When deprived of water or snipped with scissors, plants emit a flurry of staccato “screams” that are too high-frequency for humans to hear, a study suggests. When lowered into a range that human ears can detect, these stress-induced pops sound like someone furiously tap dancing across a field of bubble wrap.

Although humans cannot hear these ultrasonic pops without technological assistance, various mammals, insects and even other plants may be able to detect these noises in the wild and respond to them, researchers reported Thursday (March 30) in the journal Cell(opens in new tab). (The same researchers first shared their popping-plant discovery in 2019 on the preprint database bioRxiv, but the work has now been peer-reviewed.)

In the future, humans could harness recording devices and artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor crops for these signs of dehydration or disease, the scientists suggest.

Past research revealed that drought-stressed plants undergo a process called cavitation — where air bubbles form and collapse within the plant’s vasculature tissue — which makes a popping sound that can be detected by recording devices attached to the plant(opens in new tab). But it wasn’t clear if such popping sounds could be heard at a distance, the authors wrote in Cell.

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