Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and the three of
Speaker 1: us are easy, breezy, beautiful cover girls and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. How you doing, I'm great, good
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I wanted to be a cover girl. Well
Speaker 1: you are now I degree such fantastic. Um. I'm excited
Speaker 1: about this one, Chuck. I'm really excited because it's like
Speaker 1: a combination of one of our plant episodes with one
Speaker 1: of our animal episodes. Yeah it is, isn't it. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to not look at a venus fly trap
Speaker 1: in action on a video and not think it's an animal. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so, I guess sure. It's just so like
Speaker 1: all you can think of, or all I can think of,
Speaker 1: is that thing is like thinking with the brain. Let
Speaker 1: me close my mouth and eat this thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know what I mean, That's what it looks like for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, Chuck, is there's like there's a
Speaker 1: whole thread of botany. Now there's like a big dispute
Speaker 1: in the botanical world about just yes, about just how
Speaker 1: much plants think and thinking, and not necessarily in ways
Speaker 1: that we would recognize its is thinking, but still having
Speaker 1: intelligence memory um. And one of the things that that
Speaker 1: seems to be kind of emerging as far as studying
Speaker 1: venus fly traps goes, is that plants, just like us,
Speaker 1: use what are called action potentials, which is electrical transmissions
Speaker 1: that cause cells to do different things when they're stimulated.
Speaker 1: And that is thinking, like, that's how we think, that's
Speaker 1: how neurons fire. So the idea that plants use the
Speaker 1: same kind of general principle to do things or to
Speaker 1: react to things or respond to things, or to change
Speaker 1: the behavior. Buddy, that's thinking in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: What's a vegan to do? I know it does, definitely,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a can. They're gonna all end up
Speaker 1: breathe atterrians, right, oxygen materians. No, that's the thing. Did
Speaker 1: you know that breathe at terrians? I feel like I've
Speaker 1: heard of that. It's exactly what it sounds. So they
Speaker 1: don't need anything. They just breathe in and drink water
Speaker 1: or is that awful limit? I don't even know if
Speaker 1: they drink water, probably water. Are they all dead eventually?
Speaker 1: I'm sure Okay, but yeah, we'll have to do an
Speaker 1: episode on that because I don't know enough about it
Speaker 1: to speak on of intelligently. But it is pretty interesting
Speaker 1: because I know some people at least try it well.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a movement that would probably not gain
Speaker 1: much steam, you know, right, because they're too tired to
Speaker 1: prostalytize about it. It sounds like a short stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: there you go, gotcha. I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: But we're here to talk about the Venus fly Trap,
Speaker 1: not the w KRP in Cincinnati. DJ what a great character.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of facets played by what was
Speaker 1: named Tim something, right, Tim Reid. Wow. Nice. I saw
Speaker 1: a lot of WKRAP when I was I did too, Man,
Speaker 1: I love that show. It's funny. I remember, I'm already
Speaker 1: going on a tangent before you even get started. But
Speaker 1: I remember watching that show when I was little and
Speaker 1: seeing Johnny Fever where the Grateful Dead t shirts, which
Speaker 1: was my first exposure, and they had like the skeleton
Speaker 1: and stuff, and I thought they were some kind of
Speaker 1: like a metal thing. I did too. I actually had
Speaker 1: a couple of other posters and I was like, this
Speaker 1: band must be the coolest fan of all time. And
Speaker 1: I finally heard them, I was like, this doesn't match
Speaker 1: at all, like the best name ever, the best imagery,
Speaker 1: and then I just didn't add up. Music didn't fit.
Speaker 1: But we're talking about the venus fly trap, the plant
Speaker 1: which if you think sure effort of those things that
Speaker 1: that's like the one carnivorous plant. No, no, no, there
Speaker 1: are hundreds and hundreds of plants that actually eat other
Speaker 1: things by attracting things and capturing and killing them. Uh,
Speaker 1: but the venus fly trap gets all the press because
Speaker 1: it just it looks like it looks and it's so cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of the other plants um like
Speaker 1: eat and digest insects or even like some rodents. There's
Speaker 1: a kind of picture plant that I saw. It's the
Speaker 1: size of a toilet and like, if you're a mouse
Speaker 1: and you fall in, that's it for you. Mouse. Um.
