A botanist has documented what he’s
calling the “fastest flight in nature.” Tana
Weingartner explains:
Transcript
A botanist has documented what he’s
calling the “fastest flight in nature.” Tana
Weingartner explains:
Imagine this: a You-Tube video showing tulip-shaped fungi recoiling and
launching spores like wet cannonballs.
(sound of music)
Nicholas Money is a botanist at Miami University. He and a team of
researchers have used high speed cameras to capture, for the first time, fungi
launching spores.
“Fleas accelerate at 200 g, but we’re clocking these fungi moving at close to 200,000
g in terms of their acceleration. These are astonishingly fast movements.”
Fungi cause billions of dollars in crop damage each year.
Money says knowing how these spores move around can help prevent these
losses. He also says it’ll help allergen and pharmaceutical researchers too.
For The Environment Report, I’m Tana Weingartner.