Venus Flytrap A Carnivorous Plant

Venus flytrap or Dionaea musciplula is a carnivorous small plant that you can keep at your home as a ''pet''. It has a variety of food choices like flies, ants and small bugs so what better natural choice for your home against insects especially if you live in the outskirts or in a village. 

A question that might pop up in everyone's heads is how these plants came to be carnivorous and not just like every other plant so in other words

Why there are carnivorous plants? 

The main reason behind this is Nitrogen. Plants need nitrogen to fasten up the photosynthesis process,to build their structural components that are proteins as well as their nitrogenous bases of the DNA. Although nitrogen is in our atmosphere plants can't receive it directly from there but instead through their roots and in dead matter form. What i mean by dead matter is dead animals or rotten leaves as well as human/animal manure ( yes that part is disgusting i know). 

Because life isn't fair some plants like Venus Flytrap grow up in nutrient-poor soil so they had to evolve or die and ofc they did the first one. That evolution gave them the opportunity to become hunters like other animals and like us and hunt down whatever they can to survive. 

Where Venus Flytrap Exists? 

Nowadays due to being successfully transplanted all over the world it can be maintained worldwide so you may basically see it in any flower shop.  It's true original location though are places as mentioned low on nutrients and in general nitrogen poor places like wet savannas and swamps. It can be found in coastal bogs of  North and South Carolina, Florida and Washington.

How It Hunts?

The question everyone was waiting finally came. Flytrap has the same principle every hunter had, has and will have. That principle is laying traps! To be more precise the whole plant consists of a small rosette of leaves each of which ends up in a different trap. The trap can be around 2.5-5 cm and basically looks like a plant with teeth that's ready to destroy you. 

The traps are in general always open and they spout nectar to attract flies and other insects. The mechanism behind this isn't as simple as it sounds and the plant is more clever than you can imagine. The evolution of this plant is so magnificent and complicated that it's like the plant sat down and though it before doing it. 

The trap doesn't just shut everytime an insect is on it because literally it might be a small stone, leaf or anything else that came through air. Even rain could have the same size as a small insect so let's get into the next big question.

How does it know whether or not it's an insect?

The answer lies to the hairs that are inside the trap. Those hairs are triggered everytime something touches them and if it's only one touch then the trap will stay open but if it's 2 or more those stimulation will result in the immediate closing of the trap. Now after it closes and the food is trapped the plant will need additional stimulation to start the digestion progress. 

Venus Flytrap's trap hair

In the digestion progress the plant first make sure to cut the air from getting in and out of the trap and let the digestive glands do the rest. The soft parts will be dissolved and in general the plant will try to take the nitrogen nutrients it needs from the dead insect. Note that the flytrap has chemical sensors so if it doesn't take a signal that the nutrients are done it will continue the digestion progress. After about a week the trap will reopen and only a tiny skeleton will remain. After a couple of meals the trap will only be used as a photosynthetic tool till it drops off. 

My View

Everything is evolving whether we like it or not. Animals, Plants as well as humans keep evolving and the sole reason behind that natural phenomenon is survival. While we are ahead of basically everything else and we are standing on the top of the pyramid of evolution although judging by some behaviors some people left behind :p we need to continuously study nature. We can learn so much things from this and from the evolution of others that we can use them in our advantage. Way too many ideas that are now part of our lives came from animals and plants and i truly believe we are not even half through done with it, so maybe Venus Flytrap and in general carnivorous plant have a lot to teach us! 

Sources (there are some sources in-between the post too)
https://www.carnivorousplants.co.uk/resources/venus-flytrap-complete-guide/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-the-venus-flytra/
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/the-venus-fly-trap-counts-the-struggles-of-its-prey/424782/
https://study.com/academy/lesson/venus-flytrap-habitat-diet-adaptations.html

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