I saw this fascinating experiment explained somewhere on a tv documentary, but can’t remember what documentary it was.
Here’s the jist of it.
Some university students performed an experiment on a particular type of tree. Let’s just say it was the Larch. The larch will produce a toxin in its sap when attacked by caterpillars. This is a fact (except that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the larch) and the students were testing it out to see if it really occurred. The students found a long row of these trees in a park somewhere and in accordance to the experiment, simulated a caterpillar attack. They got up on ladders and began ripping leaves, and just as expected, the tree began to create the toxin. The experiment was a success.
But there was an unexpected result. The other trees in the row, which were not part of the experiment other than to act as control subjects, ALSO began to produce the toxins. The beleaguered tree, seemed not only to produce toxins to ward off “the caterpillars”, but also sent a message to the other trees to say, “Hey fellow Larches, caterpillars are coming, start making poison.”
Does anyone recognize this experiment? I find nothing on Google and would like to be able to reference this in a paper I’m writing.
