Friday, March 26, 2010

Man eating plants!

Well, it may not eat a man but it might slowly dissolve one of your fingers if you happened to drop it into the "mouth" of Nepenthes attenboroughii, a pitcher plant discovered several years ago in the Phillipines and named after everybody's favorite naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Attenboroughii is said to be one of the largest pitcher plants ever discovered.

Also discovered on the 2007 expedition were unidentified blue mushrooms and never before seen pink ferns. Hmm, rat eating plants, blue fungi and pink ferns. Maybe these botanists took a long strange trip and never actually left their laboratory.

So does it really eat meat? Yes. Mostly insects-however last year it was found to-perhaps incidentally-trap, drown and "eat" animals as large as frogs and mice if they happen to slip into the dreaded pool of slime from which it can't escape. Perhaps rat infested cities like New York might want to invest in a few million pitcher plants peppered around the city...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1207076/Rat-eating-plant-named-David-Attenborough.html

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