Wood Wide Web

I was 8 when Avatar got released and my younger self loved watching that movie, everytime it was on HBO or star movies. Probably cause she liked seeing tall blue semi-naked humans with long tresses. Cut to 2025, I rewatched it recently and was still left in awe, at how some parts of the movie was spitting facts and scientific evidences of this world. The movie has a scene where Dr. Grace Augustine goes on, to mention, how trees are capable of downloading and accessing data through their roots. Intrestingly, that not only occurs in PANDORA but around us too.

You would likely find it hard to believe me if I said, "Trees have some kind of fibre optics attached in their roots, that's helping them communicate ( just like the internet)." Moreover they have named it Wood Wide Web (WWW). In 1997, Suzzane Simard gave us this groundbreaking theory, on how trees communicate and share food using WWW. Wood Wide Web is simply, the interconnectedness of trees roots with the help of fungi (basically a mycorrhizae). Two trees are considered as connected, if they share same fungal species. So a single tree is capable of connecting with 100's of trees in the forest.

You may be questioning the purpose of connection between trees. Just like us humans, they need to communicate and share resources, in order to survive for a long time. For instance, let's consider a part of forest is facing pest or predator invasion. The affected trees send electrochemical signal through mycorrhizae, to the rest of the trees to become alert about the situation. In turn the trees turn their leaves bitter to avoid their predators munching on them

(Tannins produced by some species of Acacia). There's more to it than this, they act as a community and in the community they believe, 'All for one and one for all'. Regardless of species differences, they take care of each other, they provide food to the weak or younger ones through this connections and some of the connections can last 100's and 1000's of years. 

Perhaps, in the not-too-distant future we are going to rely on them. We can leverage Wood Wide Web to bring changes, such as creating a well established forest in short time period, extraction of nutrients, monitoring trees health by attaching sensors to the roots, engineering a living tree into a house by tapping into WWW. Who can say what lies ahead of us? 

I highly recommend reading The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.