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Haunting Sounds from the Largest Living Thing

We can now hear one of the largest and most ancient living organisms on Earth whisper with the tremble of a million leaves echoing through its roots.

Here, this lone male quaking aspen ( Populus tremuloides) gradually grew into a massive 6,000 metric tons of life, making it the largest living organism in the world in terms of mass. "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," Rice explained when he presented his recordings to the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, as reported by The Guardian. "Friends of Pando plans to use the data gathered as the basis for additional studies on water movement, how branch arrays are related to one another, insect colonies, and root depth, all of which we know little about today," said Oditt.

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