STBYM Halftober Monsterfest Playlist, Episode 7: Carnivorous Plants

Halftober Monsterfest continues with Stuff to Blow Your Mind's 2016 episode about carnivorous plants in nature and myth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
I want to put you in a scenario a bit seasonal.
Oh yeah, that's the seasonal Halloween scenario. You do? You

(00:23):
want to go with me on a hike? Alright, it's
late October and you are on a solitary fall hike
through the woods, and the leaves are starting to turn
orange and red, the air is dry, and you feel
like an adventure, so you head off trail. Not always
a good idea, but let's just say you're brave. If
this is how all terrible stories start, how all tragedies begin,

(00:47):
you leave the trail, Well, it starts very nice. So
you're off trail and you find a little mountain brook
and it's twisting among the rocks, and you decide, oh,
how sweet, I'm gonna follow this upstream, maybe I'll find
its source. And on the way you come across a
cluster of what looked like oak trees, thick trunks with
roots spread out exposed over the bank of the brook,

(01:08):
and there's an odd smell it's a little bit sweet,
with just a hint of deep earthiness, kind of like
overripe fruit. So you approach the stand of trees and
the ground is covered with a mat of these beautifully
colored fallen leaves. And as you come near the trunk
of the nearest tree, your foot knocks against a smooth

(01:29):
stone tangled in the outer roots. But wait a second,
that's no stone. It's smooth and white, partially buried with
two eye shaped hollows. And then suddenly, with a rushing
sound and a scattering of leaves up into the air,
something envelopes you. The light gets blotted out. You feel
these wooden fibers pressing into your skin from all sides.

(01:52):
What's going on? You struggle to free yourself, but you
find that you're becoming sluggish, disoriented. There's a powerful smell.
Your throat burns, and then the digestive enzymes come. Another
visitor disappears into the grove of the killer tree. Ah.
I knew it was a killer tree once the digestive

(02:12):
enzymes in the woods started happening, because my first instinct
would be, oh, something was in the tree. I got
myself tangled, and then something was in the tree, and
it jumped down upon me some sort of predator of
some sort. I guess that's the more logical thing to think, right, Yeah,
I list until the wood comes, or that somebody has
set some kind of trap for you. This is a
human design, That's probably what I would guess. But Robert, well,

(02:35):
what first comes to your mind when I say killer tree?
I'm sure you've got like a fictional anchor point that
you go to. Oh, I mean there's so many, uh,
there's so many examples of killer trees, and especially in fantasy, right,
I mean it makes you think of the ants or
especially like the dark sort of tree people from Dungeons
and Dragons. I'm not really familiar with those. Well, what

(02:57):
happens when you fight a tree person? Well, you know
they're big there, wooden, there, their lumbering. I think there
are a few a few different varieties. There's basically, you know,
they're animate trees and then they're sort of wooden people
and they're good, good ones, and they're bad ones. Of
course though the ants that we encounter and the Lord
of the Rings are are are good. So when you're
battling a tree person, do you like, do you have

(03:19):
to have a paladin with a blessed wood chipper or something.
I don't recall there being a requirement for magical weapons.
Of course, you know, some creatures can only be fought
with natural weapons, but with with magical weapons. But I
believe that the tree creatures in this case are just big,
tough trees, because that's the thing they're they're they're they're large,

(03:39):
They're flesh is different than us. So the idea of
them becoming animate, the idea of them turning against us
is terrifying. Uh, and they do turn against us. I mean,
we live in a very um tree friendly city, so
anytime the wind blows, anytime the anytime the rain freezes,
the trees rattle and threaten us. When they fall, they

(04:01):
can cause significant damage and even lost life. There is
a killer tree hanging over our house right now. Rachel
and I are working on getting something done about that.
But yeah, it's this old dead pecan tree. It just
looks like it is aching to plunge its killer branches
through somebody's roof. And so yeah, there, of course killer
trees in reality, But the kind we're thinking of are

(04:23):
the ones that are a little more conscious, with some
directed actions to the agency, maybe some arms, some tentacles,
some some gaping maws with thorn teeth. Of course one
of the big ones. And this one entered my mind
when you were taking me through descriptions. Of course, in
Poulter Guys, there's that just horrifying scene that scarred me
from an early age, where you have you have multiple

(04:44):
things going on it once, like there's the creepy clown
um doll on the bed, but then there's the tree
outside the window that's like trying to eat the child man.
So I haven't seen Poulter Guys in years. I honestly
don't remember this scene. I guess I got back one
of many. They they're a lot of nightmare imagree up
against the wall and up up their amount of it sticks.

(05:04):
So I gotta tell you that this episode. I wanted
to do this topic because I was inspired by having
recently watched the William Friedkin horror movie The Guardian from
nineteen for the first time. I remember the trailer for
this is like a creepy babysitter, creepy nanny, but I
never saw it, so I don't know what the what
the gimmick is. Well, i'll give you the premise. It's

(05:25):
about a couple who has a baby and they're looking
for a nanny because they both want to go right
back to work immediately, so they're looking for a nanny
to take care of their child, and they end up
going with Camilla, the British nanny, who unfortunately is a
druid who has got a tree friend, and her tree
friend is a killer tree friend, and she likes to
take babies to the tree sacrifice them to the tree.

(05:47):
Except it's this weird thing where the tree sort of
absorbs the baby and then you can see the baby's
face embedded in the surface of the tree. So I
guess that the baby kind of melts into the tree
and becomes petrified. Anyway, she she's an evil druid, kidnaps babies,
sacrifices them to a killer tree. There are scenes where
the tree kills people. There's like Camilla gets attacked in

(06:07):
the woods by some by some creeps who just happened
to be hanging out in the woods, and the tree
defends her by essentially smashing them and tearing them up.
So would you say this is part of the druids
floitation uh movement of the man if only there were
such a genre, I would be all over that. I
would be like a film scholar of the genre. But anyway,
so do I recommend this movie. It's not a good movie,

(06:30):
but it's William Friedkin, so it's like a well made
bad movie, if it makes any sense. Yeah, he there's
a there's a certain segment of his filmography that that
definitely fits that were always worth checking out if you're
a fan of his. But you know, maybe not Tough Shell.
I guess I'd say it's not good, but it's worth seeing,
especially since the spoiler alert the climax of the film

(06:51):
involves a chainsaw. Oh welcome, of course it would um,
of course, there are plenty of other cinematic examples of
animate trees murdering reason just murderous plants. Um. Aside from ants,
there's the the I don't know if anyone remembers the
sexy Matron tree from the Last Unicorn. The tree becomes
animate and attempts to love our hero to death, or

(07:15):
one of our two heroes, the male hero s Medrick.
I believe, and uh, this sounds troubling. She has like
huge bosoms and all um weird. It's a it's a weird.
It's a weird film when you look back on it.
That's the strange elements. Uh. Scott Smith's novel The Ruins
and the two doesn't movie adaptation of it that concerns
man eating vines. Yeah, and they're sort of infectious, right,

(07:38):
So it's not just that the vines reach out and
grab you, but that there's a spore element where they
contaminate you with some kind of plant germ cell I
think so, yeah, yeah, which is interesting when you start
getting into some of the technical possibilities of man eating plants. Um,
let's say already mentioned Poulter guys. There, of course the
vines and evil dead that are rather notorious. There's some

