As a biologist id say dont think of yourself as an animal sometimes but ALL the time because an animal is what you are. Most of our behaviour that we think is unique to us isnt and can be seen in other species. Things we do that we percieve as free will choices or cultural norms are actually just behaviours that lead to improved reproductive output that all animals do. We are unique in aspects like the complexity of our language but then dolphins have sonar, pidgeons outclass humans on classical IQ tests and have magnets in their brains that give them an inbuilt comlass, ants farm and even had slavery probably millions of years before humans even existed let alone developed agriculture. All species have their super powers and things that make them unique and special. As you said, humans are really no more special than any other lifeform
as someone who reads probably too many Wikipedia articles, i would warn against going too deep with the "humans are just animals" train of thought. though i don't think anyone has actually pinned down what sets apart people from animals, it is undeniable that people *are* different - an in-depth understanding of science and technology that allows for rapid innovation and development, plus the ability to understand abstractions like philosophy and morality which leads to wonderful stuff like human rights and existential dread.
@@rin_etoware_2989 Obviously humans are different from any other organism, but that isn't something unique to humans. All organisms differ from each other, often radically. As humans we just tend to value our unique attributes over those of, say, ants. I wonder what the ants would have to say about that.
Doesn't hurt to at least be aware of your bias, even if you think it's justified.
The concept of Botanolinguistics certainly is an interesting one.
Wow. This was *such* a beautiful video. I've been reading about consciousness/autonomy for the last few months, and there is all this discontent among (some) scientists about the anthropocentrism of everything we do and say regarding it, and there is this shift that is starting to try and get out of it. I was so pissed at the comments of Mannix about using "primed" and stuff like that, and was really happy when you mentioned precisely the issue with learning and language in humans. I really really loved it. I've got nothing else to add, this is just me feeling very strongly about this video. Awesome, and congrats.
Just a quick note, Mannix was just reporting on Jim Whelan's words, I don't want to lay the blame on Mannix for this one aha. But thank you so much for this lovely comment, it means a lot that this video meant something to you :)
@@kklein Yeah, I see the point. But Mannix's comment still shows his and the community's view that animals and other living beings are somehow different from us, and the very clear anthropocentrism of the scientific community. I by no means intend to blame him for it, but it is still evident from it.
I'm really thankful I stumbled on your channel. You always have something new and strange to say ❤️
I think the "language" used by dogs, chimpanzees, etc. is known as a "call system." Like you said, call systems can't relate hypotheticals. They can only refer to things present or involved in the current context/situation. Even those dogs or cats that learn to "communicate" with those speaking buttons are partaking in a call system. Dogs already can know when their human gets a leash it means they will go on a walk. So an owner trains a dog to press the button that says "walk" when the dog wants to go on a walk. The dog doesn't necessarily recognize the digital voice saying "walk," but the owner does. Dogs can understand when we say that we love them because we use mostly consistent inflections when saying so, and we include that phrase with petting. As a result the dog recognizes that action as one of affection. Owners train dogs to use the "I love you" button, but it doesn't mean the dog understands the concept of [singular 1st person pronoun] engages in the deep, positive emotional connection of love towards [singular/plural 2nd person pronoun].
“but it doesn’t mean the dog understands the concept of … [breakdown of the sentence]”
Do humans?
I mean, yes, of course, if you stop and try to breakdown the sentence piece by piece.
But, is that what people do every time they hear a sentence? No.
The majority of the time, we hear a certain series of sounds and are primed to associate that input with a certain concept.
Granted, the number of inputs we can differentiate is orders of magnitude more than dogs. But is the system we use to do so FUNDAMENTALLY different to what dogs do? I don’t know. This is an unsolved neuro-psychology question.
But I think it’s worthwhile to not dismiss the idea that these systems of communication might be built on the same foundation
I recall seeing Bunny the dog (one of the dogs known for communicating with the buttons) communicating with her owner about something that happened a significant amount of time in the past. At minimum that seems to be outside of the current context. Obviously, that is just one anecdote, but it does give me pause when considering all of this and before making broad statements. Personally, I believe in human exceptionalism, but I'm quite open to the possibility of us vastly underestimating animal intelligence and even consciousness.
@@JonathonMcClung Right. I love Bunny actually, and she is such an interesting case. I remember seeing a video of her describing a stranger outside the house, informing her owner. I thought it was intriguing because dogs, like most animals, can recognize coming danger, and her owners were able to turn that instinct into something she could explicitly relate whereas barking or gesturing at the door could mean multiple things.
