# How the Squirting Cucumber Shoots and Spreads Its Seeds

- Original post: https://www.twitter.com/i/status/2120535327496421422
- Source account: [@GaziKutlu](https://x.com/GaziKutlu)
- Source language: English
- Duration: 0:53
- Published: 2026-11-12
- Canonical URL: https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds

## Transcript

[0:00](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds) This cucumber just fired its seeds at 70 kilometers an hour, and for days before it fired, it was taking aim.

[0:07](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=7) It's the squirting cucumber, a wild Mediterranean plant that spreads its seeds by shooting them out.

[0:12](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=12) Its fruit fills with slime around the seeds, pressurized like an overfilled water balloon.

[0:17](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=17) At first, it hangs almost straight down.

[0:20](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=20) Fired from there, its seeds would go straight up and land right beside it, so it moves fluid out of the fruit and into its stalk.

[0:27](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=27) The stalk swells and stiffens and lifts the fruit to about 43 degrees, close to the angle that throws farthest.

[0:33](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=33) Then the fruit snaps off its stalk, and the hole left behind becomes a nozzle.

[0:37](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=37) The stalk springs back and kicks the fruit into a spin, tipping it more upright as it fires.

[0:43](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=43) Each seed leaves slower and steeper than the one before.

[0:46](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/iG9m5QSYjBJ4/en/how-the-squirting-cucumber-shoots-and-spreads-its-seeds?t=46) That spin isn't a flaw. It turns one shot into a spray, so the seeds land spread out, not in one pile.