(08:00):
man eating plant action in Chinese Ghost Story, which I
have not seen yet. After reading a synopsis of part
of it yesterday, it's moved back up to the top
of my must watch list. You've got the Whamping Willow
and Harry Potter, you have you have a version of
the the evil dead vines that are mentioned in a

(08:21):
Cabin in the Woods, the quote angry molesting tree, which
I think you only see like a a just a
fragment of it as it like snatches a guard in
one scene, Man Cabin in the Woods is full of
just great little freeze frame moments. Oh yeah, tremendous. Uh.
They're various kaiju that, you know, giant monsters that have

(08:42):
had plant elements to them and certainly planning with fun
guy elements to them. And I believe one of Michael
Shay's Niffed stories features a carnivorous plant kind of like
a venus fly traffic such. It has a like a
humanoid female part in the middle to lure males inside it. Weird,
but I don't have a clear memory of that, so
maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems like the kind

(09:04):
of thing that would be in one of his stories. Now,
almost all of these seem like modern fictional inventions. Do
are there are there animated trees, animated predatory trees or plants?
Going back in mythology, I would expect to find such
a thing. I expected to find some better examples, and
I was not able to find any. Um. Not to

(09:26):
say that I didn't miss something, but the closest, the
closest example that I came across and I got excited
about this was um is that is this example of
something called a jidra uh. And this is from the
traditions and folk beliefs of the Middle East. But here's
the caveat as related by medieval European travelers. And this

(09:46):
is a theme we're going to see time and time again.
The plants become animate and man killing only in foreign
environments entered by westerners, right, European and American travel writers
and cataloguers of things going on in places other than Europe,
in America and the America's talk about man eating plants,

(10:08):
and in this case as again as related by medieval
European travelers, and this was explained by Carol Rose and
are always excellent giants, monsters, and dragons Encyclopedia. Uh. The
idea is this thing emerges from the ground like a plant,
and and it's rooted in place, and it just consumes
anything in its vicinity, you know, cattle, small animals, and
of course humans. The only way to kill it is

(10:30):
to detach it from its root, essentially chop it down.
And if you do, then you get to harvest its bones,
because I guess it has bones, which would be valuable. Um,
it has bones, apparently that's according to the myth. So
I don't know, if this means that it literally has bones,
that it's a like a rooted mammal of creature vertebrate
creature of some sort, or if bones and by bones

(10:51):
we mean it's like it's it's would you know, you
know that does sound valuable because you could probably use
the bones of the jitdra to make a totally vegan stock, right,
so you roast the bones and then make it make
like you'd make a chicken ste or something, but this
would be vegan, I said, depending, well, depending on exactly
how you classify a monster like this. Now, I should
also add that it's thought that this myth probably also

(11:13):
derived from the man Drake, So you know, European influence
the idea of the man Drake, which is this kind
of like animal um vegetable hybrid creature, and then this
kind of evolves into this tale of the j dra Okay,
and I find it curious, though, you know, I looked
around for more examples, couldn't find it. I would have

(11:33):
expected plenty of the Elder, the noted first century Roman
historian who often spoke of foreign monstrosities, to have like
a clear cut example of a man eating plant in
foreign land. Oh yeah, plenty of the elders like the internet, right, like,
if you can think it up, it's on there. Yeah,
and if you can imagine it, plenty wrote about it. Yeah,
like people like beast people in other lands, the people

(11:55):
with the bellies, the with head that had mouths in them.
I mean all sorts of strange human aid monstrosities, beastly monstrosities, dragons, etcetera.
So why no man eating plants? I don't know, now, Robert,
did you ever see him night Shamalan's The Happening? I
did not. I saw the it happened. There was some happening,
and it happened, and it was about trees that were

(12:16):
trying to kill Mark Wahlberg. I have no idea why
they want to do that. But it wasn't really predatory behavior.
It was more like vindictive jerk behavior. So the trees
didn't want to eat us. They were like tired of
us being abusive to them. So it's even less in
less biologically sound, yes, than than any of the examples
we've looked at as far. So Yeah, obviously, this idea

(12:38):
of the killer tree the man eating plant is one
that captures our imagination very easily, and I think I've
got a theory as to while, and let me know
what you think about. I think the reason we like
the image of the killer tree and it shows up
in all these stories is because the idea of a
man eating plant has a certain level of why not
to it? Right, So, there are creatures in nature that

(13:00):
all large animals with claws and teeth and tentacles and
venom and such, and plants have things that are equivalent
to this. They've got thorns, vine, tendrils, poisons. Trees are
much larger than us, and then one sense they are
apt to be much quote stronger than any animal prey
that would try to resist them. So why not you know,

(13:20):
if the continent of Australia can produce an animal that
has the fur of a mammal in the bill of
a duck, why couldn't some deep, unexplored forest harbor a
tree that can reach out with a vine covered in
venomous thorns and snatch a hiker, wrap them up, roll
tight until he turns blue, and then pull him down
into a crevice in the roots structure and treat him
like a soft, salty meal. Yeah, I agree, I think

(13:43):
on on on one hand, certainly we look at all
the variety of nature. We see what's possible within nature,
and you ask yourself, well, why doesn't this exist? Maybe
it does exist, maybe some you know, a third or
fourth hand tail that I've heard about a man eating
plant is from a traveler is actually true. And the
other hand, I think the reason it's so appealing is
because it's abhorrent, the idea it's crossing category exactly inherent taboo. Yeah,

(14:09):
because I find myself kind of like if I see
an example of an insect preying on a on a vertebrate,
like invertebrates eating vertebrates is something that kind of like,
it's wrong. The spiders got a frog, and it's well, yeah,
it's like that. You're not supposed to move in that
direction because to stick to your your own invertebrate kind.
But of course it happens. Now, of course I wouldn't

(14:31):
actually blame the spider for that. I think that's perfectly fine.
But no, no, no, no no judgments spiders. But but
from our human standpoints, even more important, because we've largely
removed ourselves from the risk of predation like which is
a pretty remarkable thing in the grand scheme of things, right,
and so we don't have to worry about other animals

(14:51):
eating us. And the idea of another animal eating us
is strange and awful and terrifying. Even more so the
idea that a tree could do it. Yeah, yeah, totally.
You see, it goes backwards on the chain, the food chain, right,
it's reversing the food chain. That's it's not supposed to
be this way. So, except for the fact that we've
never seen things like this happened, at an intuitive level,

(15:12):
it's like, what's so implausible about it? Uh? Then at
the same time, I think we may be able to
come up with some good biological reasons we don't actually
see organisms like this. But according to some we must say,
not very credible accounts, there is nothing all that implausible
about the man eating tree, the killer tree, because people

(15:32):
have written about these things as if they actually exist
within the past few hundred years, and that hearsay was
more more powerful previous exactly. So I want to talk
about one source, a very weird biology book from the
eighteen eighties called Sea and Land, written by a guy
named James William Buell. Now, just glancing through this thing

(15:53):
and looking at the author's introduction it is obvious that
this is not a source of credible scientific information. It's
more are one of those nineteenth century natural wonders books.
You've ever seen these kind of things where they're you know, like, wow,
look at all these illustrations of animals in their natural habitats.
But they're all grossly inaccurate. And it's really not all
that different from various versions of Plenty's work from previous time,

(16:17):
exactly except it's you know, eight years later whenever Plenty
was living. Uh yeah, exactly so. But it's got all
these allegations of weird sensational creatures mingled in with reports
about real animals, and I have to also says like
a very Eurocentric sense of exoticism about the planet. So
there's that kind of unsavory element to it. But it's

(16:38):
also full of gruesome and probably highly inaccurate illustrations about
various animals and attack modes. And some of these illustrations
are great. There's a good one of an orangutang apparently
kicking a man to death, one of a swordfish stabbing
at a sailor through the hull of a boat. Not impossible,
extremely rare, but as we've discussed in our Jumping Fish episode.

