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After millions of years, why are carnivorous plants still so small?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- leoedin 1y agoLarger animals tend to more intelligent - presumably there’s a natural limit to the size of prey a carnivorous plant can reliably catch from a static location.
- IAmBroom 1y agoCounterpoint: mice and at least one monkey baby have died in pitcher plants in the wild.
- jonplackett 1y agoIsn’t this still just the original point though, mice ain’t that big!
- IAmBroom 1y agoWe're using different criteria for "big".
- imtringued 1y agoA lot of pitcher plants evolved to be a toilet for shrews.
- HelloNurse 1y agoLarger animals are highly undesirable prey because they tend to be able to free themselves from a carnivorous plant (low value), with a high probability of severe damage to the plant in the attempt (high cost): they can just walk or climb away, but also involuntarily break a stalk with their weight, tear open a sac with talons, rip away slowly regenerated adhesive parts, eat something that should be dangerous, and so on.
- almosthere 1y agoWe haven't had an unscheduled total eclipse of the sun with people singing in the background yet.
- colecut 1y agohave they tried feeding them alllll niiight loooong
- IAmBroom 1y agoOK, I wrote my theory, and then read the article: same. But I will add that a commercial grower of venus flytraps once got curious, and took a few thousand cloned plantings, growing them in a variety of conditions. As soon as the soil became nourishing, the plants would die. Post mortem seemed to indicate their roots were fungally attacked. So: plant adapts to living in a food desert (not an actual one, of course; it has to be wet for the carnivory to work, as the article points out). Plant gains weirdo digestion abilities, but at the same time, it no longer needs expensive anti-fungal defences - because the ground isn't rich enough to support parasitic fungi. Then: human adds the nutrients back in. Boom! The ordinary fungus in the air, which has a tough time invading grass or tree or tobacco or pepper roots (because they have extensive defences, like capsaicin), lands in the rich soil of pretty-much helpless flytrap roots, and has a buffet.
- NegativeLatency 1y agoSorta similar with a lot of plants I imagine, we planted a Madrone tree and it's very tempting to want to water a small & new tree but they can also get root issues if the ground is too wet or doesn't drain well enough. They're highly adapted to living on the sides of cliffs.
- ge96 1y agoI've been trying to grow a mango from a seed for so long. The roots always get hit by black fungus and it dies off. Tallest I got one to grow was about 10"
- pantalaimon 1y agoSame with Lychee, after a bit the leaves all start getting brown from the tip and die off. Avocado on the other hand grows like a charm.
- thatcat 1y agoTry adding some natto innoculant to the seed
- nyeah 1y agotl;dr Basically a lot of sorry excuses. If you're a plant, don't buy into the negativity. Work your way up the food chain. If you eat it, then it's your food.
- bell-cot 1y agoAs soon as a carnivorous plant gets big enough to be eating young mammals, it hits the Mama Bear barrier. With motivation, even a tiny mammal can do an enormous amount of damage to a plant.
- hirvi74 1y agoSome carnivorous plants do eat mammals. Though not primarily, some pitcher plant species have been known to eat mice, for example.
- _tom_ 1y agoYou are assuming that they haven't. Brambles can trap sheep, benefiting from the sheep as fertilizer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrGobnZq83g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrGobnZq83g Falling coconuts can not only kill people, but probably kill far more small animals, again benefiting from them as fertilizer,
- ethbr1 1y agoCame to HN for tech news, left with a disturbing realization that coconut trees might be low-key carnivorous.
- username135 1y agoRight?!
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- __MatrixMan__ 1y agoIf it's a fun kind of disturbing, and you like SciFi, you might enjoy Semiosis.
- Affric 1y agoIf plants moved faster we would be absolutely terrified of them.
- athenot 1y agoLet's not be too hasty...
- signalToNose 1y agoThe Day of the Triffids
- rcarmo 1y ago
- Sevii 1y agoPlants not being able to chew or tear their prey is a big disadvantage.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago[dead]
- bilsbie 1y agoA related question is why plants in general can thrive on such tiny amounts of protein. (Nitrogen)
- IAmBroom 1y agoSimple. They don't need that much nitrogen. I'd be surprised if your tomato plant "ate" a whole teaspoon of fertilizer in its entire growing season.
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
- chrisco255 1y ago> Some large carnivorous plants are alive out there, but none is big enough to make a meal out of you. Clearly these researchers have never been to the Mushroom Kingdom.
- signalToNose 1y agoMushrooms technically are not plants
- jijijijij 1y ago„Technically“… talking kingdoms :D Like, an orca is more fish, you are more fish (or fungus for that matter), than a mushroom is a plant.
- hinkley 1y agoWe are more mushroom than plant as well.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoPlants technically are not mushrooms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranha_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranha_Plant
- chrisco255 1y agoThe piranha plant is native to the Mushroom Kingdom, reaching sizes up to several stories tall.
