Stressed plants can make ultrasonic clicking sounds.
Why this sounds fake
Plants look passive and silent to us, so airborne sounds from stressed leaves feel too animal-like.
Plants seem silent because their sounds usually sit outside human hearing. In a Cell study, tomato and tobacco plants produced airborne ultrasonic clicks when dehydrated or cut. The sounds were recorded from a distance and could be classified by stress type. Calling it screaming would be too loaded, because plants do not have throats or pain systems like animals. The accurate version is still weird enough: under stress, some plants emit high-frequency airborne sounds that nearby microphones, and possibly some animals, can detect. A quiet greenhouse may not be quiet at all.
The click is real; it just sits to the right of the band our ears can pick up, where only microphones reach.
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