(16:59):
It has happened, okay, well, or well, individuals have been stabbed,
boats have been stabbed. I don't know if anyone, I don't,
I don't remember, of both happened would be really bad luck. Yeah,
but yeah, in this case, it looks like the swordfish
is trying to kill the guy. Okay, but in any case,
there's another one that's awesome. It's a giant crab hanging
from a tree, lifting a goat up into the tree
with its claw as if to devour it. But then

(17:22):
finally a tree with tentacles pulling a human victim into
the crown of its trunk. I have to say these
different accounts here. I couldn't help but think of a
Simpson episode and I don't even remember the context, but
they're being a scene where like a gorilla is in
a tree and a shark comes out of the river
underneath it and eats the gorilla as an example of

(17:46):
like natural predation or something. Oh wow, but yeah, So anyway,
so Buell says that travelers have told him stories of
a carnivorous plant that grows in Central Africa and South America,
and he says it's so voracious that even resorts to
eating humans. And I want to read a quote from
the book. He says, quote, this marvelous vegetable minotaur is

(18:07):
represented as having a short, thick trunk, from the top
of which radiate giant spines, narrow and flexible but of
extraordinary tenaciousness, the edges of which are armed with barbs
or dagger like teeth. Instead of growing upright or at
an inclined angle from the trunk, these spines lay their
outer ends upon the ground, And so gracefully are they

(18:29):
distributed that the trunk resembles an easy couch with green
drapery around it. Uh. Then he goes on to say
that the unfortunate traveler will come along and quote the
moment his feet are set within the circle of horrid spines,
they rise up like gigantic serpents and entwine themselves about
him until he is drawn upon the stump, when they

(18:49):
speedily drive their daggers into his body and thus complete
the massacre. The body is crushed until every drop of
blood is squeezed out of it and becomes absorbed orbbed
again by the gore loving plant. When the dry carcass
is thrown out, and the horrid trap is set again.
I'm some elements of that sound reasonable, especially later when

(19:13):
we get into real world carnivorous plants and the idea
that plants are living things that that live and move
at an entirely different speed. And therefore when you see
like fast moving actions such as from a venus fly trap,
it is very much like a like a crossbow, a
heavy crossbow that's been painstakingly loaded over time and then sprung.

(19:34):
So I could I could see this idea of like
a sprung trap working within the conceivably working within the
confines of of of actual botany. Yeah. Yeah, with a
certain type of movement, you can imagine it less so
when especially with something we're gonna hear about in the
second though. I also want to add a funny note that,
in contrast to the passage I just read that in

(19:55):
the introduction, Buell says his purpose in writing the book
is to quote bring us into a closer relation with
and a better understanding and appreciation of the mysterious and
infinite wisdom of Nature's God. I mean that certainly sounds
like a devil created tree. There ever is such a thing,
But anyway, um So Mule says that a gentleman of

(20:17):
his acquaintance who lived sometime in Central America affirms the
existence of a plant like this there, except with a
few variations. So he says that instead of lying on
the ground, the filaments of the plant quote moved themselves
constantly in the air, like so many huge serpents in
an angry discussion, occasionally darting from side to side as

(20:38):
if striking at an imaginary foe. Now that sounds completely
that sounds like not a plant. Yeah, I mean the
closest thing I can think of that is, say, like
a pussy willow with with the wind blowing through it,
you know, right. But anyway, He goes on to describe
how this tree would crush its prey and an embraceive spines,
and he compares it to the method of execution from
alleged medieval torture dungeons known as the iron maiden. He

(21:01):
also claims that in some regions the locals are said
to punish criminals by casting them into the tree, which is,
to anybody practicing witchcraft, you go straight into the tree,
and that the plant is known as yatte vo Spanish
for I see you, though I double checked the translation.
Apparently it has a tensed inflection really meaning I already
see you, which is even a little creepier. I do

(21:24):
like that a and almost certainly non existent man eating plant.
The comparison is made to the almost certainly non existent,
at least functional and functional terms iron maiden. Yeah, yeah,
that that is the case, right, Like I've heard, there's
no good evidence that iron maidens were actually used. That
is my understanding. That they became kind of you know,

(21:46):
they became it. They were an invention and then took
on a new life. Is kind of a fetish item
for those that wish to possess tortuous objects. Weird anyway.
I hate to be a downer, but I think we
can be pretty certain that this is all about of
nonsense like this. This just sounds like complete fabrication. There
may be maybe or maybe massive, massive exaggerations of something

(22:09):
people actually saw that was in reality, nothing like what's
being described. There are no trees with killer squid tentacles
that we know of, and I don't even I think
we can just say there are no such trees, because
it doesn't make any biological sense to have trees with
writhing tentacles that move around constantly. Yeah. The closest thing
I can think after this would it would be the
fact that, yes, vines grow on the ground, and you

(22:31):
could trip over a vine, you're like becoming tangled, and
you could hit your head on a rock or Yeah,
sort of passive entrapment. That makes more sense, but hardly
a scenario that that I could see plants evolving to
utilize as part of their you know, their primary survival
um tactic. Right. But we will talk about the biological

(22:53):
possibilities of such a you know, megafauna eating plant later
on in this episode. But we should say that the
Yatte Veo and and Bules accounts here are not the
only supposedly true accounts, or at least presented as true
by the by the recounters of of these man eating
plants or these giant killer trees. Yeah, and these next

(23:13):
two examples, like our previous two examples, are exotic trees
and a foreign land as experienced or at least related
by Westerners. So there's the Madagascar tree. And this is
something of a sensation at the time, appearing in publications
of the eighteen seventies. The idea here was that you
had Western missionaries led by a German explorer called Carl Leachy,

(23:37):
and they accounted a tribe of cave dwelling tribespeople in
Madagascar who made sacrifices to a man eating plant um.
There's a fun quote from this so where we talk
about the atrocious cannibal tree that had been so inert
and dead came to sudden savage life, the slender, delicate
palpy with the fury of starved serpents. Ever, the moment

(24:01):
over her head then, as if instinct with demonic intelligence,
fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her
neck and arms. Then while her awful screams and yet
more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down
again into a gurgling moan. The tendrils, one after another,
like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity,

(24:25):
rose retracted themselves and wrapped her about in fold after fold,
ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anaconda's
fastening upon their prey. And whoever wrote it, because that's
one tremendous run on sentence, I love it. It's true.
You can't stop for a breath. That that is obviously

(24:46):
some sensational detail that does not sound like like an
account intending on clinical accuracy. Yeah, I I do not
buy it for seconds. Though some people have the plant
has achieved something of cryptid status. Even the only seventh
governor of Michigan, Chase Osborne, claimed that it was legit,
but no evidence has ever been presented, and it seems
to have been a little more than a literary fabrication. Yeah.

