81K views · 272 reactions | Carnivorous plant feeding time  #carnivorousplant #tropicalplants #venusflytrap #flytrap #nepenthes #drosera #sundew #cephalotus #sarracenia #pitcherplant #plants #house | Carnivorous Plants | Facebook

A caterpillar accidentally fell onto a sundew plant and got stuck to its sticky hairs, but after struggling, it escaped. A fruit fly wasn’t so lucky—it was trapped and digested. Sundews use sticky polysaccharide mucus on their hairs to capture insects, then curl their leaves to digest them. Tougher creatures like caterpillars or springtails can sometimes break free. In contrast, Venus flytraps catch prey by snapping shut rapidly. Their success rate is lower, but the trap is strong enough to hold

Drosera glanduligera, pimpernel sundew, has remarkable traps. It has short sticky tentacles, like other sundews, and longer ones that aren not sticky. If a prey gets near those longer tentacles, it triggers a touch-sensitive longer tentacle, and then gets catapulted into the trap Inside the trap, the prey will be digested by the sticky tentacles. The movement is so fast, that an ordinary camera canoot capture it. You need a super-fast camera, and then watch it in slow motion. Poppinga S, Hartmey