October 10, 2025 • 35 mins
From plants that eat rats and frogs, to the strange reason bats curl up in pitcher plants, Will and Mango explore the eerie world of carnivorous plants.
This episode originally aired on November 9, 2018.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Guess what, mango?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
What's that? Well?
Speaker 1 (00:03):
So, did you ever have a venus fly trap as
a kid?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I did not. I mean my cousins Froshni and Rohan,
who are so cool, they had one.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, I feel like every kid who's been around one
is guilty of like trying to feed it something they shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
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,
(00:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I had no idea. I didn't think mashbox cars tasted
like meat.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
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
(01:42):
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
(02:02):
it just got moved to the science plat, but either way,
it was no longer in the hallway for kids.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
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
(02:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Wow, so that's actually true, then, is that something that
happens often?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
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
(04:59):
so obsessed with meat eating plants. There's a lot to
cover today, but where do you think you want to start?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
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
(06:12):
the prey help the plant grow faster and increase their
reproductive odds.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
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
(06:56):
breeding ground for carnivorous plants. And today they're actually about
six hundred unique species worldwide.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
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,
(07:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
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
(08:20):
the leaves, the insects aren't able to crawl back out. Instead,
they just slip into this deadly enzyme bat that slowly
digests them.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
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.
(08:56):
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
(09:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Oh wow, that's interesting. So I guess they took fluid
samples and compared them across species or something.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
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?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
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
(10:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
You're really on this is.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Well, what if I told you that a pitcher plant
is actually a cradle of life?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You'd just be making up words? What do you mean
by that?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
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
(11:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
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?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
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
(12:03):
easily spot it with their sonar.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Huh, Well, what's so special about bats? Like why would
the plants kind of roll out the red carpet just
just for them?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
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?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, and that sounds great, But first let's take a
quick break.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
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
(13:44):
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
(14:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
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
(14:49):
the only state to select an official state carnivorous plant,
and that is, of course, the venus flytrap.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
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?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
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
(15:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So he finally got it. Then, Yeah, he definitely.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So what does that mean exactly? Like, what is it counting?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
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
(17:13):
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
(17:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
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?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
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
(18:14):
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
(18:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
That's fascinating. So the first touch kind of sets off
this kind of internal timer in the plant, which is
pretty wild.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
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
(19:22):
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
(19:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, I didn't realize Flahauts were so methought their murders.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
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?
Speaker 1 (20:28):
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
(20:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
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
(22:55):
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
(23:18):
the plant was totally fine.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
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
(24:14):
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,
(24:34):
someone decided to class up the allusion to femininity and
they gave it the name of a goddess instead.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
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
(25:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Aw.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
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
(25:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And this was published as if it was a true story,
like in newspapers.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
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
(26:40):
being a hoax.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So, I guess this was all made up as a
way to like make money or something.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
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,
(27:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Oh what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Poaching, So people poach these carnivorous plants. Yeah, it's actually
a huge problem.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
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,
(28:55):
it's more than a quarter of the species naturally growing population.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Wow, awesome. I'm assuming they were caught.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
That's a pretty bold move. But I mean, obviously there
are laws against what these guys were doing.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
All Right, that sounds like a plan.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
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
(30:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
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
(31:07):
very much attracted to it.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
That's really fascinating. But how do you test out something
like that.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
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
(31:43):
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
(32:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
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
(32:41):
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,
(33:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
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
(33:41):
deserves the credit.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
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.
(34:18):
Genius is a production of how stuff works, and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Christan McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Jerry Roland does the exact producer thing.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Gabe Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the
research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Adams and Eves. Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
Good job, Eves.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
and if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
you could leave a good review for us.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Do we forget Jason?
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Jason who
Guess what, mango?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
What's that? Well?
Speaker 1 (00:03):
So, did you ever have a venus fly trap as
a kid?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I did not. I mean my cousins Froshni and Rohan,
who are so cool, they had one.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, I feel like every kid who's been around one
is guilty of like trying to feed it something they shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
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,
(00:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I had no idea. I didn't think mashbox cars tasted
like meat.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
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
(01:42):
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
(02:02):
it just got moved to the science plat, but either way,
it was no longer in the hallway for kids.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
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
(02:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Wow, so that's actually true, then, is that something that
happens often?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
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
(04:59):
so obsessed with meat eating plants. There's a lot to
cover today, but where do you think you want to start?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
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
(06:12):
the prey help the plant grow faster and increase their
reproductive odds.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
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
(06:56):
breeding ground for carnivorous plants. And today they're actually about
six hundred unique species worldwide.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
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,
(07:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
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
(08:20):
the leaves, the insects aren't able to crawl back out. Instead,
they just slip into this deadly enzyme bat that slowly
digests them.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
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.
(08:56):
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
(09:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Oh wow, that's interesting. So I guess they took fluid
samples and compared them across species or something.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
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?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
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
(10:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
You're really on this is.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Well, what if I told you that a pitcher plant
is actually a cradle of life?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You'd just be making up words? What do you mean
by that?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
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
(11:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
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?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
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
(12:03):
easily spot it with their sonar.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Huh, Well, what's so special about bats? Like why would
the plants kind of roll out the red carpet just
just for them?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
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?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, and that sounds great, But first let's take a
quick break.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
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
(13:44):
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
(14:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
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
(14:49):
the only state to select an official state carnivorous plant,
and that is, of course, the venus flytrap.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
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?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
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
(15:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So he finally got it. Then, Yeah, he definitely.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So what does that mean exactly? Like, what is it counting?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
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
(17:13):
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
(17:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
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?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
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
(18:14):
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
(18:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
That's fascinating. So the first touch kind of sets off
this kind of internal timer in the plant, which is
pretty wild.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
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
(19:22):
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
(19:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, I didn't realize Flahauts were so methought their murders.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
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?
Speaker 1 (20:28):
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
(20:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
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
(22:55):
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
(23:18):
the plant was totally fine.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
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
(24:14):
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,
(24:34):
someone decided to class up the allusion to femininity and
they gave it the name of a goddess instead.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
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
(25:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Aw.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
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
(25:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And this was published as if it was a true story,
like in newspapers.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
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
(26:40):
being a hoax.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So, I guess this was all made up as a
way to like make money or something.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
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,
(27:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Oh what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Poaching, So people poach these carnivorous plants. Yeah, it's actually
a huge problem.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
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,
(28:55):
it's more than a quarter of the species naturally growing population.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Wow, awesome. I'm assuming they were caught.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
That's a pretty bold move. But I mean, obviously there
are laws against what these guys were doing.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
All Right, that sounds like a plan.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
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
(30:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
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
(31:07):
very much attracted to it.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
That's really fascinating. But how do you test out something
like that.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
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
(31:43):
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
(32:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
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
(32:41):
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,
(33:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
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
(33:41):
deserves the credit.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
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.
(34:18):
Genius is a production of how stuff works, and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Christan McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
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Speaker 1 (34:32):
Gabe Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the
research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Adams and Eves. Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
Good job, Eves.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
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