Guess what, mango?
What's that? Well?
So, did you ever have a venus fly trap as a kid?
I did not. I mean my cousins Froshni and Rohan, who are so cool, they had one.
But yeah, all the cool kids had one. It's true, you know. I think one of the things I remember most about it was how impossible it was to convince my friends not to keep making it close up like this one that I had. And it was just something too satisfying about like taking a pencil or something like that and triggering it to close up.
Yeah, I feel like every kid who's been around one is guilty of like trying to feed it something they shouldn't.
Well, And I was recently reminded of a little display of these carnivorous plants that one of our teachers had
put out in front of her classroom. This was back in third grade, and you know, there was some venus fly traps and pitcher plants, of course a few others, and it was weird how problematic this display became because you had this one group of kids that just couldn't resist, and so every day, at or any time they were outside, they would try to find anythings to feed the plant like insects, whatever they could find, and things got a little out of hand when one day the teacher found
a matchbox car inside one of the picture plants.
I had no idea. I didn't think mashbox cars tasted like meat.
Well me either, but apparently they did. But it really did show just how impossible it is for a group of kids to resist feeding these plants that they saw
as just being so exotic. And you know, keep in mind, this was I think a year or two after the remake of Little Shop of Horrors had come out, so you know, this idea of a ferocious flesh eating plant was it was kind of already in kids' minds, and it actually led to the bigger problem, which was that some of the older kids in the school were telling some of the kindergarteners that these plants were going to
eat them. Of course, and it only took a couple of kindergarteners who simply refused to walk past the display to put it to an end, and the display disappeared as quickly as it went up. Or else, I guess it just got moved to the science plat, but either way, it was no longer in the hallway for kids.
To say, poor kids. But you know, even if you're horrified by the plants, like, there is something so fascinating about them, right yeah, And it's what made us.
Want to tackle today's topic, you know, to talk about things like the plant that Darwin described as the most wonderful plant in the world, or to think about which animal actually likes to spend its nights inside a picture plant, and of course which state is the only one with an official state carnivorous plant. There's so much to bid into, so let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to
part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always by my good friend mangesh hot Ticketter and on the other side of the soundproof glass tending to his own venus fly trap but trying to feed it. Is that a slim It is a slim gym Oh wow, that's our friends and producer Tristan McNeil.
I know I already told him I don't think it's going to eat a slim tom, Tristan, but he just looked me in the eye and said, meat is meat.
Kind of a weird catchphrase there, Tristan, But I mean this is something that a lot of people are actually curious about is what types of meat do Venus fly traps preferred?
You know, yeah, so usually of course they go for insects and spiders, though I did read that some fly traps will occasionally catch a small frog for dinner. And there are also these carnivorous pitcher plants and the Philippines that are big enough to digest rats and shrews.
Wow, so that's actually true, then, is that something that happens often?
Not exactly, so, frogs and rodents are pretty big meals for carnivorous plants. Basically, it's like a I don't know, like if if human ate an entire cow or something, right, it's not something that we do very often, just because of how much time and energy it takes to digest something that huge.
Yeah, I don't need an entire cow every day. I feel like that's just more of a sometimes food for special occasions, the full cow. But I mean, seriously, though, how amazing is it that there are plants that can actually eat animals? I mean, it's kind of terrifying, but it's also pretty incredible.
Yeah, It's one of those things that always measures to amaze me. And creep me out, like every time I think about it. You know, it also just seems so unplant like. Uh, it feels like, you know, a plant that hunts and traps and kills and digests the meal. Like those aren't plant activities. I don't mean to stereotype, but.
And that's why today's show was such a fun one to put together, because so much of what we found out was just completely unexpected. So today we'll be answering all sorts of bizarre questions that most of us have never thought to ask, things like why did carnivorous plants evolve a taste for meat? The venus fly traps really know how to count? And how come Thomas Jefferson was so obsessed with meat eating plants. There's a lot to cover today, but where do you think you want to start?
Mango, So, one of the things we should probably get out of the way right up front is why carnivorous plants eat meat in the first place.