Speaker 1: But they don't do anything. They just kind of sit
Speaker 1: there and hope that something falls in. That. The thing
Speaker 1: that makes the venus fly traps so fascinating is it's
Speaker 1: one of only two plants in the world that actually
Speaker 1: like closes that actually traps and and and it traps
Speaker 1: its prey and like, that's just you just don't see
Speaker 1: that the other ones the European water wheel, and it
Speaker 1: looks like a fern with the very tips of each
Speaker 1: fern frond um, kind of like venus fly trap, the
Speaker 1: very very small version of it. The Venus fly trap
Speaker 1: is just big enough to be like, wow, that's really neat, right,
Speaker 1: Like they would never write a character named Audrey after
Speaker 1: those ferns and put them in Broadway musicals No and
Speaker 1: Audrey two. Technically Audrey two. Yeah, Audrey was the guy
Speaker 1: was Seymour's love interest, the girl that he liked, so
Speaker 1: he named the plant Audrey two. Can I confess something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know nothing about Little Shop of Horst. I mean,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen in a really long time either, but
Speaker 1: I um I went and looked up some stuff on it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're confessing to um. I saw on a YouTube
Speaker 1: video this guy from the Carolinas talking about the Venus
Speaker 1: fly trap, and he said a more appropriate name for
Speaker 1: them would probably be did you see this guy the
Speaker 1: Caro the Carolina spider trap. Because of two things, they
Speaker 1: are basically only found in about a seven hundred mile
Speaker 1: area as far as growing wild along the coast of
Speaker 1: North and South Carolina, and then he said they really
Speaker 1: only eat about five percent of their diet as spiders
Speaker 1: or I'm sorry, as flies. He said, they mostly eat
Speaker 1: spiders and ants. Uh. And you can also throw in
Speaker 1: crickets and slugs and some other caterpillary things in there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, very frequently whatever just kind of
Speaker 1: happens to to wander onto the plant itself. But I
Speaker 1: mean it'll take what it can get. But I guess
Speaker 1: winged insects and maybe get away faster or more easily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I get the idea that the flies can
Speaker 1: get out of there easier. So it's just I mean,
Speaker 1: they're fine to eat flies, and it's harder. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also I saw I saw um. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was in that same video or not. That there's
Speaker 1: only an estimated one d and fifty thousand of these
Speaker 1: plants in the wild and the entire seven hundred miles
Speaker 1: just tiny strip along the coast of North and South Carolina,
Speaker 1: and they live in bogs like marshy bogs, sometimes salt
Speaker 1: marshes um sometimes pete bogs, but you know, like a
Speaker 1: wetland that's like always wet that's that's where they grow. Um,
Speaker 1: and they like the sun and they like you humid.
Speaker 1: But they can also whether the cold, as we'll see,
Speaker 1: because it can get pretty cold in the winter in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. So there's really no way around explaining the
Speaker 1: origins of the name without it being a little well,
Speaker 1: it's just a little dicey because it was named at
Speaker 1: a time where, uh, things were different back then, and
Speaker 1: they named it because the plant resembled, uh, perhaps a
Speaker 1: woman's anatomy. Help me out here. No, I'm really enjoying
Speaker 1: watching your tap dance. Well, I mean, and we've talked.
