Whisper of Pando recorded, largest living organism on earth talk via roots

Chicago: A sound artist has recorded the sound of the world's largest living organism and it is believed to be a whisper that is thousands of years old.

Pando, known as the forest of a single tree, is located in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah. The tree is spread across 106 acres. The forest is made of 47,000 genetically identical stems sprouting from a shared root system. This makes it a tree and a forest at the same time.

It is believed to be thousands of years old and has a dry weight of 6,000 metric tonnes. It is the heaviest living organism.

The artist, Jeff Rice used hydrophones to capture the acoustic portrait of Pando. He was curious to find out what the largest organism on the planet will sound like. "This project began with a question: what is the sound of one of the world's largest organisms."

The hydrophone was placed inside a hollow at the base of a branch and threaded down to the roots to record the sound. The hydrophone also captured the thumps from tapping on a branch 90 feet away and proved that Pando's root system is interconnected.

"I recorded pretty much everything that I could possibly record. The recordings include the sounds of leaves, birds, foxes, and even of ants moving over the branches," he told The Guardian. In one of the recordings, a whisper with a tremble of a million leaves echoing through the tree's roots was heard. "What you're hearing, I think, is the sound of millions of leaves in the forest, vibrating the tree and passing down through the branches, down into the earth."

He presented the findings at the 184th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Chicago.

"It was just an experiment, and I honestly didn’t think I would get anything. In one recording, made during a thunderstorm, an eerie, deep rumbling can be heard. What we were doing was not science. This was just sort of exploration," said Rice.

The thump was not audible through the air but was detected via the hydrophone. "That suggests that there’s a connection between these different branches in terms of the sound. What we’re hearing is not just this one branch that we’re listening to but many branches around us." However, more research is needed to confirm that the sound wasn't travelling via soil.

"I think the sound of Pando is really the sound of all of the parts of it. It’s the birds that are living in the tree, and it’s the insects, and it’s the wind in the leaves and it’s the vibration of the earth and the potential sound of the roots. And so I see it as really a great way of understanding the interconnectivity of Pando, and also soundscapes in general," he added.

Experts have been warning that Pando is probably dying off due to human actions.