@@melon_man_dan6888 Yeah, I should catch up on her videos. I haven't watched them in a long time. More so I want to do the same thing with my dogs, but those programmable buttons have gotten expensive! 😂
@@devongilweit388 *vsauce music plays
The Court of the Lord Lyon has said (youtube eats comments with links but you have google):
> The term ‘laird’ has generally been applied to the owner of an estate, sometimes by the owner himself or, more commonly, by those living and working on the estate. It is description rather than a title, and is not appropriate for the owner of a normal residential property, far less the owner of a small souvenir plot of land. It goes without saying that the term ‘laird’ is not synonymous with that of ‘lord’ or ‘lady’.
Please don’t accept sponsorship deals to outright lie to people. Scotland does not allow tiny plots of land to be sold (registration of the sale *is* still necessary and not available for such plots), and owning such a plot does not actually make you a Laird.
not the established titles jumpscare
1:48 i like how the acacia tree is from minecraft
I have no roots but I must scream
oh no not established titles
"K Klein Kingdom"
yeah i don't think that's gonna work...
Everyone gangsta until the wise mystical tree.
It's called the wood wide web btw.
Must play this game
Why was my immediate reaction to the title to check if this was posted April 1
Feels very Tom Scott, and I mean that complimentarily.
congrats, Lord Klein
It doesn't actually answer your question on the subject of meaninglessness, but check out the book Mycelium Running! How networks of fungi communicate with the trees and pass the tree's messages around is so cool! For example masting. Trees release a small number of acorns every year to keep the squirrels around and alive, and then every so often number of random years, the trees will communicate via the fungi "THIS IS THE YEAR, LET'S GO!" and they'll all produce some ridiculous amount more number of acorns than usual, so the squirrels will still go around burying them but not be able to eat them all and more acorns will survive than usual.
There's also the Hidden Life of Trees, so good! For example, we do know a way that trees communicate when there is no danger. They provide less sugars for baby trees to survive that aren't growing politely, if it's a social tree. There are species of antisocial trees that live where not many other trees grow and don't care at all if the social trees nearby dislike where their branch is growing, lmao. I especially like the Hidden Life of Trees for the way it describes the trees. It talks from the perspective of the trees in a very "being" way as opposed to "object" way, as you put it. For instance the chapter on trees being polite describes the social trees as if they were stuck up and the antisocial trees as rebels, which I just adored. Trees are great! You should Hidden Life of Trees and make videos on tree language! Man that'd be cool!
Also just while I'm at it, the science fiction book Semiosis is about an intelligent plant alien and it's just fantastic. In the second book in the series the author even describes from the intelligent plant's point of view another intelligent plant's joke about water molecules being flat!
Established Titles... Yeah. 💀
IIRC the scientific consensus is still a bit up in the air for this one so take any claim or single study with a healthy dose of skepticism
My definition of language is, a language is something which can exprees information in a way in which an infinite amount of meanings are possible. That's what we do every time we speak. We tell something which has a meaning, one of an infinite amount of possible meanings which someone can understand.
Until we learn about living beings which has the ability to express an infinite amount of meanings while being understood by something else we won't know anything. Especially since we just recently learned that voices in frequencies we cannot hear exist, bugs fart and touch to communicate, plants are plants and the many amounts of expressions some animals can make which we cannot differentiate or even see.
We as humans have even whistle languages and sign languages.
5:16 for Umberto Eco, the sign is defined as that which can be used to lie.
Can trees lie?
Can trees opt to not believe a tree?
Can tries deny to share/help?
I logged into the wood wide web and the mycelium didnt even know you
Wohlleben found a dead tree, that was wohl am Leben.
Established Titles really have gotten to everyone in the past few weeks, huh 😵💫
Promotions like this always make me hesitant to share videos around.
Imagine going back into the past and telling the people about Established Titles
ännu mer intressant video
Awesome video!
when i saw the notification for this in school i just knew it was going to be a video with trees
wow last quote was powerful.
You should be aware that just like animals, plants have life. What makes it different from animals like us is they have plant cells. However they still function for life
Trees are so kind.
If a human steps on a Lego and there's no tree around to see it, did they still say "oh FFS"?
Trees don’t talk, they bark.
Meant to make a video about this too, great video!
I love to know it as well
2:22 I really apriciate that you spell naïve with the diaresis!
When there's no danger; trees talk and ponder if humans have a language, or if they just react and respond to dangers and are only conditioned.
Big up your GCSE Biology teacher
Love this channel
Obviously we can choose to define learning however we want, but from a practical standpoint I think having a specialized organ dedicated to generalized signal processing(a brain) is probably a good way to delineate learning from priming. Obviously still not perfect; a plant with a sophisticated set of adaptations for responding to signals may actually have more ability to adapt than an insect with a small neuron cluster but I imagine there are practical limits to the amount of conditions an organism without a brain can adapt to, whereas one with a brain will really only be limited by the size of its brain.
When reading your comment, I wondered if a computer's CPU counts as "a specialized organ dedicated to generalized signal processing." By similar lines of thinking, a cell's ribosomes could also be argued as meeting that description.