(25:09):
That just seems like another one of those kind of
like Eurocentric stories of the exotic weirdness of other lands. Yeah,
I mean another example, and I'm not going to go
into the video on this one, but Phil Robinson in
eighty one, writing in Under the Punka described tales of
man eating trees in southern Egypt, and this one is
called the Nubian tree Um. Yeah. I all these accounts,

(25:32):
they really they have this sort of ickiness to it of, oh, well,
a Westerner of being. Westerners live in a special land
where trees know their place and we're we're above even
predation by by other vertebrates. But but it's like everybody
wants these things to exist, Like you can't stand the
idea that they're not real. You just don't want them
to be near you. They're they're hidden in some other

(25:54):
place where you don't live, a savage land full of
savage people, according to these recounter. Yeah, and I'm not
trying to say that that's like the the only element
at play here. I mean, also, just like the idea
of man eating plants is really cool. I don't want
to suggest that the desire to encounter a man eating
tree is necessarily linked to some kind of colonial xenophobia, right,

(26:15):
but but I feel like there are some elements there
that are that are little achy to to modern readers.
All Right, well, you know, on that note, let's take
a quick break, and when we come back, we will
we will ask the question, indeed, a question that the
glen Danzig may have asked, Uh, why do plants kill?

(26:40):
All right, we're back. Tell me, Joe, why do why
do the plants kill? Well, that is a good question
because in the realm of the well known, of course,
there are plants that kill. Right, So we've been talking
about trees that prey on humans in in these legendary
accounts that are pretty obviously false. But there are plants
that kill, not just with defend sieve toxins and thorns,

(27:01):
but with predatory tactics. They've got specially designed morphological features
to trap, poison, paralyzed, dissolve, and digest prey animals, generally insects.
These are the predatory flora, if you will, the eaters.
So let's discuss a few scientific facts about the eaters. First,

(27:22):
I think we should ask the question why would a
plant kill to eat? I mean, think about it for
a second. A defining feature of what makes a plant
the plant kingdom is the fact that plants, unlike us,
are autotrophs. They make their own food, so the energy
that they need to survive they get from photosynthesis. There's
energy and the sunlight coming down from the sky, and

(27:44):
they use that energy from pure sunlight to create a
chemical reaction where they react carbon dioxide from the air
and water in the end producing chemical energy in the
form of glucose sugars. I mean, when you look at
the the energy economy of life on Earth, generally speaking,
plants are the only ones with a with an ethical
get out of jail free card, right like well, I mean,

(28:05):
I guess you also microorganisms that are tropes. But but
but everything else is having to consume something else for
its energy, has to steal its energy. But here we
have all these plants getting the energy from the sun. Well,
it seems cutting dry. I wouldn't let him off the
hook too much for the for the ethical quandaries, because
plants and will not necessarily plants, but auto tropes did
some atmospheric engineering that led to great extinction events and

(28:28):
killed probably more organisms than any mediat or ever has.
But anyway, so plants get most of their energy from
this harmless process, why would they ever need to trap
and insect and digest it. That just seems like it's uh,
it's redundant. It doesn't make any sense. And to find
the answer, we can look at where these carnivorous plants

(28:49):
usually live. So most often you're going to find them
in inhospitable growing conditions, the nutrient poor soil of bogs,
fins and swamps, places where there might be plenty of
access to sunlight, hopefully water too. But in the words
of the old man from pet cemetery, the ground is sour.

(29:09):
There is not enough nutrition in the ground. And so
what does nutrition mean for a plant? This is the
first fact, by the way, Carnivorous plants eat for nutrients,
not for energy. They don't need the chemical energy within you.
They need your compounds or your molecules. So, just like
human beings, plants rely on the environment for essential nutrients. Right, So,

(29:30):
if you're stuck in an environment where you get plenty
of food energy through sugar, but you have no dietary
access to some essential nutrient like vitamin C, your health
will deteriorate. You've probably read about this on on old
like ships, you know, the sailors or whatever. Exactly, So,
without vitamin C, you're gonna start to experience some not

(29:53):
so great symptoms. You're gonna have dry splitting hair, rough
scaly skin, inflamed gums and gum, bleeding, nose bleeds, wounds,
and bruises that won't heal. This is all because your
body can't synthesize vitamin C on its own. You have
to get it from your diet, and eventually, if your
diet is really deficient in vitamin C, you're gonna develop scurvy,

(30:15):
in which you experience extreme fatigue, loss of strengthen the
connective tissues all over your body. Like, your body needs
vitamin C in order to make collagen these for these
connecting tissues and uh, and you're also gonna have fragility
in the walls of your blood vessels, which is as
not good as it sounds. Likewise, plants need essential nutrients

(30:36):
to write that. They can't make everything they need to
survive within their bodies. They have to get it from
their environment. And one example of this is nitrogen. So
most plants get nitrogen through their roots from the soil
around them. They reach out into the ground with all
of their roots and they pull up these molecules. They
pull up these nitrogen atoms from the ground. And if

(30:57):
the soil is nitrogen poor or it gets robbed of
nitrogen somehow, like apparently this can happen if there's over
introduction of carbon into the soil, plants in the area
can suffer nitrogen deficiency, which is kind of a scurvy
for plants. You see with the stunted growth, leaves turning
yellow and pale, and body structures that look kind of
wilted or sick. So, if you are the plant equivalent

(31:20):
of a vitamin C starved sailor with bleeding gums and
fragile joints living in this nutrient poor soil. Where do
you get your essential nutrients? Well, you could snatch up
and digest something that has plenty of nutritious molecules in it,
like an insect. You know. And and we discussed in
a previous episode, the Weird Mushroom episode that you see

(31:41):
this exact scenario play out with with oyster mushrooms in
which there's a nitrogen deficiency and therefore they have adapted
to prey on nematodes and in some cases spiders. I
didn't know that. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And then of
course we turn arounderneath the oyster mushrooms. Well, they are delicious.

(32:04):
You never eat a spider on purpose, but who knows
how many times you you get one down the chain.
That's the old myth, right, the average person eats sixty
spiders at night. I think it's crawl right in there.
That's a myth, right, that's not true. That's an Yeah,
that's an exaggeration of the myth on my part Alright,
So okay, so here's another fact about carnivorous plants. Uh So,

(32:25):
the this trick, this insect eating trick, in order to
get nitrogen and other nutrients that the plant needs. It's
a good trick, and for that reason, the carnivorous phenotype
evolved multiple times independently, so there was no one carnivorous
ancestor plant that all carnivorous plants today can be traced
back to. This is an example, or scientists think this

(32:47):
is an example of what's known as convergent evolution. So
it would be kind of like flight. There's no one
flying animal that all flying animals today evolved from. Flight
is a solution that was reached by evolution in different
branches of the tree of life, independently and at different times.
Uh coast three different times. Yeah, carnivory in in plants

(33:10):
is the same way. It's a survival strategy that's so good.
Different branches on the tree of life adopted separately in
separate evolutionary contexts. Uh. Let's let's go to a third
fact related to the previous one. Carnivorous plants come in
a lot of different varieties. You're probably familiar with venus
fly traps, but the superstars, Yeah, but they're not the
only ones. There are multiple different types of carnivorous plants.