Speaker 1: We may have mentioned it in the folklore episode the
Speaker 1: idea of the vagina dentata, which in many different cultures
Speaker 1: and nations around the world, there are these folkloric legends
Speaker 1: of these women who had teeth and there vagina act
Speaker 1: as a trap keep going chuck. And that is where
Speaker 1: this name comes from. It's named after Venus, that got
Speaker 1: pagan goddess of love because of that plant's resemblance and
Speaker 1: because of that folklore. Yes, chee, good job man, I
Speaker 1: think you really presented that well right, Um, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: name it that today, can I say that? No? They
Speaker 1: definitely wouldn't have. People are a lot less uptight when
Speaker 1: it comes to s e X you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it be the Carolina spider trap, that's right. I also
Speaker 1: saw that when the it was imported to England for
Speaker 1: studies around the mid eighteenth century, UM that it was
Speaker 1: popularly called tippity witch. It's that's what they called venus
Speaker 1: fly traps in England. I thought it was fun too,
Speaker 1: And Charles Darwin said that it was one of the
Speaker 1: most wonderful plants in the world, which I'm mean, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a pretty good endorsement coming from him, you know. Oh,
Speaker 1: I bet he loves the venus fly trap. Yes, he
Speaker 1: really did. And I don't think because he um had
Speaker 1: any kind of sexual proclivities toward it like some of
Speaker 1: his other fellow botanists who actually named it that. No.
Speaker 1: I think because it's a wonder of natural selection and evolution.
Speaker 1: I would say that's why too. One of the other
Speaker 1: things he's like, oh natural selection, yes, um. So one
Speaker 1: of the other things about the venus fly trap has
Speaker 1: another name too. It's um it's a taxonomic name. Is
Speaker 1: Diane a Musca pula. I think that's right, and that
Speaker 1: actually is named after Diana, a different goddess, the Roman
Speaker 1: goddess of the hunt, and muscapula apparently means mouse trap.
Speaker 1: So the other name thing you could call it besides
Speaker 1: Venus fly trap is Diana mouse trap. It's not bad.
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of really great names. I mean, tippity,
Speaker 1: which it alone is worth, you know, celebrating. I think
Speaker 1: Diana mousetrap might be my new hotel check in name.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one. I like that. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, they eat insects and not because they um
Speaker 1: just love the taste of spiders or flies. Uh, they're
Speaker 1: they're regular plants to They love photosynthesis and they do
Speaker 1: their thing during photosynthesis like all plants do, and take
Speaker 1: the energy of the sun and and then convert it
Speaker 1: to sugar and oxygen and use that stuff as energy.
Speaker 1: But they also need other stuff, just like all plants need,
Speaker 1: but they can't get it because of where they live
Speaker 1: and that p D. Marshy bog. They need all these
Speaker 1: amino acids and vitamins that their land doesn't provide, and
Speaker 1: they get that from these insects. Yeah, because most other
Speaker 1: plants are able to get things like nitrogen from the
Speaker 1: soil and phosphorus and magnesium soul for cassi calcium potassium. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: they need a TP energy and they a word in
Speaker 1: the form of carbohydrates like all plants to um, but
Speaker 1: there's other nutrients that they need to build sell walls
Speaker 1: to produce dna um, to transport water throughout that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Like you definitely need a lot more than
Speaker 1: a TP. And since they can't get it from the soil,
Speaker 1: they have evolved to get it by eating other bugs
Speaker 1: or eating bugs or you know, even in some cases
Speaker 1: like like those giant pitcher plants like mice, because animals
Speaker 1: are really great mobile stores of stuff like calcium in
Speaker 1: sulfur and phosphorus and magnesium. That's right, And then that
Speaker 1: wet pd acidic soil they must seek purchase elsewhere. And
Speaker 1: luckily those little spiders are happy to just crawl in there.
Speaker 1: And maybe we should take a little break and we'll
Speaker 1: tell you all about how this trap happens right after this, Okay, chuck,
Speaker 1: Before we go any further, I just want to restate
Speaker 1: one of the coolest things I've ever heard, that the
Speaker 1: venus fly trap and other carnivorous plants couldn't get nutrients
Speaker 1: from the soil they grew in, so they learned to
Speaker 1: eat bugs to get those nutrients. It's astounding, and it
Speaker 1: also makes them so similar to the to the animal world,
Speaker 1: because that's why animals eat other stuff, like other animals
Speaker 1: or even plants, because we need to get our energy elsewhere.