- Nevermark 1y agoI would have thought that plants which ate neighboring plants, for their easily accessed nutrients and to protect their own access to sunlight, water and forest nutrients, would be pervasive. I have heard of chemical/strangling/parasitical type competition. The banyan tree is territorial, for instance. But we would need another name, other than territorial, carnivorous or vegetarian, to describe plant predators which overtly, actively fed on the physical structure or leaves of fellow plants.
- olau 1y agoI think the problem is that then you need two energy harvesting systems, and there's not just that much to eat nearby. I guess to effectively live a long life by eating other stuff, you need to be able to move, or what you eat need to be able to move to you.
- IAmBroom 1y agoNah. Eating and reproducing lots, fast, is a viable means. See: much of the fungi kingdom. I suppose you could view the passive offspring dispersal system (wind, current, animal digestive tract, raindrops, etc.) as a form of intergenerational movement.
- adrian_b 1y agoThere are many parasitic plants, like the well-known mistletoe, which eat other plants. Unlike mistletoe, some of the other parasitic plants have given up completely on phototrophy, depending only on the nutrients sucked from the host plant. It is likely that there are much more parasitic plants than carnivorous plants. Plants that feed on other plants must do it similarly to a fungus, by penetrating them and growing into them a root-like organ, for sucking their fluids. A plant could not bite and chew another plant, because, like the fungal cells, the plant cells have abandoned their ancestral animal-like mobility, by covering their cells with walls made of cellulose, which prevent cell mobility. While there are a few plants capable of infrequent fast movements, like the Venus flytrap, they use special tricks for creating tension in an elastic structure, like when drawing a bow, which would not be suitable for sustaining a sequence of movements.
- musicale 1y agoI guess there are still some things that we can be grateful for.
- cyberax 1y agoOK, let's see. You're a plant, so you have photosynthesis. It allows you to tap around 5W (averaged out) per square meter of foliage by just AFK-ing. Your major need: water, you have to evaporate it for the photosynthesis to work. But it's not a problem in your habitat, there's plenty of water available. You also need nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients, but comparatively little of them. Nitrogen is the toughest one. This is the one that you can easily get from animals, though. So you can evolve a complicated mechanism to trap small animals and digest them for nutrients. It also provides you with a bit of energy, but it's completely immaterial compared to photosynthesis, so you don't even bother evolving all the complicated protein-to-glucose pathways. Now, you want to grow bigger. How would you do it? Energy is not an issue, the photosynthesis provides plenty of it. But you need to trap more or bigger animals, and that's an issue. There just aren't that many of them, and you can't just get away with simple traps anymore.
- jijijijij 1y agoIs nitrogen really the bounty, not phosphor? I imagine nitrogen fixation is basically the same problem everywhere, equally distributed through air, but phosphor depends on geological processes, depends on the mineral make of the soil. If phosphor gets depleted, you have two options: Wait for mountains to grow and shed some, or indulge in someone else’s DNA and ATP. Maybe the acidic soil makes uptake harder, or aids wind and water erosion? Looking at my spotted windowsill, if I was a plant on an evolutionary adventure, I‘d befriend some spiders and turn my crown into a cotton candy guano cloud. I‘d rather have the animal predators do the work and then have them shit in my yard for the nitrogen and phosphor. You only need twigs and then some bioluminescence or stink to help those spiders fill their nets. Have a fungus rot my legacy core wood so an owl can defecate a hectare of mice and squirrels right into my tummy. Or you look all mighty and judgmental so these funny naked apes drench your soil in the blood of goats and their youths. Is that still a thing?! What about instagramable forest cemeteries? Heard about the tree toilet TikTok challenge? So fun! Super healthy and natural too. Now thinking of it, I wonder how many plants encourage animals shitting and dying in their yards. Maybe it’s not deterrent, but enterotoxic payment options? I guess, unless your objective is to grow impractically large fruits, because your human creator couldn’t keep it in their pants, for most plants in most places, neither phosphor nor nitrogen side hustles are really worth the effort.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoI bought a tiny Venus Fly Trap once, left it in the kitchen, and went away for a weekend. When I came back the kitchen was buzzing with flies, and the plant had literally gorged itself to death. This was extra impressive because none of the windows were open. It had somehow leaked attractant scent through gaps I didn't know existed and the flies - not exactly numerous where I was - must have been aware of it from hundreds of yards away. Point being the plants may be small, but they can be very good at what they do.
- beAbU 1y agoSo what you are saying is that a Venus fly trap can actually make a fly problem worse, by attracting more than it can eat?
