Yes, this can happen. Just like how prefetching (where email servers/providers pre-load email content before the user has opened the email) can inflate your open rates, links can also be "clicked" by email servers before actually clicked by a user. This is usually a security measure, where the system is checking the link for safety. But these types of clicks can usually be identified by the system, and thus excluded from the open rates they show you.

I have 9 years experience working at companies that allow people to send marketing emails, in roles ranging from tech support to product management, and I have seen instances where the filtering didn't happen as it's supposed to. These have been low-impact bugs, not very common and pretty quickly fixed. Within email campaigns where this happened, I don't recall specific numbers that were seen in terms of normal vs. abnormal click rates.

If you're sending emails and seeing way more clicks than usual, happening almost immediately, this might be the case for you. I'd suggest comparing like-to-like when looking into this, though - a "reset password" email campaign is going to have way more fast clicks than your standard marketing promo campaign, for example, and audience engagement varies. So look at the history for your particular emails and audience to get an idea of what's likely happening for you.