Nihrah Ahmed
Surprisingly, new experiments and studies have shown that trees undergo changes that are not only chemical but also physical when they allegedly sleep. Of course they do not snore (yet) but they do make creaking noises. Tips of birch trees have been seen to droop low as much as 10 centimeters by the end of the night.
This was a Finnish experiment which was one of its kind and unique. A full scale and fully gown tree was not known to have undergone physical changes during ‘sleeping’ before this. Norbert Pfeifer of the Technical University of Vienna in Austria and his partner, who carried out the experiment assured that this was not due to other factors. They made sure it was not a windy night, and the length of the nights were same and carried out the experiment on 2 trees, one in Finland and one in Austria.
11 scans was made of the Finnish tree, each hour, and 77 scans were made of the Austrian tree every 10 minutes. Laser scanning was utilised, according to the experimenters, because it was a better alternate to only photography observation. This brought out more accurate results and they intend on carrying out these experiments on trees of more and other species to see the varying or same results.