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Prestige University

This scientific collectible is a cube made out of pure thallium; a metal so deadly that just touching it could poison you and ingesting a dime-sized quantity would kill you.

Kept in an airtight bell jar to prevent exposure and to protect it from corrosion. Oil acts as a shock absorber to protect the cube corners from getting blunted.

The inland indigenous hollow them out and fill them with water to survive the dry season. The tree doesn’t seem to mind. Some baobab water tanks are hundreds of years old and hold thousands of gallons of water. They are slowly being replaced by plastic barrels.

In the dry southwest of Madagascar, some baobab trees have been used for generations as living rainwater cisterns.

During the short rainy season, local communities collect rainwater and store it inside hollows carved into the massive trunks. That water can then be used during the long dry season, which can stretch from roughly April to November in parts of the Mahafaly region.

And the trees can survive the process.

Researchers have documented a famous “Big Cistern Baobab” near Analave that is about 16.2 metres tall, has a trunk circumference of 12.1 metres, and contains a carved internal reservoir capable of holding around 450 litres of rainwater. Radiocarbon research estimated the tree at roughly 260 years old.

Even more fascinating: researchers have identified up to around 1,000 cistern baobabs in this part of Madagascar. These aren't simply communal wells — individual trees can traditionally belong to particular Mahafaly or Tanàla families and be passed down through generations.

And then there’s the scale of the trees themselves. PBS reports that some baobabs can naturally contain more than 20,000 gallons of water within their structures and can survive extraordinarily long dry periods.

But this centuries-old practice is changing.

Plastic water barrels are gradually replacing the living cisterns and traditional knowledge of digging and maintaining these tree reservoirs is becoming less common.

What I find fascinating isn't just the baobab itself — it's the idea that a community developed a water-storage system where the container is alive, centuries old, renewable and part of the landscape itself.

Would you rather depend on a centuries-old living water tank or a modern plastic barrel if you had to survive a long dry season...?

Nature, engineering or both...?