Speaker 1: We don't get it from the soil. So it makes them,
Speaker 1: in some weird way akin to us as well. Do
Speaker 1: you feel a kinship a little bit? And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a little attracted to it too, like some of
Speaker 1: those early botanists, not in a Darwinian way or both
Speaker 1: you swing both ways. Okay, I don't, I don't, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't judge. Who knew this podcast would go in
Speaker 1: this direction? Right when I saw that first thing about
Speaker 1: it being dicey, yes, about the name being I knew
Speaker 1: exactly where it's gonna go. Uh. So they are not
Speaker 1: the only plant also that attracts things via their smells
Speaker 1: or these delicious syrupy SAPs. I mean, if you go
Speaker 1: out in your garden on any day and see butterflies
Speaker 1: and bees and other insects flying around, they're all going
Speaker 1: to these plants and these plants are using these insects
Speaker 1: in one way or the other. They're just not quite
Speaker 1: using them up like venus fly trap does. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: using them to help pollinate. That's why they do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they want the bee to fly away. They the
Speaker 1: venus fly trap does not want anything to fly away. No,
Speaker 1: it says, come here, let me eat you. So here's
Speaker 1: what happens. If you look at a venus fly trap,
Speaker 1: when it's unfolded and beautiful and has all these little
Speaker 1: beads of sweet nectar on it, an insect will land
Speaker 1: on that, and on each side of uh what are
Speaker 1: they called petals? I saw, lobes, and then like that,
Speaker 1: the thing that connects them in the middle is called
Speaker 1: the mid rib. The mid rib, not the mid rib.
Speaker 1: It's good, you only get it at certain times. The heather.
Speaker 1: Right on each lobe, you've got three little trigger hairs
Speaker 1: arranged in a little triangular pattern. And these are part
Speaker 1: motion detectors and part sort of timers almost, because when
Speaker 1: a little fly or a spider or any kind of
Speaker 1: insect that's small enough lands in there, and we should
Speaker 1: say by small enough we mean ideally about a third
Speaker 1: of the size of those two lobes. Can't go much
Speaker 1: bigger than that. No, and they're not big there, it's
Speaker 1: not a big plan. I saw that they grow to
Speaker 1: be about five inches tall. Yeah they're small. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: fairly small. And then each plant will have, you know,
Speaker 1: between five and ten I think um fly traps on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if you get your information from Little Shop of Horrors,
Speaker 1: you're being the slag um. So you've got these little
Speaker 1: trigger hairs and once one of those is is flicked
Speaker 1: by a fly leg or an ant leg or a spider,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a timer kind of starts, and they've
Speaker 1: got about twenty or thirty seconds to dance around that
Speaker 1: thing without hitting either that one again or one of
Speaker 1: those other trigger hairs. And once it hits the second one,
Speaker 1: or hits that first one the second time within that
Speaker 1: little timer, that is when the trap closes in a
Speaker 1: fraction of a second, the blink of an eye. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's super quick. Um. And you know, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes it seem animal like is
Speaker 1: it's it's really hard to find a nature documentary about
Speaker 1: the venus fly trap without some sort of foreboding orchestral
Speaker 1: music playing that ground so it really kind of juices
Speaker 1: it up a little bit. Uh. But here's the deal is,
Speaker 1: they don't they don't know exactly why or exactly how
Speaker 1: the mechanism works, since it doesn't have a brain, you know,
Speaker 1: they know they trigger that trigger hair and then it
Speaker 1: claps shut. But all they've got is a pretty good hypothesis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what they think happens is that the the um
Speaker 1: the lobes stay open um like that you just um
Speaker 1: liken it to a mouth, So the mouth is wide
Speaker 1: open on the venus fly trap. By the cells around
Speaker 1: that the lobe I guess around the midrib and the
Speaker 1: lobe where they connect are basically being crumpled. And then
Speaker 1: something about the trigger hairs being stepped on starts to
Speaker 1: um d crumple that still like it starts to release
Speaker 1: a little bit of the pressure, and then when that
Speaker 1: second hair is triggered, the pressure is fully released. And
Speaker 1: they think what happens is through the use of um
Speaker 1: of burning a TP for energy, that the the the
Speaker 1: water pressure changes in those cells so that they go
Speaker 1: from being crumpled to being plump, and so they're no
Speaker 1: longer holding the flower open and the mouth open. So
Speaker 1: it just shuts, and all of that is again carried
Speaker 1: out by those action potentials, which starts with the trigger
Speaker 1: hair being stimulated, which somehow creates an electro chemical um
Speaker 1: transmission that goes through the plant cells to tell it
Speaker 1: get ready, get ready because it might happen again. And
Speaker 1: when it happens again, it says, okay, release the water,
Speaker 1: and then the thing snapshot, which is pretty neat. But
Speaker 1: even after that, even after that second stimulation and the
Speaker 1: mouth um the mouth closes, that's not the end of
Speaker 1: the whole process, Like, that's there's still another third one,
Speaker 1: and it has to do with those amazing trigger hairs
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, like this, to me, it's already pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable that this plant can do this, and and I
Speaker 1: knew I kind of knew all that stuff, But this
Speaker 1: is when it really floors me, because even before I
Speaker 1: got to this part, I started thinking like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: how long does this take into like reset the trap?
