Plants Really Do 'Scream'. We've Simply Never Heard It Until Now.
Well, sort of. Not in the same way you or I might scream. Rather, they emit popping or clicking noises in ultrasonic frequencies outside the range of human hearing that increase when the plant becomes stressed.
This, according to a study published in 2023, could be one of the ways in which plants communicate their distress to the world around them.
"Even in a quiet field, there are actually sounds that we don't hear, and those sounds carry information. There are animals that can hear these sounds, so there is the possibility that a lot of acoustic interaction is occurring," said evolutionary biologist Lilach Hadany of Tel Aviv University in Israel.
"Plants interact with insects and other animals all the time, and many of these organisms use sound for communication, so it would be very suboptimal for plants to not use sound at all."
Plants under stress aren't as passive as you might think. They undergo some pretty dramatic changes, one of the most detectable of which (to us humans, at least) is the release of some pretty powerful aromas. They can also alter their color and shape.
