Venus Fly Trap

[HAnn521]

How does it work??

(as I posted in Home and Garden)...

Plants have NO intelligence and all they need to survive is sunlight and water, so what in the world does this plant want/need from insects as supper??

Aside from why, How does it "know" what/when to eat something??

Plants are also NOT carnivorous, so why does this plant "eat" other living things??

Please fill me in-thanks!

[morg_monster]

venus fly traps and other 'carnivorous' plants grow in areas with poor quality soil, so they try and get some of the nutrients they need from insects instead.  It has lots of little hairs inside the trap that detect a living insect, and then the trap springs shut on it and the digestive juices start flowing to digest down the insect.  How the plant shuts its trap is a bit of a scientific mystery still.

[Mattk]

you say plants have no intelligence but strictly speaking this isnt true as they need to seek light and water which takes a form of intelligence albeit at an extremely base level.there was an item on tomorrows world many years back where they actually showed that plants can feel 'pain' ie a minute electronic charge is emmitted when cut.

as for a venus fly trap i would assume that the movement of the insect stimulates the plant and it closes as a reaction the same way a plants roots will change direction to seek a new water source

[3Styler]

Plants are pretty clever but not in the conventional nerve signal sense (although the tomorrows worlds thing sounds interesting), for example plants ar able to move towards light (phototropism) and water (hydrotropism) by releasing different amounts of the plant hormone auxin down the sides of the plant they can cause one side to expand/grow at a faster rate than the other side and thus cause the plant to lean or grow in a certain direction, and so i believe plants DO have a type of intelligence and quite obviously some plants ARE carniverous.

The venus fly trap is the way it is because of evolution, natural selection dictated that the venus fly trap would be able to survive because of the fact it could obtain the nitrates and minerals it needs to grom from the digestion of flies.  The fact that it has the ability to digest flies is the result (like every animal on this planet) of genetic mutation.

[bazwillrun]

you left out the word random, it should be random genetic mutation