I think it's clearly because they're evil. We talked about the timing of the movie Little Shop of Bars. If that's scientifically speaking, I think that is the answer, right.
Yeah, So, you know, one weird thing is I've never seen that movie as strange as it is, but uh, and I know it's beloved. But you know, for actual carnivorous plants, meat isn't really what they're after. Like, they don't capture live prey for the thrill of the hunt or whatever, or for the taste for that matter. You know, as you can guess, they're just doing it as a way to obtain important nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.
I mean, but it feels like there's got to be an easier way to get those nutrients, Like why not just absorb them through their roots like those nice, you know, peaceful plants that are out there.
Yeah, that's right. I mean, it is kind of an extreme measure when you think about it, but they had to develop that way because carnivorous plants tend to live in places where the soil is really thin and poor in nutrients, so they might think of like a swamp or a bog. And since the plants can't get what they need from the soil alone, they get it by digesting this live prey. Basically, the nutrients that come for the prey help the plant grow faster and increase their reproductive odds.
All right, So if the meeting and trait was an evolutionary response to poor soil, then where did the carnivorous plants first come from? Because I'm just curious which part of the world had soil so bad that the plants were having to figure out, like how to eat flies and stuff like that, just to figure out how to survive.
Yeah, I mean, carnivorous plants are native to places all over the world. In fact, you can find them on every continent but Antarctica. And it's interesting because it suggests that throughout history plant species have evolved carnivorous tendencies again and again. In fact, that they've done it no less than nine times according to researchers, And any place in the world that had lousy enough soil basically became this
breeding ground for carnivorous plants. And today they're actually about six hundred unique species worldwide.
Oh wow, So you're saying that each of those six hundred can be traced back to one of you know, ten or so common ancestors.
That's right, because even though several different plant species hit upon the idea of eating meat, they came up with totally different, like kinds of traps for sourcing that meat. You know, we're probably most familiar with venus fly traps, which have those spring trap jaws and that they used to snare their prey. But uh, you know, other carnivorous plants have their own strategies. There's there's the sundew plant, which uses a bunch of sticky tentacles to like grab
passing bugs. And there's something called the butterwort, which has this broad, flat leaf and and that kind of acts as like a fly paper, so an insect gets stuck in place, and then the leaf glands cover the bug and digestive mucus, and you know, all the nutrients are then absorbed straight into the leaf.
Oh a nightmare. It's like being chained to a wall while the wall eats you. It's just not something pleasant to think about.
The wall is drifting this gross goole over you're at the same day. You know. As memorable as the butterwarts trap is, my favorite carnivorous plant is the pitcher plant, and they're probably the second most known next to the flat traffs. They have these specialized leaves that use color and also scent to draw insects to their picture, like organs, and then thanks to all these downward facing hairs on
the leaves, the insects aren't able to crawl back out. Instead, they just slip into this deadly enzyme bat that slowly digests them.
Well, I can see why that's your favorite. I mean, who doesn't love the old dunkem in a tub of acid routine? And it's impressive.
Yeah, But I mean I get that it's gruesome, but I kind of like how well designed it is, right, Like, it's super tricky. And you know, picture plants can be gross too. They don't actually have a way of expelling their waist, so as the plant gets older, it's picture just kind of fills up with all these indigestible insect parts until it kind of becomes this big bug graveyard. And while the picture plants acid bad sounds like kind
of bad. The thing is like all carnivorous plants rely on some kind of chemical cocktail to digest their prey fly traps, inject it into the chambers where they trap their prey butterwarts, as we mentioned, secrete it through their leaves. And in fact, there was a study last year out of the University of Buffalo and it shows just how similar this technique is across species. Basically, it proved that different carnivorous plants, including ones that were only distantly related,
all use the same molecular recipe for digestive fluids. And that's despite the fact that some of these plants are native to different continents and evolved separately over the course of millions of years.
Oh wow, that's interesting. So I guess they took fluid samples and compared them across species or something.
Yeah, exactly, and they found that all the plants relied on similar enzymes. But what was even more amazing was that the enzymes aren't unique to carnivorous plants. They're actually used by non carnivorous plants as a way to fight off pathogens.