Speaker 1: Like what if a what if something kind of floats
Speaker 1: through there that's not an insect and it just happens
Speaker 1: to trigger two of those hairs, you know, does it
Speaker 1: just open right back up? Does it spit it out?
Speaker 1: Like oh, I don't want this thing in there. What
Speaker 1: if some dumb little kid sticks his finger in there,
Speaker 1: it's gonna close of course, because it's triggering the trigger hairs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you should not do that, by the way. No,
Speaker 1: you should totally not do that. But you know that's
Speaker 1: why I said, dumb little kid. So what it counts
Speaker 1: on is a living thing squirming around in there. Once
Speaker 1: it's sort of you know, it's not sealed tight exactly
Speaker 1: at the very very beginning. It's it's like shut. Ideally,
Speaker 1: they're not getting out, but maybe a fly can slip
Speaker 1: out if it's quick enough, or maybe it can work
Speaker 1: its way out. But all that's doing is triggering those
Speaker 1: little trigger hairs again. And that's the signal basically that like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you've got a living thing in here. It's not a
Speaker 1: something that fell off a tree or whatever that you
Speaker 1: don't want. So now is the time where you really
Speaker 1: really close down and locked down tight. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: thing's been inside scirming because like you're saying, it's it's
Speaker 1: like it's got alive one here. One of the other
Speaker 1: things that just I found absolutely astounding, Chuck, is when
Speaker 1: the when the venus fly trap seals shut, when it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a bug in here, and I want to
Speaker 1: go ahead and start eating it. The little things that
Speaker 1: look like teeth, the cilia, they lace together and form
Speaker 1: an air tight seal. And there's a couple of reasons
Speaker 1: for this. One. It keeps the bug from escaping, which
Speaker 1: it couldn't really get out after the second the second
Speaker 1: hair was tripped, like, it forms a cage. But then
Speaker 1: after it squirms around inside that cage, then it seals tight,
Speaker 1: air tight, and that's it for the bug, by the way,
Speaker 1: um and it keeps the bug inside. It also keeps
Speaker 1: um uh bacteria from entering because this is not a
Speaker 1: fast process what's about to happen. It takes the course
Speaker 1: of days before it's completed, and in that time bacteria
Speaker 1: can enter through any like hole in that seal. And
Speaker 1: so the seal prevents bacteria from getting in and rotting
Speaker 1: the bug and in turn rotting them the venus fly trap,
Speaker 1: causing the poor little fly trap to turn black and
Speaker 1: fall off. So I saw it takes about an hour
Speaker 1: or two to fully seal. Uh. It takes about Remember
Speaker 1: I said earlier, like what if something just happens to
Speaker 1: go how long does it take to reset the trap.
Speaker 1: That takes about twelve hours if there's a uh twig
Speaker 1: or something. But I was looking for a kind of
Speaker 1: a fun word for a that's not sexual. How about
Speaker 1: a a twitter like a false alarm? But my mind
Speaker 1: just keeps going to dirty places. Well, like, why I
Speaker 1: have no idea false alarm? Let's just call it? No?
Speaker 1: Know what? What were you going to think? That was dirty?