- freedomben 1y agoI wouldn't think it gorged to death because the leaves close around the fly while digesting. I have a few small Venus fly traps as well and the greenhouse I bought them from said they are really easy to kill with too much or too little water, even just using basic fertilizer. Just speculating of course. These plants are cool but feel so alien. But yeah they definitely can attract a lot more flies than they can eat and can make the fly problem way worse
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jcalx 1y agoReminds me of a semi-plausible mechanism for carnivorous flora from this [0] Worldbuilding Stack Exchange answer by ckersch: > Bonegrass is a white fungus which grows in wheat fields. Most of the time, the bonegrass fields are normal wheat fields, indistinguishable from other wheat fields except for their exceptionally high yields and relatively low numbers of animal inhabitants. Of course, this entices lots of animals, large and small, to move into the area. Populations boom, fueled by the seemingly unnatural abundance of the wheat. > And then the bonegrass blooms. Overnight, huge mycelial mats below the wheat fields become active, with white fungal growths growing up the stalks of the wheat plants, using their stalks for support. Then, simultaneously across hundreds of square miles, the bonegrass releases its paralytic spores. Within 12 hours, the wheat fields become pale, white places of death. The fungus then begins to grow over the paralyzed creatures, flooding their body with neurotoxins that keep them immobilized until they die from dehydration over the next few days. > The dead animals quickly break down, broken apart by the fungus. As suddenly as the bonegrass grew, it will then die back, shrinking back beneath the earth, where it will slumber as the land above it slowly repopulates, drawn by the seeming gaia above the soil, and unaware of the horrors slumbering beneath... Scary stuff. Symbiotic plant-fungi or plant-bacteria relationships seem like plausible mechanisms for "carnivorous" plants, even if it's not "plants directly eating people" a la Little Shop of Horrors. There are more good answers with a similar premise under the same SE question. [0] https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/38354/how-often-must-carnivorous-grassland-eat https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/38354/how-...
- halflife 1y agoIf you liked this you should watch the animated series Scavengers Reign. It’s about astronauts crash landing in an alien planet, where the flora and fauna have a symbiotic relationship, and what happens when humans appear. Fantastic show.
- darkhorn 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuzLXxbGc4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuzLXxbGc4c
- imoreno 1y ago>Most of this carnivorous botany is small, but the diversity of different trapping mechanisms raises an evolutionary question. Isn't the obvious conclusion that: 1. There are many peaks in the fitness hypersurface for plants that correspond to meat eating 2. The peaks have smooth gradients at the outskirts 3. All peaks are minor local maxima 1 is because low nitrogen alone is not enough to make carnivory a net positive contributor to fitness. You need additional factors to make the gradient positive to begin with. That means the peaks (niches) are random and narrow. 3 is because carnivory implies an arms race against prey defenses, competing scavengers, and competing predators. Specialist animals are at a large advantage against plants, especially if meat is still a side dish to sunlight. To me the interesting question is 2 - most plants don't digest animals at all, so how does this begin to evolve?
- phkahler 1y agoHow about: larger animals can learn from seeing others eaten, so they won't fall for the trap.
- moate 1y agoI mean, that's a weak evolutionary argument against all forms of predation/prey. It assumes a level of cultural/shared knowledge that doesn't typically exist. Also, size =\= intelligence/problem solving. Chimps and humans are both smarter than gorillas. Yes, troop 1 of monkeys have learned about the monkey-eating plants that have evolved overnight, but troops 2-10 haven't. Eventually troop 1 leaves the deadly forest, and troop 2 comes in. After a few seasons, they notice these fucking plants keep eating their babies (again, most predators go after babies for the reason you mentioned, they haven't learned how to avoid death yet) and then they move on. Repeat for several centuries. Behold nature in all its splendor. I like the article's ideas: If you can grow large enough to eat a person, you're getting enough nutrition that you don't need to eat a person.
- MisterBastahrd 1y agoBecause a fly can spit on your food, but a mouse can eat a hole in your baseboards.
- Noelia- 1y agoI used to think carnivorous plants would someday grow huge and eat people like in the movies. Turns out they have always stayed small and just got really clever instead. This piece made me see it differently. Not growing big is not a flaw. In a place with barely any nutrients, surviving with just a bit of strategy is actually kind of amazing.
- mmsc 1y agoOne day it'll The Day of the Triffids
- a_bonobo 1y agoThe article doesn't seem to talk about it but many carnivorous plants lost part or most of their chloroplast genomes: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30629170/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30629170/ I.e., because they got their nutrients from animals they didn't need chloroplasts and the chloroplasts 'broke' over time. Chances are minimal to zero that carnivorous plants will regain chloroplasts. In a way, carnivory in plants is an evolutionary 'dead end' similar to parasitism, which is also often linked to chloroplast loss. Where could the plants evolve 'to' if they have no chance of getting energy from alternative (chloroplast) sources?