All right, so then when the carnivorous plants kind of adapted and repurposed the enzymes for use in digestion, But I mean, how did that work? Exactly?
The example I came across is this polymer called kitan, and apparently it's what the cell walls of fungi are made from. So plants obviously don't want a bunch of fungi growing on their roots and choking the life out of them, So they produce this special enzyme to break the kitan down and keep these funguses at bay. But in the case of carnivorous plants, that enzyme has been repurposed to eat away like insect exoskeletons, and that also
happens to be made of kitan. So it's a pretty wild case of plants kind of reprogramming their existing genes to suit this more meat loving lifestyle. Huh.
All right, so maybe all carnivorous plants share this same gross bond, But I still think you need to convince me a little bit more about picture plants.
You're really on this is.
That we know that flooded graveyard you described has to make them like fifty times grosser than the other meat eaters that are out there. It's just kind of weird.
Well, what if I told you that a pitcher plant is actually a cradle of life?
You'd just be making up words? What do you mean by that?
So one of the things I'm surprised to learn is that there are actually some species of super tiny frogs that lay their eggs in the safety of a picture plant, and then when they hatch these baby tadpoles spend their first weeks of life swimming in that murky water, right up until they're old enough to sort of hop out and strike out on their own. You know. There's also a mammal in Borneo that just likes to cozy up
to pitcher plants. It's called the common wooly bat, and apparently one of its favorite places the sleep is snuggled up inside a pitcher plant.
Wait, it actually sleeps inside the picture, Like, why would it want to sleep in a bunch of dead bug water? What's the incentive there?
Well, that's what makes this particular species so special, So it actually grows two different kinds of pictures. The first is your standard bug catching picture. It's close to the ground, it smells sweet, and it's filled with these digestive fluids. But the second type of picture is designed especially for bats. It's higher up, it's dry inside, and its shaped almost like a little reflector dish so that the bats can easily spot it with their sonar.
Huh, Well, what's so special about bats? Like why would the plants kind of roll out the red carpet just just for them?
I guess it's that the plants are actually after the guana or you know, the bat waste, and every time the bats spend the night, they relieve themselves and leave nutrients for the plants to absorb. So it's kind of like a bat hotel where everyone just pays for the room with feces.
Oh, a disgusting business model, but whatever works. But I mean, I think you sort of brought me around on the picture plants. They are pretty enterprising, I have to give you that they are.
And you know, picture plants aren't the only ones either. You know, carnivorous plants in general have this alien kind of cleverness about them, where when you look at the level of ingenuity and precision on you know, how they display their traps, it's kind of easy to forget you're dealing with a plant and not some kind of intelligent animal.
Yeah, I know what you mean, And you know, I think the venus fly trap would probably be a good example of the kind of we have, the kind of intelligence that you're talking about. So what do you say we take a closer look at what makes those tick?
Yeah, and that sounds great, But first let's take a quick break.
You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the cutthroat world of carnivorous plants. You know, despite their violent tendencies, meetating plants have had their fair share of admirers over the years. You know. Charles Darwin, for instance, was a big fan of carnivorous plants, and honestly, maybe too big of a fan. He wrote an entire book about them, and at one point he even declares the venus fly trap to be the most wonderful plant in
the world. He also went to bat for the plants against scientists who weren't as enthusiastic about meat eating plants as he was. Like, you remember those sundew things that you mentioned earlier, the plants with the sticky tentacles. Well, apparently Darwin knew a botanist who didn't think sundews were anything to ride home about. So Darwin sent a note to the guy saying, quote, you are unjust on the merits of my beloved sundw. It is a wonderful plant,
or rather a most sagacious animal. I will stick up for the sund to the day of my death.
I mean, it does sound like he was really smitten. And it's funny because Thomas Jefferson had a similar fascination with flat traps, though I don't think he ever got to study them up close the way Darwin did.
