full transcript
"From the Ted Talk by Jonathan Drori: The beautiful tricks of flowers"

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Now you can imagine that if nectar is such a valuable thing and expensive for the plant to pucorde and it atcttras lots of pollinators, then, just as in human sex, people might start to dicveee. They might say, "I've got a bit of nectar. Do you want to come and get it?" Now this is a plant. This is a pnalt here that insects in South Africa just love, and they've evolved with a long pisrobocs to get the nectar at the bottom. And this is the miimc. So this is a plant that is mimicking the first plant. And here is the long-probosced fly that has not gotten any nectar from the mimic, because the mimic doesn't give it any ntacer. It thought it would get some. So not only has the fly not got the nectar from the mimic plant, it's also — if you look very closely just at the head end, you can see that it's got a bit of pollen that it would be transmitting to another plant, if only some btsnioat hadn't come along and stuck it to a blue piece of card.

Open Cloze

Now you can imagine that if nectar is such a valuable thing and expensive for the plant to _______ and it ________ lots of pollinators, then, just as in human sex, people might start to _______. They might say, "I've got a bit of nectar. Do you want to come and get it?" Now this is a plant. This is a _____ here that insects in South Africa just love, and they've evolved with a long _________ to get the nectar at the bottom. And this is the _____. So this is a plant that is mimicking the first plant. And here is the long-probosced fly that has not gotten any nectar from the mimic, because the mimic doesn't give it any ______. It thought it would get some. So not only has the fly not got the nectar from the mimic plant, it's also — if you look very closely just at the head end, you can see that it's got a bit of pollen that it would be transmitting to another plant, if only some ________ hadn't come along and stuck it to a blue piece of card.

Solution

  1. botanist
  2. nectar
  3. plant
  4. deceive
  5. proboscis
  6. mimic
  7. produce
  8. attracts

Original Text

Now you can imagine that if nectar is such a valuable thing and expensive for the plant to produce and it attracts lots of pollinators, then, just as in human sex, people might start to deceive. They might say, "I've got a bit of nectar. Do you want to come and get it?" Now this is a plant. This is a plant here that insects in South Africa just love, and they've evolved with a long proboscis to get the nectar at the bottom. And this is the mimic. So this is a plant that is mimicking the first plant. And here is the long-probosced fly that has not gotten any nectar from the mimic, because the mimic doesn't give it any nectar. It thought it would get some. So not only has the fly not got the nectar from the mimic plant, it's also — if you look very closely just at the head end, you can see that it's got a bit of pollen that it would be transmitting to another plant, if only some botanist hadn't come along and stuck it to a blue piece of card.

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
electron microscope 4
flowering plants 3
yellow flowers 3
scanning electron 3
ultraviolet light 3

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
scanning electron microscope 3

Important Words

  1. africa
  2. attracts
  3. bit
  4. blue
  5. botanist
  6. bottom
  7. card
  8. closely
  9. deceive
  10. evolved
  11. expensive
  12. fly
  13. give
  14. head
  15. human
  16. imagine
  17. insects
  18. long
  19. lots
  20. love
  21. mimic
  22. mimicking
  23. nectar
  24. people
  25. piece
  26. plant
  27. pollen
  28. pollinators
  29. proboscis
  30. produce
  31. sex
  32. south
  33. start
  34. stuck
  35. thought
  36. transmitting
  37. valuable