(33:33):
It actually occurs in According to one source, I found
at least nine families, nineteen genera and six hundred species
of plant, and so it could be more by now. Yeah,
I think just a few years ago it was I
saw a source saying five hundreds. So apparently just continually
or discovering new examples. Yeah, So what are the different
types of carnivorous plants. Well, you have a few different models,

(33:56):
a few different methods out there. First of all, snap
trap plants, venus fly traps, water wheel plants. This is
the the iconic example of the little trap that slowly
opens and then a fly lights in the middle and
the gates close over it. So it'skind of a trigger
plate kind of yeah, which exactly has a trigger plate.
It works very much like a like like I said,

(34:18):
like a like a wolf trap or a fox trap
or a bear trap. Right, and uh, and these are
you know, these are famous because they're beautiful, they're they're
relatively easy to cultivate or at least by the store
and keep alive for a certain period of time in
your home. I had one when I was a kid
one time, and I think consolation for the fact that
my mom took me to a very long, boring time

(34:40):
at a plant nursery where she was buying some flowers
or something. I asked and returned to get this venus
fly trap, and I got it and it was very cool.
But I recall I got at home and I couldn't
get it to close on anything. Oh yeah, I remember
being I never had one as a kid, though certainly
it would be the only plant I would have been
interested in as a child. I had. I had one
for a while, maybe ten years ago. My wife and

(35:03):
I had one called Monster Tom, and we kept hoping
it would catch flies, like would be one of those
things where you would let a fly live in the
house because you're like, all right, let Monster Time take
care of it. I don't think the Monster Time ever
ate a single fly, but it was still a beautiful
little plant afp around. I wonder if the domesticated venus
fly traps have gotten soft, you know, maybe they just
don't prey on flies, like they just know they've got
to have like big beautiful eyelashes, right, I mean, because

(35:27):
but of course, these these are known as the snap
trap plants, and they're not the only kind of This
also includes water wheel plants, right do we say that? Yes? Okay,
I'm sorry, but there are plenty of other kinds too, well,
like how about pitfall traps. Oh yeah. The main example
of this being picture plants, which is which is one.
I believe they have them in Newfoundland, Canada, and that's

(35:48):
where I kind of encountered them early on when Yeah,
or at least some variety of them, because they're pretty
widespread and these are lovely specimens. The leaves fold into
deep slip repools field with digestive ensigns, So it's essentially
a champagne flute that's filled with insect death. Yeah, but
with it's got the slippery slide going down into it. Yeah,

(36:11):
so the the insect light slides down Scott and the
goo and dissolves, So it's it's it's kind of monstrous,
but also be their beautiful plants. So you seem like
a lot of botanical gardens. I'm always seeing them, often
with some kind of chemical attractant to to bring the
insects in, to lure them down. Uh. And then there
there's something I've read about the special surfaces, right, like

(36:32):
the surfaces on the lip of the picture plant becomes
slippery when wet, so it's hard to scramble back up
them and just kind of slide, uh, intellectably down into
the pit. Yeah, and of course it's worth worth reminding everyone,
Like one of the key things here is that is
that plants and insects and have had a long history
with insects serving as pollinators for for so for so

(36:56):
many different plant variety. Oh yeah, there's actually a study
about that I want to mention in a few minutes here.
But anyway, the picture plants, Yeah, that's so they're they're,
they're they're numerous varieties of this. And the earliest fossil
evidence of a carnivorous plant might be a picture plant, uh,
the mid early Cretaceous uh Archaeomorpha longa servia uh was

(37:19):
discovered in what's now northeastern China, and researchers are now
split on the matter, with newer research arguing than it
might not be a picture plan at all, some of
the others, especially earlier papers, saying that, oh this, this
is definitely it is a picture plan or at least
sort of a proto picture plant, And so it's it's
kind of a problematic fossil right now. But there's a

(37:40):
possibility other than that that there's not a whole lot
of fossil evidence of carnivorous plants. So any dreams you
might have out there listeners for a for like a
prehistoric thinking out like a giant one that's eating dinosaurs
or prehistoric mammals. Uh, well, it's not in the fossil
record at any rate. Man, that's bummer free. History gives

(38:01):
us giant toads, giant scorpions, but no giant carnivorous plants.
Of course, there are other varieties of carnivorous plants as well.
There are lobster trap plants. Oh, these are great, these
are They go by the pickle jar principle, right, Yeah,
you reach in, you grab the pickles and you can't
get your hand back out right or indeed, as the
name applies, lobster traps various crab traps. Does anyone who's

(38:24):
ever used these know that the creature crawls in, but
then it can't quit get out again. And that's exactly
how these plants that do that with the through special
structures m that that end up trapping the creature. Yeah.
I think there's a certain element of this, and I
think it's actually a type of picture plant, but it
had there's an element of easier to get in and

(38:45):
apparently easy to get out until you're inside. In uh
in the cobra lily, this cool example of an American
carnivorous plant that I found. It goes in I think
northern California and southern Oregon. Uh And it's this beautiful
looking plant that has a has a picture and is
in some way carnivorous. But it's got an opening on
the bottom and then the top. It's kind of translucent

(39:07):
so the light can come through, so I assume to
an insect, it looks kind of like you can exit
through the top until you get inside, all right. Up next,
we have sticky traps a k a. Fly paper traps,
and examples here include sun dues and butterwartz. So the
leaves exude a uh, sticky substance that catches lighting insects.
Pretty pretty basic, but hey, it's a winning design. I mean,

(39:31):
I've I've got the willies from glue traps because I
know the stories of people who have you tried to
use glue traps to catch rodents in their house? And
that's just a sad. Yeah. The tragedy of glue traps
is that they sound humane on the surface. Of things
not but they're they're not at all, especially when you
when you realize that reptiles that gets caught in them,

(39:52):
they're gonna suffer a long time because they've evolved to
to to go a long time between meals. Uh so, hey,
if you do. I have had to remove a snake
from a glue trap before, and if you use oil,
that will really help. I think I think we used
olive oil and we're able to free a specimen. Yeah,
that's amazing. Well, well, I don't know, it's amazing. I

(40:13):
didn't know you were such a hero. Robert. Well it was.
I feel like, can you come get my cat out
of the tree? Can you come get my snake out
of a glue trap? Well? I have you. I have
found that if I am if I encounter an animal
with my son, I'm often even more humane, Like not
not so much snakes, because I generally am going to
be cool with snakes. But this most recent trip, we
came across some blackwood of spiders and like, actually three

(40:36):
you're like really close to um to a house, and uh,
you know, normally once the instinct that I grew up
with is if you find a blackwoodo of spider. You
go ahead and kill it because it's you know, it's
a highly it's it's not a good animal have around.
You don't want that thing bite me, right, I feel
like we should learn to resist that impulse. I think
so too. I like, you know, if it's not hurting us,

(40:58):
then we shouldn't crush it. So we just checked it out.
We actually caught one and put it in a little
glass and looked at it for a little bit and
then released it further away from the house. But then,
of course, there is one other major type of of
of carniversus plant, right, these suction traps. Yes, these involve
highly modified leaves in the shape of a bladder with
a hinge door lined with trigger hairs. Uh. So these

(41:22):
are the ones, if I'm picturing them correctly. Um, these
are the ones that kind of remind one of of
pipe organs with a little bit on the top, like
a little lid on the top of the organ. Huh pipe. Yeah, Okay,
I don't think I've ever seen that, or maybe it's
more like no, no, it's more like the I'm I'm
comparing it to cartoons. I think in my mind, we

(41:43):
have like a steam engine or something, and they have
the little top that flips up on the top of
the thesaft pipe. Yea, yeah, kind of similar to that. Okay,
uh so hey, let's hit the next fact about carniversus plants.
Among the killer plants, You've got a couple of different
major varieties, right, So got carnivores and then you've got
the proto carnivores proto carnivorous plants. So what would what