Yeah, that's true, but I mean it's not for lack of trying. I was actually looking into this a little and it turns out that Jefferson had an especially tough time tracking down his own venus fly traps. It's a little weird because you have to consider that some venus flytrap species are actually native to the Carolinas. In fact, this is a little bit random. But North Carolina is the only state to select an official state carnivorous plant, and that is, of course, the venus flytrap.
What a great fact, you know, it is very smart of North Carolina to have snapped up that the first round of the carnivorous plant draft exactly. But did you know, I want to talk about Jefferson more. Did he ever get his hands on a fly trap?
Well, we actually don't know for certain. I mean, what we do know is that Jefferson started a letter campaign back in seventeen eighty six, and he was requesting that multiple people send him either fly trap seeds or fully grown plants as soon as possible. I guess this was an urgent matter, and unfortunately, the plants were so hard to come by and the postal service was so unreliable back then that Jefferson didn't actually get his hands on
the seeds until a full eight years later. So on January eighteen oh four, President Jefferson wrote a letter to Timothy Bloodworth saying, I thank you for the seed of the fly trap. It is the first I have ever been able to obtain, and shall take great care of it.
So he finally got it. Then, Yeah, he definitely.
Got some seeds in eighteen oh four, but unfortunately the trail goes cold after that until like eighteen oh nine or so, and Jefferson writes his last mention of fly trap in this manuscript that's about gardening, and it's it's kind of an ominous but a little bit confusing of an entry. So he simply wrote, sewed seeds of Diania mascupula in a pot. They were several years old.
So I'm guessing nothing came of that, but it's kind of amazing that he didn't bothered, Like, after what eight years he was asking for these seeds, he finally got them, and then he didn't bother them to plant them for like another five years. Like, yeah, I'm kind of questioning his commitment to the plants.
I guess, so it feels a little odd, But you might want to excuse him because he probably got a little bit busy with the whole Louisiana purchase thing, got a little distracted. But you know, one thing that Jefferson and Darwin would both have liked is a recent study that showed that the venus fly trap actually knows how to count.
So what does that mean exactly? Like, what is it counting?
Well, actually a few things, but I feel like we got to backup just a little bit to understand how the fly trap functions. So, for starters, each plant has multiple each of which is made of these specialized leaves covered in these tiny sensory hairs. And so the leaves of the trap, as we mentioned, secrete this sweet smelling nectar to help lure in those hungry insects. And when one of these visitors brushes against the plant's sensory hairs, the trap can actually snap shut within a tenth of
a second. So then after the digestive period that lasts a week or longer, the trap reopens and the husk of the insect blows away, while the process starts all over again. So each trap catches about three bugs before it wears out and then really has to be replaced. But again, since the plant uses multiple traps at once, they never have to miss a meal.
I like how poetic that sounds. The husk of the insect blows away. Beautiful, But you know it also sounds like the system kind of runs like clockwork. But I'm kind of curious still, where does the counting come in?
Well, clockwork actually isn't a bad analogy, because the actions of the fly trap are basically mecanic. I mean, their movements aren't directed by any kind of consciousness or anything like that. But it doesn't mean there isn't some sort of calculation that's going on. So, for instance, fly traps can actually count the number of times that their prey comes in contact with the sensory hairs that are on its leaves, and each of those touches brings about its
own unique reaction. So in the very first touch, for example, the plant actually does nothing. And this makes sense if you think about it, because you know, a single touch could be a false alarm. You could have a rain drop or a falling leaf or you know, bait from a slim gym or something like that, but essentially something that wouldn't be worth the energy of closing the trap.
So instead the plant waits, and it waits on that second signal, and if one arrives within the next twenty seconds, then the trapped spring shot on what is hopefully this nice, juicy cricket or something. So it really is pretty amazing how it does function like clockwork.
That's fascinating. So the first touch kind of sets off this kind of internal timer in the plant, which is pretty wild.
Yeah, but the plant actually doesn't even stop there. I mean, it keeps on counting. So after the trap is sprung, the prey is still alive and it keeps on struggling, and as it does so, it bumps into the trigger hairs even more so. The third and fourth touches send these electrical impulses to help prepare the trap for digestion.