One of the interesting things about language is how terms can gain meaning far beyond their original intent while still connecting back through layers of metaphor and generalisation.
Id argue that we are being quite limited in assuming only an animal type brain/ganglia can achieve this. Plants can have extremely complex fungal networks which could perhaps function analgously to neurons on a macro scale. If we assume that a brain is the only way nature can evolve sophisticated behaviour we might miss other forms of intelligence. There is nothing to say that a system entirely different from a brain (i.e a mycelium network) couldn't have evolved similarities in regards some of its functions. At the end of the day, a brain is just a bunch of highly connected cells sending signals and a mycelium network is also a bunch of highly connected cells sending signals.
Cool video also nice outro music
There is a great sci-fi book called “Children of Time” that deconstructs how we think of intelligent life that covers some similar ground of how do we know if life is intelligent
I really have enjoyed watching this video! Good job! and thank you!
the wise mystical tree makes sense now
panpsychism fr fr
I really like your content :)
Something this makes me think about, which you may or may not have a video about, is I heard in a video about Orcas, that the more social a species is, the more intricate and detailed their language becomes. Have Orcas learned to express abstract ideas or things that don't independently exist? like "boredom". Are Orcas smart enough to even be bored? The video also talked about how, independent cats such as a lynx, is less intelligent than pack cats, such as lions.
thats so interesting and cool and you are awesome
aww thank you :)
damn trees really be more social than me
What do Trees have to talk about except the consistency of Squirrel Droppings?
Did you just use Lingo Lizard for the aliteration?
i know
5:21 So trees probably can’t bullshit?
re: hypotheticals, your immune system is absolutely capable of encoding signals for conditions that couldn't possibly arise, e.g. calling for the production of an antibody to an impossible disease. And sure, the antibody being called for is itself still real.... but so is your drawing of the tree turning into the unicorn.
It's true
Girl: “you’re so human and humble”
Me: “🌲🌲🌲. 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲”
5:05 Aha, I found why that's not true; you don't even have a tree in your backyard!
Also a key difference between proper memory and immunological memory is despite being part of the adaptive immunity response immunological memory at the level of a cell is all but adaptive, it's innate. It works by shuffling genes in any given lymphocyte and then selecting the active ones after the fact. A brain, and all its components, change in order to record memories; a white blood cell either "remembers" the right thing from the beginning and is allowed to continue on or it doesn't and it's discarded
"I'd like to be a tree." -- Fluttershy
1972: Can monkeys posses a language?
2022: Can trees talk?
I hope your GCSE biology teacher sees this 🔥
5:09
Keep us updated!
So interesting!!!
I love the closing question!
(if a tree communicate in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, could be a hypothetical?)
When you posted a poll about trees, i thought that it is gonna about generativism or languages family tree... just realized that trees play a huge role in linguistics....
omg thank ypu haha
does anyone else kind of hate when scientists say obvious things like its groundbreaking information when talking about non human like they will do a study showing how animals have basic empathy and be shocked or how theyll be like trees can talk to each other when this has been known to almost every culture in the world since the dawn of humanity
as someone who studies plants, thank you for making this video
sick m8
How about saying they communicate?
Besides, it's kind of absurd to completely change how one interacts with some part of the world only due to learning neutral information about it.
(I suppose it might be a different story if we learned what trees have to say about us. Can trees misjudge things?)
It is absolutely not absurd to change how you interact with something based on neutral information (unless you define neutral to mean irrelevant and then the information in this video is arguably not neutral).
@@cheshire1 Only if the given part of the world doesn't really matter to you anyway and how you interact with it is truly arbitrary.
Otherwise your relation to it is shaped by material conditions which aren't altered by your understanding alone.
Saying that something is relevant makes no sense without clarity to what it would be relevant.
Would you lay out that argument?
@@xCorvus7x Would you act differently towards plants if you found out they were conscious? Would that information be 'neutral'? What do you mean by neutral information?
so it's a language if it's got an irrealis mood? 🤔
Trees:)
Do a video on Scottish Gaelic!😊
#ad? I can't do this anymore.
wow i never thought of language versus warnings or commands as being able to say "meaningful nonsense". interesting
This video is a real treet! Didn't expect that branch! Leaf it to you to make plants such an interesting topic!
Interesting, i've heard about this but never had it explained
That bit in debate reminded me that my conlang is planned to categorize all living beings under their word for people, which includes plants and animals
Plants scare me sometimes. Not in a "scream out loud" kinda way but I get chills down my spine.
Anyways I've discovered your channel today through the first video you did on Chinese phonemes and it was really fun watching all of these videos! So I thought I'd drop a little thank you
thanks :) i appreciate that!
So the Lorax knew of this the entire time. No wonder he's so defensive whenever one tree gets cut.
Ok this is my last video I’m going to sleep after this video