Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A still showing the jet ejected from a squirting cucumber, which carries its seeds distances of up to 32 feet away from the mother ...

Take a look at squirting cucumber explosive seed dispersal in real time and slowed down. Credit: Helen Gorges/CC BY-NC-ND One doesn’t normally associate ballistics with botany, but most of us don’t ...

New research into the biomechanics of explosive seed dispersal in squirting cucumbers (Ecballium elaterium) reveals how these plants have adapted a suite of unique traits that help propel their ...

An odd little gourd called the squirting cucumber has an explosive reproductive strategy that has intrigued naturalists since the days of the Roman Empire. Squirting cucumbers blast their seeds over ...

Three summers ago, Kiel University biomechanist Stainslav Gorb, returned to Germany after a vacation in Turkey with a present for Ph.D. student Helen Gorges. "He came back and was like, 'Helen, I ...

You don’t usually expect plants to launch their seeds like missiles - but the squirting cucumber does exactly that. This explosive little plant builds up pressure until it violently ejects its seeds ...

This revealed that the seed projection method of the squirting cucumber has been fine-tuned to ensure near-optimal dispersal and the success of the plant over generations. For instance, making the ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

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A small, hairy, toxic version of the cucumbers found in the produce aisle does have an advantage over its more palatable cousins — a feat of... Stand back! This explosive cucumber is bursting with ...