Then the fifth touch tells the gland cells and the trap to begin producing digestive enzymes, and so from there, each additional touch produces these proportionally you know, greater enzymes being created, you know, in order to help digest the food there, So the more an insect struggles, or the bigger and stronger it is, you know, it'll mean that the plant has to release more enzymes in order to
fully digest it. And it's crazy to think about because the fact that the fly is fighting for its life is actually the very thing that brings about its death. And the harder it fights, the more the plant learns how to kill it. It's it's pretty wild.
Yeah, I didn't realize Flahauts were so methought their murders.
I guess it's true, but I mean, if it's any consolation, though, the captured insect isn't alive as it's being digested, and that's because the trap is actually hermetically sealed after you know, a few hours, so the insect has run out of air well before this digestive fluid is pumped in to kind of do its thing.
Which I guess is a little more humane. But I am curious how the plant knows when its prey is fully digested, Like does it count out like one hundred mississippis and then just spits it out?
You know, I think plants count by mississippis as well. It's pretty it's an amazing fact about nature like that. It's actually a little more nuanced than that. I mean, the inside of the trap is lined with chemical sensors that detect the kitan and a bugshell and all the nutrients and its blood. So the plant just keeps on
digesting until it can't detect that stuff anymore. And once the taste of kiten and nitrogen is gone, the plant knows the bug is tapped and it's time to find something else to eat.
So I think what's the most interesting about this to me is that I feel like I'm just picking up valuable tips if I ever have to face off against like a giant venus fly trap, because and you know, maybe I'm wrong here, but it sounds like if you're ever caught in a fly trap, you should just be patient, right, Like, if you just only moved once every twenty seconds or so, you could probably get out of there without springing the trap.
Well, and even if you did get caught in the trap, if you stayed still and waited long enough, the digestion would would never begin and the trap would just reopen the next morning. So, you know, just for our listeners and the off chance you ever encounter a man eating fly trap. Now you know exactly what to do.
Well, as long as we're on the subject official fly traps, why don't we spend some time on a few of the myths and the legends about carnivorous plants that have sprung up over the years. But first, let's take another break, all.
Right, mengo, So since you brought up man eating fly traps again, I thought we should settle the age old debate and answer once and for all whether or not a venus fly trap can really digest human flesh. If any guesses on this foot, so I.
Would rather not have to watch my back around a houseplant. So I want to believe that they can't. But I guess there's no reason why they couldn't. Write. I mean, they wouldn't be able to swallow a whole person or anything, but if you threw a little bit of skin in there, it feels like the plant could probably eat it.
It's actually true. I mean, it turns out that the fly trap can eat a person so long as they were fed, you know, just a gram or two at a time. And this is something we know thanks to a carnivorous plant enthusiast named Barry rice. And no, Barry did not chop up a bunch of people and feed them to his plants. But just about seven years ago, Barry did contract this mean case of athletes, and that
gave him the idea for an experiment. He decided to tear off some of his loop toe skin and feed it to one of his venus fly traps, just you know, just to see what would happen. So he triggered the trap to clothes and about a week later it reopened with just a tiny bit of half digested skin goo left inside, and the rest had been completely digested and the plant was totally fine.
That is so gross, and just the idea that you put a little bit of toaskin in there no hot sauce or salt or condiments, that's right. I do have to admit it is kind of cool that we're still finding out new things about these plants after all these years, right, Like even if one of those things is that they could potentially eat our feet.
You know. Another big question I've had is how did the venus fly trap get their name? And I mean the fly trap part makes sense, but how does the venus fit in? Like is it a reference to the goddess of love or to the planet, because to be honest, neither one really makes full sense to me.
Yeah, I was curious about that too, but I couldn't find anything definitive. Some naturalists say the name comes from the white flowers and these ornate leaves that the plant produces, and supposedly they were so beautiful and feminine that people began to associate them with the goddess Venus. However, there's another theory that many historians subscribe to, and that one's
a little dirtier. Apparently, a bunch of naturalists in the late seventeen hundreds they thought the plant's trap was, you know, kind of resembled a female genitalia, so they started calling it tippity twitchet, which is not a term I learned in health class. This was the seventeen hundreds and it was a different time. But you know, a few years later, someone decided to class up the allusion to femininity and they gave it the name of a goddess instead.
