This seemed like an urban legend type deal, but I couldn’t find exactly where to put urban legend questions which may or may not have anecdotal or some form of factual basis. I admit I did not search a terribly long time, so sorry if it’s in the wrong forum.
I was reading an autobiography I bought at a garage sale recently. In it, the author (an environmentalist) mentions hearing stories about older trees emitting “screams” or loud sounds when being chopped down. He states that loggers hear this phenomenon so frequently that they get used to it. No cite, of course.
It sounded intriguing enough to look around for some firsthand accounts or even a debunking.
I have looked for links to accounts or stories, but to no avail. After Googling and searching Snopes (using several different combinations of search terms), I decided to ask my fellow Dopers and see what information might come up. Anybody else ever heard of this story/urban legend? Or have links to more info?
There is/was a band called “Screaming Trees” that I liked a lot.
Although I’ve never cut down a tree, I’m pretty confident that if they screamed, I would have heard of that by now. Plus there’s the fact that trees do not have any mechanism to produce sound.
The book is A Language Older Than Words, by Derrick Jensen. There is a lot of far-out stuff in the book (I’m only to page 55 or so), but this particular smidgen was mentioned in the context of his having heard stories or urban legends about it. That’s what I’m interested in more than any factual basis, as I have my doubts also about the possibility of any facts.
The scientist makes a machine that converts really high-pitched noises to sound we can hear. He hears screams everytime his neighbour cuts flowers. It turns out all plants speak in this way.
Dunno whether this is the story you were looking for.
Seriously? I can’t imagine how anyone could believe such a thing.