(42:05):
would we mean by that? A proto carnivorous plant is
a plant that has the tendency to catch and kill prey,
but doesn't yet have the capacity to directly digest the meal. So,
for example, there are some picture plants that do not
produce their own digestive enzymes, but rely on bacteria to
dissolve organic matter in the traps. And some botanists would

(42:27):
class proto carnivorous plants as taxons that are part of
the way. They're right there on the evolutionary path to
becoming carnivores. Yeah, it's interesting when we consider that that
many carnivore lineages, you know, they enter into the carnivore
game via proto carnivore lifestyle. So yeah, it's it's it's

(42:48):
it's kind of like seeing evolution in action. Uh, and
I can't help it. To consider the relationship between figs
and fig wass that's interesting, which I think is a
great example of you know, complex relationship, really a mutualistic
relationship between plant and a particular insects species. I've never

(43:09):
heard this mentioned as an example of of a carnivorous plant.
But Robert tell us how it goes down. What's the relationship?
All right? Well, uh, again, it's a mutualistic relationship, but
there there's some there's some nutrients absorbed to at the
end of the story. So, but the basic scenario here
is that fig trees need wasps to transport pollen from
one plant to the other. The plant provides a fig

(43:31):
wasp with their only source of food and shelter. Um.
What we call a fig is actually a structure called
a seconium, and it's really more of an inverted flower
than a fruit, with all its reproductive parts located inside.
And after a female fig wasp flies over from her
home fig plant, she has to travel to the center
of the seconium to lay her eggs, and to get

(43:53):
there she climbs down a narrow passage called the osteo passage,
is so cramped that she scrapes off her wings and
her antenna during the descent. It's just a real, real
nightmare scenario. And then once inside, there's no getting back
out and flying to another plant. Uh, it's like like
finding a narrow hole in a cemetery and climbing down
into a grave, just ripping a bunch of skin off
in the process. And then when she's down there, well,

(44:16):
she better hope she's in the right place because fig
plants boast two kinds of figs, male caprifigs and then
female edible figs. If she if she winds up an
inedible fig, she eventually dies from exhaustion or starvation. She
can't lay her eggs there, the stylus is in the way,
but she at least delivers the pollens, which is kind
of a cool cruel trick, right. Um, we see the

(44:37):
mutualistic aspect here, but it also kind of breaking down
right like the right the plant gets what it wants,
but the wasp doesn't get what it wants. Now she
enters the male caprifig, she'll find male flower parts perfectly
shaped to hold the eggs. She'll eventually lay The eggs
grow into larva, which is then developed into male and
female wasps, which emerge after hat ing. The blind wingless,

(45:01):
wingless male wasp will spend the remainder of their lives
digging tunnels through the fig. The female wasp then emerge
through these tunnels and fly have to find a new fig,
carrying pollen with them. Now, and that is a crazy process, Yeah,
it is. It's it's it's wondrous, wondrous. I had figs
in in my backyard this this year, and uh, I

(45:22):
thought about it every time I went out there to
check on them. Well, wait, then, is it accurate to
say that in some sense the fig tree is consuming
the wasp that is stuck inside it. Yes, because this
is what happens in the death fig um when a
female wasp dies inside an edible fig, and enzyme in
the fig called king breaks down her carcass into protein.

(45:46):
So the fig basically digests the dead insect, making it
a part of the resulting ripened fruit and the crunchy
crunchy bits and the figs, though or seeds, not anatomical
parts of the wasp case. And he was wondering, now,
one thing I do you think about here, is that
a fig tree doesn't seem to me to be something
that is suffering from a lack of nitrogen or some

(46:09):
other nutrient or or is it. I mean that that's
not my understanding that it's necessarily suffering, but it just
gets some kind of maybe even if it could survive
without these wasps, I'm not saying I know that it could,
but even if it could, it just gets a little
extra boost. I guess it's like using every part of
the buffalo, right, I mean, the wasp is in there,

(46:30):
it's it's not going anywhere. Why not digested? Why not digested?
I mean to sort of anthromorpi anthropomorphize the the evolutionary
process here of that. But it's it's an interesting example
I think of certainly a complex relationship, a mutualistic relationship
where it's kind of like thinking of it as a corporation. Right,
So you have you have fig Tree Corp. Or you know,

(46:54):
and they have all these different departments, and most of
the departments are related to fruit production and and and
wasp relations. But there is definitely a wasp dissolving and
digesting department. It's not the primary department it's on the basement. Yeah,
it's in the basement, but it still plays a role
in the overall company structure. Okay, okay, uh, and it's

(47:16):
you always got to put the payroll in now. I
wanted to see if there was any interesting new research
from this year on on carnivorous plants, and I can
across one paper I thought was kind of interesting. It's
called Pollinator prey conflicts and carnivorous Plants when flower and
trap properties mean life or death? From scientific reports published
this year in and it was studying uh, plants of

(47:39):
the genus Drosera, which are the sun does right. We
talked about those the sticky trap plants, and its studied
how the plants solve a particular problem if you've thought
about this, If you're a carnivorous plant that wants to
draw insects into a death trap, but you're also a
flowering plant that wants insects to spread your pollen for reproduction,

(48:01):
how do you make sure that you don't trap and
kill the insects that you need to pollinate your flowers. Um,
I'm about to say a metaphor for this that might
be the worst metaphor I've ever tried on this show,
so so stop me if I'm going off the rails. Well,
it's kind of like if if you couldn't have sex
without the help of a certain species of live wild rat,

(48:25):
but you also have rat traps all over your house,
like kill traps, this would seem to lower your reproductive fitness.
So instead, what the drosera plants do and study is
that they offer different visual, spatial, and chemical signals that
selectively attract nonpollinators to the traps, so that they've adapted

(48:47):
to have selective appeals in the traps versus in the
pollinating structures. What's kind of like imagining these um, these
hotels and horror movies where they cannibalize the guests, Like
you gotta keep your yelp rating up enough where you
get more guests. Exactly, You've got to have enough real guests,
but then at the same time, you need guests to eat,
so you've got to find that balance. Yeah, so in

(49:09):
in my horrible analogy, it would be sort of like
having traps that are designed to to kill all the
rats except your sex rat that you need for reproduction.
So yeah, let's let's discuss the real carnivorous plants, the
plants that really do prey on vertebrates. Okay, well we've
got to start by discussing the alleged ones that prey

(49:30):
on vertebrates. So the one I want to start with
is the Puya chill Insis. So, this is a bromiliad
plant that grows in the arid parts of the Andes
in South America. It's known as Puya chill insists. And
it's sort of because it's a bromiliad, it's going to
be a cousin of like the pineapple, and it kind
of looks like a pineapple. It looks like a giant,
woody pineapple with yellow green spikes extending out at an

(49:54):
inclined angle from the trunk. And it has been widely
reported on popular websites and a few new sources that
this plant is known as the quote sheep eating plant
because it sometimes feeds on the carcasses of livestock caught
in its spines. For example, there's ABC news piece about
how the Royal Horticultural Society and Great Britain managed to

(50:17):
grow one of these plants in a greenhouse in Surrey,
and the story was about how the plant was about
to flower. I think it takes a long time to
do that. But the article claims quote in the andies
it uses its sharp spines to snare and trap sheep
and other animals, which slowly starved to death. The animals
then decay at the base of the plant, acting as