Those naturalists are just a bunch of cards. I think I'd rather stick with the Little Shop of Horror's origin story and just say that the plants are actually aliens. From outer space and I guess the planet Venus presumably.
Yeah, so you know, a hundred years ago, you wouldn't have been alone in that theory. So back then we didn't know much about the surface of Venus, and all you could see through a telescope was this thick blanket of clouds. So a ton of researchers speculated that Venus might be this steamy planet covered with lush jungle landscape,
and you know, this really sparked the public's imagination. Sci fi writers began depicting the planet as this I guess, this world of carnivorous plants, and of course that theory fell to the wayside. One scientist actually could see the planet's surface and realized that it's actually a bomby nine hundred degrees or so on it. So, you know, that isn't great for supporting life.
Aw.
Yeah.
It seems like there was a period from about the eighteen eighties to the mid nineteen hundreds when these stories of man eating plants were really all the rage. And you know, one of the most famous instances was also
the first depiction of carnivorous plants in pop culture. That was supposedly this first hand account from a German explorer and scientist, and in eighteen eighty one he claimed to have witnessed the ceremony in which this tribe in Madagascar actually sacrificed a woman to this enormous flesh eating tree, and he described the plant as having a base like that of a pineapple, with eight long spiky leaves and six powerful tendrils that could wrap around a victim, kind of like snakes would I guess.
And this was published as if it was a true story, like in newspapers.
Yeah, I mean newspapers, magazines, science journals, you name it. And other explorers confirmed this story over the years, though none of them ever provided any hard evidence of what they claimed to have seen, and the reports were just accepted as fact for decades, all the way up until you know, like the mid nineteen fifties, when this science writer named Willie Lay finally debunked this whole thing as being a hoax.
So, I guess this was all made up as a way to like make money or something.
Well, somebody made the story up, but it actually wasn't the story's author, And in the end, the German explorer turned out to be just as fake as the tribe and the plant itself, and so nobody really knows who was behind the hoax, but whoever it was, helped cement these carnivorous plants and the popular culture for decades after, and without this man eating tree of Madagascar to pave the way, we may never have gotten the genre classics
like Little Shop of Cars or some of the others, which, obviously, as you said earlier, made such an impact on you.
So you know what I find really strange is for all the stories we've concocted about the threat of carnivorous plants and how creepy most people seem to find them, the plants are really the ones that should be afraid of us, not the other way around.
Oh what do you mean by that?
Well, matchbox cars for starters, But right, of course. But one thing I came across this week is that many carnivorous plant species are endangered, possibly as many as half of all known species, and as you might guess, humans are the biggest threat they face, from habitat loss to pollution to even poaching. And we're just making things really difficult for me eating plants, say.
Poaching, So people poach these carnivorous plants. Yeah, it's actually a huge problem.
So if you take venus fly traps, for instance, you remember how Jefferson had such a hard time sourcing them even though he lived just one state north of their native habitat. I mean that's because while fly traps grow in this extremely limited area, there's a seventy five mile range in and around Wilmington, North Carolina, and even within that area, the plants are really rare.
All right, So did the plants go for a lot of money or something, because I feel like you can find them pretty cheap if you just go to greenhouses, and they're even in those children science kids like that, you see. Sometimes I'm a little confused by that.
Yeah, that's the thing that the plants only net the poachers about twenty five cents each on the black market, So that means they actually have to make off with a huge bunch of plants in order for it to be lucrative, and of course that only makes the problem worse, right, Like, yeah, I was reading this story in Smithsonian about this international group of fly trap poachers who once tried to smuggle
nine thousand poached fly traps on a flight to Netherlands. Yeah, it's more than a quarter of the species naturally growing population.
Wow, awesome. I'm assuming they were caught.
Yeah, thankfully they were intercepted at customs. This is a little random, but the Dutch guy who tried to smuggle plants claimed that he was uh, he was actually exporting Christmas ferns, which is such a strange thing.
