1-1 Carnivorous Plants

Animals don't eat it, it eats animals. And there's one right here.

Watch.

This is Venus's flytrap. It shapes its traps from the ends of its leaves. One or two hairs on their surface act as triggers.

Here comes a meal.

Touch the hair and the trap is sprung.

There's now no escape. The beetle's struggles stimulate the plant to close the trap even more tightly. It now produces digestive acids from glands on the inner surface of the leaf, leaf which first kill and then dissolve its victim's body. Growing in the same Carolina swamp there's another carnivorous plant. These are the trumpet pitchers. They like the Venus's fly trap find so little nutriment in this impoverished waterlogged soil that they supplement it with the bodies of animals.

Their traps are also formed from leaves but leaves that have been folded length to make a vertical tube which fills with water.

These spectacular trumpets may look like flowers, but of course they're not, though in a sense this bright yellow top to them serves the same purpose as a petal. It's an advertisement of a delicious reward, and the reward itself is under here.

Sweet nectar. But if an insect comes to collect it and strays into the mouth of the trumpet, then it's doomed.

The inside of the throat of the trumpet is covered with microscopic downward-pointing spines.

As long as it stays on the rim, the ant is all right. But if it strays off it, it falls into a pond of water and drowns. The tiny corpse dissolves and the marsh pitcher absorbs the resulting soup.

and where one ant goes, others are likely to follow.

The marsh pitcher attracts other animals too. This frog may be hoping to eat some of the insects before the pitcher does, but if it loses its footing, the plant will eat it.