(50:38):
a fertilizer. The RHS feeds its specimen on liquid fertilizer,
and then they quote a horticulture is saying that obviously
it would be problematic to feed this plant quote its
natural diet um. So despite these reports, most of which
sort of repeat the same thin summary claims over another,
over and over, I have been unable to find any

(51:02):
evidence in the scientific literature that these plants are really
known to do this to trap and kill large animals
like sheep, And honestly, looking at a bunch of pictures
of them, I'm also having a hard time seeing how
this would happen, Like they look like they would be
painful to fall into, but not deadly traps. Also, I've
read a few accounts of people who claim to work

(51:22):
around the puya and don't report anything about this, So
this makes it seem to me like this phenomenon of
sheep becoming trapped in puya growth, dying and then fertilizing
the base of the plant is something that maybe conceivably
could happen by coincidence. Like I guess you could accept
that rotting animal flesh is generally a decent fertilizer, but

(51:45):
it probably doesn't happen often enough to qualify as a
real evolutionary adaptation by the plant. Yeah. And plus, I mean,
there are plenty of animals that are already going to
play prey on a sheep. And then if you were
having sheep that are raised and basically an artificial population
of sheep, if they're gonna be there's gonna be a
higher susceptibility to stranger on natural deaths. Right. Yeah, So

(52:07):
I'm skeptical of this one. I think unless somebody can
send us some really good evidence that this actually takes place,
I'm going to say this one actually looks like a
myth to me that has somehow made it into news reports.
I think that is a safe bet. But then there's
another one that is definitely not a myth, though we
have to be a little careful and how we characterize it.
So I want to talk about nepenthes, the tropical picture plants.

(52:31):
So these are pitfall traps, right, Like we've talked about
picture plants where they've got a uh, they've got a
deep well that has some killer fluids in it, and
they want you to fall in and get stuck and
die and dissolve. Now it's it's definitely worth saying that
the natural prey of these plants are invertebrates. They're going
to be insects. But some of these traps can grow

(52:55):
like more than forty centimeters deep or hold up to
two liters of aggestive fluid. That's huge, looks like a
you know, it's like a big soda bottle. Like with
some of its various species having traps this big, it's
sort of natural to wonder if anything bigger than an
insect ever gets digested, And I'd say the answer appears

(53:17):
to be both no and yes, and so like I said,
first of all, invertebrates are clearly the main prey of
these plants. Um they appear insectivorous by evolutionary design, but
animals come into the picture as well well. One one
sense is more mutualistic, Like there are several picture plants
that seem to have this non predatory symbiotic relationship with

(53:40):
vertebrates like birds, bats, and shrews. And it works like this.
You've got a picture and it's got sweet nectar all
along the outer surface, and a bird or a forest
rodent comes along besides, I want some of that nectar,
And while it's hanging out of the opening of the
picture plant, it just happens to deposit some seas inside. Now,

(54:01):
normally you would not expect an organism to have an
adaptation that incentivizes animals to poop inside it. But guess
what those feces are rich in nitrogen. Yeah, exactly the
nutrients that the plant would normally need to get by
killing insects. So there are types of picture plants that
also seem to provide like a roosting shelter for bats

(54:23):
as well, and the bats to do the same thing.
They poop into the plant and the plant gets some
sweet nitrogen out of it. But with some of the
larger tropical pictures, what if a small mammal were two
fall all the way in, would it be able to
get out? And if not, would the plant eat it?

(54:43):
I think the answer is ding, ding, ding. You bet.
This is this nightmare scenario. I encounter anytime I use
a composting toilet. Oh no, those things smell bad enough anyway, yea,
even when they go. I was in a really good
one last week. Oh, I shouldn't bad mouth thought. I'm sorry.
I've been near one that's old. Really, but it's still
horrifying because especially like in my case, I'm putting my

(55:04):
son on it, and I was like, oh, he could
just fall right down there, and then I guess I
have to go down there too, like the fluke man, right, yeah,
oh man, this is a horrifying scenario falling into a
picture trap. God. So here's the evidence. There is a
photo and video documentation online of a Nepenthes research expedition

(55:25):
that took place first in October, and they were going
to Mount Victoria and the Philippines, and they were studying
specimens of Nepenthes at in Borough e I when named
after our our favorite at Inburg, endemic to the region
and with the species not and not Attenburgh. But they
found one picture of this plant that contained a wild

(55:49):
caught dead tree shrew, and they showed it in photos
and on video, and a return expedition two months later
showed the skeletal remains of the shrew covered in a
sort of layer of first So essentially all the soft
tissues of the tree shrew appeared to have been digested
by the plant. So does the picture plant naturally target

(56:10):
vertebrate mammals as prey. Probably not, but if there's one
on offer, yeah, I don't mind if I do. That
seems to be the approach. But now the real question
is could it be possible for a real world plant
to be the man eating tree, that the killer tree
that would trap and kill large megafauna like a deer

(56:30):
or a bear or a human being mm hmm, or
even something like a raccoon, right, I mean, oh yeah,
it's settling for a raccoon medium size because because the
even the the bat possibility and the shrew possibility is
kind of iffy, right, So anything larger than that it
becomes increasingly fantastic. Yeah. So I will say, first of all,

(56:52):
I found no evidence that a plant like this already exists.
We'll start with the bad news. But the good news,
or maybe the bad news, who knows what's good and bad,
It depends where he's stand on plants killing and eating humans.
Is that there's some interesting leads. So, first of all,
I want to consider the possibility of a proto carnivorous
bramble trap. So I watched a video blog and this

(57:12):
is not scientific information. This was a video blog by
an Irish sheep farmer, and this guy was personally insisting
that the BlackBerry brambles on his land are carnivorous, or
he called them carnivorous. I think more accurately you would
call them proto carnivorous. But if he's correct, But here's
his argument. He says by demonstrating how his sheep become

(57:36):
trapped in these brambles all the time, they get like
they get their wooly coats caught in the hook like thorns,
and then they struggle and they get more and more
tangled in the branches as they struggle to escape. That's
kind of interesting. I guess the idea is that they
get caught, they can't escape, they die. It's kind of
like what was being alleged with the Puya chilensis, that

(57:58):
they would fall down near the base the plant rought
and fertilize the soil. Well, even if they in doing this,
if they didn't kill the animal outright, if they even
if they didn't allow starvation to occur. They could conceivably,
you could conceivably have the plant just holding it long
enough for a predator to come take advantage of it,
eat part of it, and then but they'll leave portions

(58:20):
of the creature to rot. Oh that's interesting too. I
hadn't thought about that now. I do want to say
I'm not going to endorse the hypothesis of carnivorous brambles
here because I think we don't have evidence that that's
necessarily what's going on. I think you'd have to demonstrate
that this is actually an adaptation towards which bramble evolution
was shaped, like where they're similar wooly animals native to

(58:42):
the regions wherever these plants evolved. Would one of these
animals rotting at the base of the bramble plant really
provide enough nutrition incentive to make a major difference in
survival and reproduction? Like are it would? The would the
nutrients it provides matter enough for this to be an
evolved trade that is targeted by selection. Yeah, Because to

(59:04):
come back to the fig tree scenario, think of it
as a well run corporation. At what point does do
the do the masters do the do the CEOs of
the border directors or whatever, we're going to invest in
the processing division. Yeah, it's like, tell me more about this, uh, this, this,
this sheep eating division that you're working on this project. Alright,

