STUDY SHOWS TREES SYNCHRONISE ELECTRICAL SIGNALS DURING A SOLAR ECLIPSE
In a remarkable discovery, scientists have found that trees may act as a “living collective”, synchronising their internal electrical signals in anticipation of a solar eclipse.
During the 2022 eclipse over Italy’s Dolomites, researchers recorded spruce trees aligning their bioelectrical activity hours before the event began.
This suggests trees don’t just passively experience environmental changes - they anticipate and respond to them as interconnected organisms. The older the tree, the stronger its anticipatory signals, pointing to a potential transmission of ecological awareness across the forest.
Using custom sensors on living trees and even old stumps, the scientists observed coordinated changes in voltage within cells, known as bioelectrical potentials. These signals, driven by ion flows across membranes, indicate trees might communicate and adapt collectively.
The findings lend strong support to the idea that forests are not merely clusters of individual plants, but interdependent systems where ancient trees play a key role in resilience and ecosystem intelligence. The study also adds weight to growing calls to preserve old-growth forests for their unseen but vital ecological wisdom.
(The study is published in the journal of the Royal Society Open Science.)