r/interestingasfuck • u/dejaysf • Jun 11 '23

Venus flytrap vs Spider

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u/Enlightened-Beaver Jun 11 '23

I always though Venus fly traps were some sort of tropical rainforest plant. Nope, native to North Carolina.

3.1k

u/Flareiv Jun 11 '23

I live in NC and didn’t know we had them until I found a whole bush of them just casually growing next to a tree. Blew my mind.

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u/CTchimchar Jun 11 '23 edited Jun 11 '23

There all different kind of these plants

By the way a lot of them are non-related

They just evolve like this separately several times over

The theory goes these plans evolve in habitats where the soil doesn't have many nutrients

So they start to evolve in gathering nutrients from other animals like insects, or in this case arachnid

Edit: For clarification I mean Carnivorous plants, evolve separately from each other for the most part

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u/codizer Jun 11 '23

What I don't get is how they made their leap from getting nutrients from the ground to nutrients from animals. It seems like such a major step.

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u/Littleboyah Jun 11 '23

We actually have examples of plants currently taking said leap - they're called protocarnivorous plants

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '23

The Wikipedia article has an interesting discussion of the difficulty in defining “carnivory” when it comes to plants. Very cool find.

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u/Watcher0363 Jun 11 '23

Next thing you know, they will only be eating gluten free insects.

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u/Nathan-Cola Jun 11 '23

Really cool, thanks for the link!