(59:24):
let's hire some more people, let's let's invest more in that,
and let's bump it up in the overall hierarchy exactly.
So I haven't seen evidence that that's what's going on
at the brambles. Yeah, but given all these questions, I
do want to say I could believe it's possible that
some bramble type plant could establish an evolutionary pathway toward
proto carnivary and eventually full carnivalary, starting with accidental snaggings,

(59:47):
accidental snagging of sheep and other unfortunate creatures that are
covered in suicide vel crow. You know, this reminds me
of of a specimen the ninencountered in Arizona last week,
and that's the Death's claw or harvardgap item, also known
as a grapple plant or a wood spider wood spider.
They're pretty gnarly looking. Um. They they're from the sesame family,

(01:00:10):
but they're a hooked fruit. So it starts when it's growing.
Initially it kind of looks like a weird green banana,
and apparently it can be consumed. Uh we did. I
did not eat one, but I was told that, yes,
some people have things they can do with these. Um.
But it starts off like a banana and then it
kind of splits in the middle, and so it ends
up like you imagine you're like your hand making the

(01:00:33):
devil horns and then imagine if you had super long,
curvy fingernails on both of the protruding fingers. Yeah. And
so what it does is when a a mule deer
or a prong horn a horse or even a human
comes along, Uh, it latches onto the ankle. These these
these the devil horns here latch around and it becomes

(01:00:55):
and it carries the the fruit across you know, long distances, um,
and it doesn't does not hurt the animal in question.
And actually they seem to have anti inflammatory properties that
are utilized in some folk medicines. But if this is possible, yeah,
why not a grappling mammal killing root as well? Yeah. Again,
I guess we'd have to come back to the question

(01:01:17):
of is the incentive there is the evolutionary incentive big
enough to work on these powerful structures. Another way to
ask this question, another scenario for this. How about a
human sized snap trap, sort of like what I pictured
in the grove of the killer tree at the beginning.
So imagine this. It's a venus fly trap, large enough

(01:01:37):
to capture and digest a deer or a bear or
a human like, not not so much necessarily like a
little shop Ahara's Audrey too, but just a giant venus
fly trap. Just a trap doesn't mean a thing. Yeah,
it doesn't sing or a leap out, but just large
enough to lay a trap that could snag a larger creature. Yeah.

(01:01:58):
So there are obviously plants that move quickly. The venus
fly trap is one example of them. There's you know,
plants usually exhibit very slow motion motion that's expressed through
growth patterns rather than through uh fast moving of plant tissues.
But there are plants that have fast moving tissues. You
touch a fern and sometimes the leaves can close. The
venus flytrap can snap closed. I'm not sure how big

(01:02:22):
and how sturdy you can scale up those fast movements
and plants like I've never seen a plant with huge,
strong structures that exhibit fast movement. All the all the
ones I know of with fast moving body parts tend
to be pretty small. Yeah. Yeah, anytime you you see
the same thing when you're talking about johnet Gerrillas right,
anytime you scale up morphology, you're gonna run into various

(01:02:45):
engineering limits and you end up having to change the
design in order to make it conceivably work. And then
in some cases, is it even possible to upscale that design? Yeah,
but let's just imagine. Let's say, okay, imagine you can
scale up fast moving plant body parts. Uh, still a
couple of problems here. It doesn't take a lot of

(01:03:07):
compression strength to hold in a fly or a spider,
but imagine how many pounds of compression force it would
take to hold in a human or a bear that's
fighting to get out of a trap. This would have
to be a really strong, big, powerful plant. And I
guess my question is why would a plant evolves such
an extravagant morphological contrivance and does it even make sense

(01:03:29):
to imagine how it gets to there? Because remember, carnivorous
plants tend to practice animal predation in order to offset
nutrient deficiencies in the soil. Right, That's the whole reason.
We go back to their growing in inhospitable conditions. They
can't get the nitrogen or some of their nutrients they need,
so they need to prey on animals to get those little,
those little molecules. But what would an organism grown in

(01:03:52):
such poor soil be able to attain human trapping size
to begin with? Like, how does it get that big
and that powerful if it hasn't been trapping humans the
whole way would have it would have to sort of
like be scaling up as it goes, catching bigger and
bigger animals as it gets bigger. Yeah, And why would
you why would it? Why would it evolve to depend

(01:04:13):
on increasingly larger and increasingly um, you know, more rare
uh specimens? Why why would it would be making it's
it's there would be there would be a tipping point
where it would just be making its work harder for itself,
and and therefore there would be less uh less, it
would be less advantageous to its evolutionary ascent. Yeah. And

(01:04:34):
another thing to remember, as we've said on the show before,
in evolution, we've always got to keep in mind, bigger
is not necessarily better. It seems better to us because
we like bigger trucks, but bigger bodies are not necessarily better.
Organisms will not tend to grow larger unless there's a
clear survival advantage or reproduction advantage, Right, it comes down
to what the environment will bear, what's competitive. I just

(01:04:56):
just a few seconds ago, I I said evolutionary ascent,
which we all and us and talking about humans. But
that's kind of a misnomer because evolution, but in the
same way that there's no evolving, evolution is not an
upward or downward movement. It is just a movement um.
And yeah, if you start thinking about it in terms
of there being a goal other than survival, other than propagation,

(01:05:19):
than muddy the waters. So yeah, the the human sized
snap trap, I'm going to say that that's something that
maybe could be engineered. You know, I could imagine in
the future if you're you're tinkering with plant genomes trying
to create something weird. It's possible that that that's sort
of a a physical uh, something that's physically attainable and
plant morphology. I don't know, it might not even be that,

(01:05:40):
but even assuming it is that, it doesn't seem like
something that would arise in nature, right, it would need
to be a mad scientist who decided, you know, he
or she wanted a large man eating plant. Maybe you know,
an evil dictator who wanted it to live it at
the bottom of a trap door or continue feeding witches too. Yeah,
or or how about this, how about a bio toilet

(01:06:02):
for for spaceship gardens. So going back to the picture
plan idea encouraging animals to poop in it like a
compos bio biological compost, biologically engineered compost toilet. Or maybe
it's engineered by a British nanny who is a druid
who has had her tree killed with the chainsaw that

(01:06:23):
she used to worship for years. She needs a new god,
and so she genetically she studies genetics, she you know,
masters the art of crisper gene editing, and then she
makes this thing. Or as she just merely entered into
contract with the space toilets who overthrew another alien species
because they were tired of just being pooped into. Okay, Robert,
I think we're done. Yeah, we've got off the deep

(01:06:45):
end here, but I think we've covered some We've covered
some fictional ground here. We've covered covered some mythological, some
cryptid ground as well as the the the the, the
more solid soil of of actual scientific inquiry, and nothing
aid us in the process. So I guess we're doing okay.
It would be a good way to go, though, it

(01:07:07):
would be a noteworthy way to go, not a pleasant
way to go. But yeah, it'd be good to be remembered. Yeah. Yeah,
because none of these scenarios, I think we can agree,
none of the scenarios of carnivorous plants actually sounds pleasant.
All of it takes place, that death ends up occurring
at the slow rate that is uh, that is typical
of the of the plant's slower approach to life. You'd

(01:07:29):
really be hoping a bear would come along and get
into you. Yeah, all right, So there you have a
carnivorous plants um. Hey, if you want to learn more
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(01:08:14):
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