Monday, September 24, 2012

Green Carnivores



 Everything eats flies, even plants!







Venus Fly Traps and Trumpet Pitcher Plants are two different type of carnivores plants. They both use some kind of physical attraction to bait their prey into their unique death traps. These videos will explain more but be warned the first one is pretty sad unless you hate flies like me. More info below videos. 




The Venus Fly Trap has a very fragile life cycle. It closes its trap slowly to make sure the insect is big enough to be worth the effort of digestion. If the insect is to small it will escape. If it was just a rock or to small of an insect it will reopen in about 12 hours. If the insect is big enough it slowly forms an air tight seal around it to prevent any harmful bacteria from getting in during digestion and keep the fluids in. If the insect sticks out of the trap, bacteria can come in and cause the plant to wither and die. The actual process of digestion can take any where between 5 to 12 days depending on the insects size. Once the digestive enzymes have finished the plant will open and the corpse will be blown away by wind or rain. All this takes enormous amounts of energy and the plant could easily die off if it doesn't secure its meal.  

The Trumpet Pitcher Plant may also have bacteria in its little water pools that help digest the animals inside and then both parties receive certain types of nutrients. If it doesn't have these other organisms to help it, it will use digestive enzymes to break down the animal inside the pool as they are being drowned. The plant absorbs amino acids, urea, phosphates and amonium from the animals. 

No comments:

Post a Comment