A priceless slug-eating plant has been stolen from a nursery in Austria.

It’s hoped the flesh-eater has been taken by pranksters rather than rival botanical geneticists.

Slugs and other pests cost agriculture billions of pounds each year so a copy could be worth a fortune. A predator plant could also make many poisons redundant.

Useful energy from random vibrations

A question for the physicists… Just how much energy could you theoretically get from these things? There’s plenty of sources for the motive force – just put banks of them under freeway overpasses and between train tracks. But could they be made cheaply enough and placed densely enough to make them really useful?

For instance, could you fit enough of them inside a jet airliner wing to power the plane’s electrical systems from the engine vibrations and turbulence? Could you use them near the tires of electric cars to supplement the battery power?

Or provide power to a city by the screams of those who encounter the zombies in the tunnels below?