Did you know that some plants eat meat?

Most of the time, animals are the ones that eat plants. But in some rare cases, the plants are the ones doing the eating.

Probably the most famous of the meat-eating plants is the Venus flytrap. It works a little bit like a mousetrap: at rest, the flytrap rests in an open position, with tiny hairs scattered along the pink surface of the trap. But when an insect or arachnid disturbs two of those hairs, the trap snaps closed! If the prey escapes, the trap opens again in 12 hours, but if the prey trapped inside struggles, the trap tightens and digests it. The trap usually captures small prey like insects, but has been known to entrap larger prey like frogs as well!

Another carnivorous plant is the sundew. This one works almost like a strip of sticky flypaper. The top of the plant is covered with long tentacles tipped by sticky balls of a substance that acts like glue. When an unsuspecting insect lands on the sundew, it is traped by the sticky tentacles and the sundew folds around the insect to consume it.

The pitcher plant is one that doesn’t move, but instead relies on a pitfall trap to capture its prey. Pitcher plants are shaped just like pitchers, with slippery sides and a pool of digestive liquid in the bottom. Insects approach the pitcher attracted by its bright colours or sweet nectar, and slip down its slippery sides to the pool below where they drown and are digested by the plant. The biggest pitchers can even capture mice!