Do Plants Talk about Sex?

CrowdScience listener Doug has been experimenting with holding his wireless garage key to his chin. Why? Because he's testing a strange trick of physics. The range of a key can apparently double when held against your head rather just being held in your hand. Could this really be ...  Show more

CrowdScience listener Kassy in India wants to know if there’s any science to support the practice of ‘manifesting’ – the idea that you can make your wishes come true just by writing down your goals and sending your dreams out to the universe. Is it just a wacky belief or can it b ...  Show more

En mars 2023, des chercheurs de l’université de Tel Aviv ont pu enregistrer des sons émis par des plantes. En effet, cela fait 10 ans que des études montrent que les végétaux dégagent des vibrations mais c’est la première fois que des audios sont captés. Bien que les sons n’aien ...  Show more

Qui n’a pas été interpellé en rayon par la couverture du best-seller «La vie secrète des arbres» ou de son rival «La révolution des plantes»? Leurs auteurs Peter Wohlleben et Stefano Mancuso appellent à la reconnaissance d’une troisième forme d’intelligence, après celle du règne ...  Show more

Vision without eyes? Intelligence without a brain? Are plants more akin to us than we have been prepared to acknowledge? Or are they different in ways we will forever strain to imagine? One way or another, a vine with some unusual abilities is shaking the field of botany to its f ...  Show more

The second instalment in our double bill on the science of sex, answering this question from Robert Turner, a Curio from Leeds: "Why do we only have two sexes?"Drs Rutherford and Fry look for anomalies in the animal kingdom that go beyond the traditional mechanics of human reprod ...  Show more