Carnivorous Plant Venus Flytrap Can Digest Human Flesh but Not an Entire Person

Venus flytrap, a flesh-eating plant, can digest human flesh. However, it is impossible for it to consume an entire person due to its size.

Carnivorous Venus Flytrap

Animals as large as rats and other medium-sized rodents have been observed to be devoured by carnivorous plants in the natural world. Can they ever devour a human, though?

According to Barry Rice, an astrobiologist at Sierra College in Rocklin, California, who has researched carnivorous plants in great detail, they are fantastic, lovely organisms that showcase the brilliant advances of evolution. Every inhabited continent has carnivorous plants, and the USA has them in every state!

Plants developed to capture and consume animals as an additional source of nutrients are known as carnivorous plants. The Natural History Museum in London estimates that there are currently about 630 species known to science, though there may be many more. The plants have had to develop their own methods for consuming their food because they lack teeth or a stomach.

According to Rice, carnivorous plants develop digestive enzymes that may quickly turn animal tissue into liquid goo that the plants can consume. The key is chemistry!

A few carnivorous plants rely on the bacteria inside them to digest their prey instead of producing these enzymes themselves.

Additionally, the plants employ a number of techniques to entice and capture their prey. The spring-loaded jaws of the Venus flytrap are probably the most well-known example, but there are also other varieties, such as the trumpets of pitcher plants with their slick lids and the sticky tendrils of the round-leaved sundew.

Venus flytrap is a flowering plant, most known for devouring other living things. Each leaf's terminal has two hinged lobes that make up the "trap." Trichomes, which resemble hairy projections on the inner surfaces of the lobes, are what trigger the lobes to close when prey comes into touch with them.

The trap won't close until the trichomes have been touched several times, preventing the plant from wasting energy if no prey is present. The edges of the hinged traps have tiny bristles that interlock when the trap closes, preventing the prey from squeezing out.

Although other carnivorous plants actively catch their prey, the Venus flytrap is one of the very few that does this. The Venus flytrap is native to North and South Carolina, but it has also been imported to Florida and New Jersey, among a few other states. In spite of their widespread popularity as a potted plant, most Venus flytraps sold today are either domesticated or harvested from dwindling wild populations.

Can Venus Flytrap Consume an Entire Person?

According to the World Record Academy, the largest Venus fly trap in the world is still only 2.4 inches long, far too short to capture even a mouse, let alone a person.

Per Rice, the fact that plants' cells have walls rather than membranes presents a significant obstacle to their attempts to be scaled up to consume enormous animals. Since they typically find it difficult to move about like animals do, they were unable to pursue larger prey. It would have to be a plant based on a pitcher plant if we wanted a large plant predator, Rice suggested.

He added that all it would take is for a human to fall into a deep well with smooth, strong walls just slightly taller than a person. They would drown, which would allow the plant to consume them whole.

But as of yet, no plants have recognized an evolutionary need to pursue a larger prey. The expert noted that it would be difficult to imagine a plant evolving to capture large prey since there are so many small prey available. Rice added, however, that if there were a scenario with diminishing small prey, evolution would favor a carnivorous plant that could consume large prey! Nevertheless, for the time being, humans are a considerably bigger threat to these plants than they are to us.

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