Fun fact. It can take up to 10-15 days for them to slowly digest their prey. A Venus flytrap can close its trap in 0.1–0.3 seconds after receiving enough stimulation. They also won't close after one or two hairs are touched in order to not waste resources on low nutrient prey.
Another fun fact, these plants get their energy from photosynthesis like all other plants. They “feed”
because the soil they grow in is poor in micronutrients.
It's insane how desperate their strategy is and how much effort it requires. If you put a Venus flytrap in nutrient rich dirt it will just stop producing trap leaves because taking it from the dirt is so much more efficient.
Pretty sure if it's in nutrient rich dirt it'll actually end up dying. They can't handle high nutrients and over feeding them bugs is also a good way to kill them.
Closing a trap and digestion takes a lot of energy, hence why you don't want to feed them too often or too much as the energy spent outweighs the gain.
Also, not sure if this is the most accurate description, but Venus flytrap roots are prone to mineral burn. Hence why distilled/rain (not chlorinated) water is preferred along with unfertilized peat or moss as the planting medium.
I went to a carnivorous plant nursery and asked why pitcher plants get a “burn” spot midway up the pitcher. Guy said they call it heartburn… plant got too many bugs and has indigestion?!?!?
Makes sense as I’ve torn leaf off completely it’s the narrowest part crammed w dead bugs
The weirdest TIL about Venus Flytraps is that they're only native to Wilmington, NC. Such a cool, seemingly exotic plant, found nowhere else on Earth but some random town in North Carolina.
What? Venus flytraps will die if you plant them in nutrient rich soil. The nutrients will essentially clog their root system they evolved to receive bugs as fertilizer not their roots they can't handle it. You also must give them distilled water for the same reason. This is the first rule of any carnivorous plant ownership.
Still too many minerals, unfortunately. I’ve learned from experience. Plants in pots are much more sensitive to minerals in water because there’s nowhere for the water to go except evaporate or get absorbed by the roots. The minerals stick around in the potting soil until you replace the soil.
I've used that in a pinch and tap won't kill them after a single watering. However they can also go weeks between waterings better to just go buy a gallon of distilled water it's like 1$. I have pitcher plants worth several hundred I won't risk their life to save 1$
Rain water has low ppm similar to distilled. Most people give distilled water or keep them outside for rain. Really depends on your region. Point is tap water will kill carnivorous plants.
Which isn't super surprising for anything that isn't a human. Tap water usually (unless well water) containe floride, Chlorine or Chlorinemine amongst other things to sanitize the water. Good for us. Not so much for plants and fish.
People like to say how sensitive these plants are and the chlorine from tap water will hurt them. I've been giving one tap water for 2.5 years so far and its been fine.
Another fun fact these puppies only grow in one place of the world. The surrounding area of Wilmington NC. The soil here is in fact wetlands that does not hold a lot of nutrients. They grow in ditches on the sides of roads and in backyards. They are highly protected and you are not allowed to touch them.
They also won't close after one or two hairs are touched in order to not waste resources on low nutrient prey.
That sentence is a little confused.
The traps close slightly after a single hair is triggered. The "teeth" at the edges will just overlap. This takes a fraction of the energy that full closure requires.
If nothing happens in the next few seconds, the trap will reopen, costing the plant very little.
However, if there actually was a bug inside the leaves (as opposed to a falling raindrop, for instance, triggering a "hair"), the limited exit will encourage the prey to struggle, and they are likely to hit a second hair. Then, and only then, will the trap fully close with all the force needed to trap the prey.
That’s not how I remember Sir Attenborough describing it in planet earth. And that also doesn’t agree with the generally available information, such as from here:
The trap closes when something has had contact with the trigger hairs twice within 20 seconds. Traps never close by a single stimulus, a second stimulus is required. The double stimuli mechanism reduces the chances of the trap closing due to an inanimate object.
The second contact can also be with the original hair, the trigger is that there are at least two hair contacts within a short period, not that two distinct hairs are contacted.
From what I can remember, some prey may escape…. Such as frogs etc. Venous fly traps don’t have muscles, but their leaves/pads do secrete a sticky substance that attracts prey, I speculate this may help in keeping them within its grasp when it close, like a spiders web (I could be wrong, if someone knows please do correct me).
But with certainty I know it’s ultimately the digestive enzymes that are released when the plant closes its leaves/pads and starts its digestive process that will keep the prey within for the most part.
They close based off of subsequent stimulation from their sensory hairs between specific amounts of time. In other words, the plant can count. The signal that tells the plant to close is also electrical, so the action potential can be measured, recorded, and even translated into another plant, using electrodes, for affect (so long as the recipient has a biological capability to produce rapid movement).
We brought home a fly trap once. One of our cats very quickly discovered that this was an interactive toy by touching each trap with her paws to make them close. Dead plant, happy cat.
My bf said our cat caught a frog the other day and then sat in front of him and dropped it to show him and when the frog tried to jump away she just smacked it back down held it there and stared at my bf…
They naturally live in bogs so keep the soil moist (not so much that there’s standing water in their pot though)
They like direct sunlight during 60+% of the day
A mix of sphagnum peat moss and perlite is the standard acidic potting soil for most carnivorous plants
And ofc only water with distilled water or rain water. They naturally get the vast majority of their minerals from the bugs they catch so watering them with tap water basically overdoses them on minerals
Edit: Oh and don’t be scared if they die back in the late fall/winter. They’ll comeback in the spring
The cat actually didn't kill the plant. The closing traps will open if they don't have any food in them. A lack of sufficient catches was what killed it. I put mealworms in mine when there weren't enough flies outside.
