How nature can teach you to value your quiet personality

We often think of ‘quiet’ as being an undesirable quality, that to communicate we must be loud and put ourselves out there – but nature teaches us differently. To survive, to thrive and to enjoy life, nature beautifully finds its own quieter ways of communicating.

By looking at 5 incredible ways that nature uses quiet ways to communicate we can learn that quiet isn’t a bad thing at all, and perhaps there is something ‘extra’ to us quiet ones that we hadn’t thought about before…

5 Ways Nature Quietly Communicates

1. Trees

Did you know, trees can talk to each other?! I’m not kidding! These beautiful, still statues that tower over us for hundreds of years – can actually talk! Under the ground, trees have an extremely complex root system, these are covered in tiny fungi called mitochondria. These mycorrhizal link in their millions to form chains between trees! When a tree is feeling weak, suffering from disease, or in need of an extra boost  – it will send distress signals down to these little fungi, who in turn, transfer that information to the surrounding trees! Amazingly, the surrounding trees can react to this, they might send out any additional nutrients to the distressed tree, or take a break from drinking to allow the sick tree to get what it needs!

Its so incredible to think, that when you’re in a woodlands all these amazing trees around you are working together as one big community to ensure the survival of one another! It just shows that even us quieter ones can be filled with empathy and provide so much support for those around us without words!

2. Bee’s!

Did you know.. that Bee’s can DANCE!? This video is so amazing and absolutely worth a little watch if you’ve never seen a bee dance!

It’s been discovered that bee’s actually dance to let other bee’s know where a good flower or plant is! They’ll use very specific angles in their body to determine the direction and how far away the food source is! How amazing to think that bees can transfer all that information across in just a little wiggle! We can think about how we can use movement to communicate too  – Maybe we should even try dancing round the kitchen to let our family and friends know dinners ready … (maybe not)!

3. Ants

We might not think of ants talking to each other.. these tiny little insects that follow each other in lines across our garden paths or occasionally found roaming our cupboards after that jar of jam has started to leak! But amazingly, they can communicate with each other in some pretty cool ways! Have you ever noticed all ants following one straight line? Well these lines of ants have a pretty cool story! Ant’s will go off and forage for food – When they a good food source, they’ll return to their nest but as they do so, they’ll leave a little trail of scent! Once they reach the nest, other ants can pick up on this scent and will follow it over to the food – as they’re doing so, they’ll keep topping up that scent so more ants can follow and they don’t loose their way! Finally, once that food sources has been exhausted, the ants will stop trailing the scent and it’ll disappear extremely quickly, which means others will no longer follow the trial to the food! It’s their way of helping everyone eat and also saying.. sorry, we’ve eaten it all! Pretty clever ey!

4. Butterflies

Everyone loves watching butterflies, so small and elegant as they flutter on through the air with seemingly no effort at all. When they take a time to pause, we can see the arrangement of their tiny tiny scales into bright, beautiful and bold patterns that are almost identical for each individual in that species! Although these patterns might leave us in awe because of their beauty – for many animals its the a BIG warning sign! We know as humans, that these beautiful butterflies don’t want trouble – but birds see them as a tasty snack! So, just like these peacock butterfly, they can use their wings as a way to say GO AWAY! Look at this photo for a while.. what do you see? What about two huge eyes.. a terrifying face that says ‘are you SURE you want to eat me? I’m pretty big and scary you know’..! These subtle signs keep them safe and are such an elegant way to communicate with other animals!

5. Foxes

Beautiful foxes, known for their stealthy and silent movements, you’ll rarely hear them make a noise as they gently move from place to place, hiding away in the bushes. But did you know, foxes communicate with the world around them in a very unique way. A lot of the time, they can use their sense – smell, sight, sound – but sometimes they need an extra hand. As their stealthily hunting their prey in slightly harsher conditions – like snow or long grass, they’ll engage a “6th sense” – they’ll feel the earths energies and hunt by using the earth’s magnetic field. This helps them to get a precise and accurate pounce onto their prey! It’s incredible how being so in-tune and engaged with the earth can help them to survive.

Although this isn’t so much about the fox communicating, it does really teach us to pay attention to the world around us and see how the world might just be communicating with us, to help us along a little – perhaps we just have to notice a little more.

Nature shows us that being quiet isn’t a bad thing at all – and there are some pretty amazing ways we can communicate without words!

To survive, nature must find those quiet moments and work with them to thrive and grow. Nature teaches us to reframe quiet, respect quiet, and look for quiet in order for us to thrive and grow too. It shows us that quiet isn’t a quality we should hide, its a quality that strengthens us and allows us to find our unique way in the world.