That's a pretty bold move. But I mean, obviously there are laws against what these guys were doing.
Right, yeah, definitely. In fact, the problem got to be so bad then in late twenty fourteen in North Carolina passed more laws to about stealing fly trafts. But you know, now poachers can actually face anywhere from one to three years in prison for digging up the plants.
Well, hopefully that does the trick and kind of convinces these folks to leave them where they are. But you know, as bizarre and unsettling as carnivorous plants can be, they undoubtedly make the world a stranger and more colorful place to live. So I hope they stick around.
Obviously amen to that, but you know, because it couldn't hurt to stay on their good side. But what do you say? We headed to the fact off and share some of the more fun facts about carnivorous plants.
All Right, that sounds like a plan.
While Facebook has developed a reputation as a place to stock exes and manipulate elections, you shouldn't really get down on the social media site just yet, because one of the cooler things Facebook has helped us do is identify new species. There's this amateur researcher named Reginaldo vascan Salos, and he uploaded a picture of a plant he saw on a hike on this mountain top in Brazil, and it turned out to be a new species called the
magnificent sundube. Apparently, the plant, which grows five feet tall and can eat dragonflies, is severely endangered. But it's on this mountain that a lot of people access, so it's kind of surprising that it took us this long to find it.
Okay, So we talked about this earlier, that carnivorous plants use all sorts of techniques to attract their prey, you know, from bright color to the various fragrances they admit. Scientists in India just discovered that they have another trick up their slaves. Some picture place in the region glow with this ultraviolet ring around their room, and so while humans can't see the ring, ants and other insects are actually very much attracted to it.
That's really fascinating. But how do you test out something like that.
Well, the scientists actually painted some of the plants in the wild with some sort of chemical that turned the UV ring off, and when they did that, those plants weren't able to catch nearly as much food as the others.
That's really fascinating. So Alice Obscura has a little piece on celebrities with animals named for them, and of course there are plenty of these right Like we've talked about Hugh Hefner has a rabbit named for him. I think Michael Jackson has a hermit crab. We've recently talked about a shark name for Peter Benchley. But you know, according to the article, only about fifty people have two animals named for them, and only nine people have more than
five species named for them. And those heroes tend to be people like Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama, and Nelson Mandela. But you know, one person with at least eighteen critters and plants named for him is David Attenborough, Oh, the naturalist has a wildflower, a flightless weevil, and echidna and at addenborosaurus. But these are all named for The most interesting to me is the Attinborough pitcher plant, which is
only found on one mountain in the Philippines. And this is actually the one that's big enough to digest rats and truth.
Oh wow, I'd actually love to see one of those things. That's pretty wild. All right, Well, here's something that's interesting. In Wilmington, North Carolina. There's a massive carnivorous plant garden. The city apparently created the space after a beloved horticulturist named Stanley Reeder who had passed away. Now he was
known around the town as the fly Trap. And it's cool because there's a full three fourths acre dedicated to cultivating pitcher plants, sundews, venus fly traps, and all these other meat eating species, and so visitors can come for free and take tours while they're there, and with the one note being that they're asked to wear clothesed toed shoes because you know, of course the plants do have feet.
But what's crazy is that this is a s with a lot of thefts actually, in fact, in twenty thirteen, one thousand venus fly traps valued at twenty thousand dollars were stolen from this location alone, And while the criminals behind this plant heist were never caught, that's actually the crime that triggered, making stealing anyone's venus fly trap a felony.
Oh that's interesting, and I do kind of love the idea of a venus fly trip heist, like I would love for the next Ocean's eleven to be based on that. You know, I had a fact about furniture that's been made to eat insects and even small rodents, and it's all based on flat traps. But I actually think we should end with a flag trap. Man, I think he deserves the credit.
So sorry, I got a little distracted because it actually looks like Tristan finally got the slim gym to go down. That's oh wait, looks like he's eating at Tristan eight. That's amazing. That's that's really impressible, And I sorry, I got a little distracted. This was a fun episode to work on. But from Tristan and Gabe, Mango and me, thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part time.
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Do we forget Jason?
Jason who