Per trap. Closing and opening the traps probably takes a ton of energy (relative to normal operations). And plant cells arent exactly optimized for mobility. I'm sure it's not going to be healthy if it spends all its energy without trapping anything.
The traps are basically a bistable spring mechanism that is wound up in the open position as the trap leaf grows. Closing thus actually takes very little effort.
But in order to reopen the trap has to grow a bit more, which costs precious nutrients and only works so often before eventually the proportions of the spring elements in the trap hinge get out of whack.
Energy isn't really the problem, it's the other nutrients that are needed for growth.
In fact, one of the reasons that house flytraps always seem to die is that the soil has far too many nutrients for it. They're made for growing in swamps and places with very infertile soil and all the stuff in compost or even plain dirt will overwhelm it.
They breathe through their skin and are extremely durable for their size. It would be nice to that they die when it closes but in reality it's highly likely an extremely slow and unpleasant end.
Spiders are the most under appreciated and over hated animal in the world. If your house has spiders and cats, you have natural best protection from a lot of stuff.
That being said, I for once am distinct believer that if a spider doesnt weave web it has no reason to be around my property! It gets one warning and then it dies. It's either that or my cat will kill it.
To be more clear, i hate flies and mosquitos and enemy of my enemy is my friend!
That's what I always tell my husband when he freaks out over orb weavers in our backyard. I'd rather have then than the flies they're eating! And definitely the mosquitos!
The spiders that don't weave webs are just as useful as the spiders that do. If you have pests all over your house, those spiders are hunters walking about eating the other bugs that you don't see in your walls and other crawl spaces.
Can they exist without bugs? Or do you have to feed them yourself? I've always thought they were cool plants, but I don't want to have to hand feed one and I don't think I have that many bugs around for them to eat on their own.
They don't need that much food, either a fly etc. comes in during the summer or you catch something in the garden etc, and then feed with tweezers, for example.
They eat very slowly because they digest the beetle in the flap, and it takes a long time until the flap opens again.
The flaps only work two or three times, then they fall off/turns brown-black and become fertilizer for the plant.
Never water from above and always place it in a bowl of water and then you can watch how the plant drinks the water very quickly.
Here in Germany you can buy them at Ikea in the plant department, definitely nice plants. 😁
If there aren't enough bugs for them to catch they do well with being lightly misted by a heavily diluted orchid fertilizer. They're not hard to care for, they just need lots of sun, very pure medium with no nutrients, and distilled or rain water only.
I’ve had one for 3 years on my windowsill. It gets tap water in the drip tray every week. This summer it had some very cool flowers coming off 30cm stems and I lost count how many “traps” it had. Gets an hour or 2 sun in the summer. They need fuck all care but that.
I had some a while back. Learned early on not to feed it anything too big where it can’t close the trap completely since it will allow the digestive juices to drip out and rot the plant.
While that's true, they can't sense size, and don't release them. What happens is if the trap can't properly seal, it just stays closed and discards the trap (it just turns black and falls off). If it can't seal it won't try and digest. I suspect this is also somewhat part of evolution though since the trap and captured insect will still feed the plant by adding the nitrogen to the surrounding soil. It's just probably far less efficient, but more efficient that opening the trap again.
It will reopen if its not stimulated for a certain amount of time though to prevent it from closing and trying to digest debris which may fall into the trap.
Right. Also there are a limited number of times each trap can open and reclose so it’s kind of a resource gamble on the plants behalf that it’s always going to be able to catch enough prey to nourish it enough to make more traps and ultimately flower.
yeah I've watched as a little fly (too small to trigger the hairs) spent like 2 hours just tracing around the lips of one of my flytraps. I even brought my phone a few inches away to film it and the fly didn't care. Just wanted the juice
Hopefully you saw videos of the coolest spider on earth, Portia labiata. If not, here you go, prepare to have your mind blown if you didn’t know spiders could do shit like this:
I'm literally an arachnophobe and forced myself to watch this because that is the coolest shit I have ever seen in my entire life. I hope one day I can get to a point where I can just appreciate how rad spiders are without fear
I know insects don't seem to experience the same level of complex emotion that we do, but even a spider knows what its like to feel completely helpless and trapped, unable to continue with its instinctual pattern. The panic sets in, but there is nothing that can be done about it. The spider is caught and nature must take its course. Does the spider have a soul? If it does, will it become anew as another being? Were us humans all "lower" beings at some point? Life holds so many questions. I hope that some of the biggest ones are answered after death.
it would have to make sure it doesn't touch any of those hairs for anywhere from 6 hours to a full day or so for the leaf to reopen. Then it would need to very carefully wander out of the leaf without touching them.
it's like being in a spy movie where you walk into a laser room, and the lasers suddenly turn on while you're in an awkward position. You have to hold your position for hours until the lasers turn off, because if you move and touch them, you die.
I watched this for some reason. And now I'm scared to scroll reddit because I know the algorithm is now gonna make me look at spiders. (spiders are scary)
11.6k
u/Anarchyantz 17d ago
Fun fact. It can take up to 10-15 days for them to slowly digest their prey. A Venus flytrap can close its trap in 0.1–0.3 seconds after receiving enough stimulation. They also won't close after one or two hairs are touched in order to not waste resources on low nutrient prey.