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image depicting Amazing nature: Are some plants carnivorous?

Amazing nature: Are some plants carnivorous?

 

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Amazing nature

What is a Carnivorous Plant?

Carnivorous plants are plants that get nutrients from trapping and eating animals. Since they get some of their food from animals, carnivorous plants can grow in places where the soil is thin, or poor in nutrients. As a result, they have to get their nutrition by trapping and digesting their prey of insects and small animals instead. They have another name as insectivores plants.

There are 630 different kinds of carnivorous plants around the world. Among them, some carnivorous plants are water plants (they live in the water). And some live in the soil like most other plants do. However, most carnivorous plants don’t get very big; about 12 inches tall. There are a few, however, that grow to be much larger than that. The large carnivorous plants grow to be about 3 feet tall.

Amazing nature

How do Carnivorous Plants Catch Their Prey?

Insectivorous plants have leaves that are made like pitchers or bladders which catch insects. Today, five different ways of trapping are known:

1. Pitfall traps (pitcher plants) trap prey in a rolled leaf that has a pool of digestive enzymes or bacteria.
2. Flypaper traps use sticky mucilage (a bodily fluid).
3. Snap traps use rapid leaf movements.
4. Bladderworts suck in prey with a bladder that produces an internal vacuum.
5. Lobster-pot traps force prey to move towards a digestive organ with inward-pointing hairs…

All carnivorous plants also have flowers, but they don’t use them to catch prey. They need some insects to carry the pollen found in their flowers from plant to plant so that new carnivorous plants can be produced. Similarly, Pollination is the process in which insects carry pollen from flower to flower.

Amazing nature

 

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