Speaker 1: What were you thinking that was dirty? I can't I'll
Speaker 1: tell you later. I guess I can't say it out loud.
Speaker 1: I kind of figure this out. Oh, oh, I know.
Speaker 1: To me, let's just say it's a false alarm about
Speaker 1: twelve hours, and then the entire digestive process can take
Speaker 1: a week or more. Yeah, Like, if there is an
Speaker 1: actual bug in there, it takes about a week to
Speaker 1: digest it. It doesn't sound like a pleasant way to
Speaker 1: go for a bug to be trapped in a venus
Speaker 1: fly trap, because after that seal is completely sealed, w'd
Speaker 1: you say, it takes about a couple of hours an
Speaker 1: hour or two for that seal to be airtight. Yes,
Speaker 1: the whole time that bug is still alive, chuck, and
Speaker 1: it's still just sitting there flipping and flopping against those
Speaker 1: trigger hairs. And this is the other service that the
Speaker 1: trigger hairs provide that I referred to earlier, that when
Speaker 1: they're stimulated again after this thing is sealed, what they're
Speaker 1: doing is telling the venus fly trap, Okay, this thing's
Speaker 1: about this size. Um, it's not a big thing. It's
Speaker 1: about medium size. So I only need to release, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit of digestive enzymes. And this is a
Speaker 1: really great adaptation because it's really energy um intense to
Speaker 1: produce digestive enzymes. UM. So the fact that it just
Speaker 1: kind of dolls out just as enough to dissolve whatever
Speaker 1: is in there, whatever size insect is in there, is
Speaker 1: pretty astounding. And it judges this somehow, some way, in
Speaker 1: a mindless sort of way, by how much those trigger
Speaker 1: hairs are tripped while the thing is is squirming around
Speaker 1: in the ceiling um fly trap. It's just awesome that
Speaker 1: it can do that. Yeah, I mean, and this this
Speaker 1: jumps to the end a little bit. But the reason
Speaker 1: it does that is because it can only do that
Speaker 1: so much. Um. They do. They do recycle what they
Speaker 1: can from those juices at the end of the process.
Speaker 1: But I get the feeling like each With each opening
Speaker 1: and digestion and manufacturing of those enzymes and recycling of
Speaker 1: of what they can of those enzymes, it just gets
Speaker 1: a little bit less and a little bit less, until
Speaker 1: eventually the lobes uh can't do their job anymore. And
Speaker 1: then they just stay open and say, all right, I'll
Speaker 1: just be a regular plant and soak up the sun.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna photosynthesize. Brother. I showed my daughter this
Speaker 1: morning when before she left for school, I was watching
Speaker 1: these videos. It's like, oh man, she's gonna love this.
Speaker 1: And she watched it and got really sad about the fly.
Speaker 1: That's sweet, and it's because of the way they shoot these.
Speaker 1: They do that dramatic music, and she's conditioned, you know,
Speaker 1: she's been disnified. So it's like it's Bambi's mom in there,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, it's Bambies fly mother, or it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's Dory sure, Dory the fly version. Just show her
Speaker 1: a fly close up or have her listened to our
Speaker 1: Flies episode and she'll be like, I don't care. I know. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing they do that really kind of um
Speaker 1: is really easy to overlook, but definitely perhaps overly dramatizes
Speaker 1: a venus fly trap. Shutting on a fly is they
Speaker 1: they will very often dub in like a panther's roar
Speaker 1: right when it um right when it shuts, and it's
Speaker 1: you can't pick it out unless you're looking for but
Speaker 1: when you are, it just sticks out like a sore thumb. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think they get about ten to twelve either partial
Speaker 1: or complete closures per lobe set. So that's how long
Speaker 1: they can hang in there before they coast into retirement.
Speaker 1: Not a bad run. And when you consider that, uh,
Speaker 1: they're only eating an insects every like week or two
Speaker 1: maybe in the wild, how about three times a month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so multiply that times tend it twelve and that's that's
Speaker 1: your lifespan basically. Although I did see that they can
Speaker 1: live twenty years in the wild well because they'll regenerate
Speaker 1: new lobes and yes, so yeah, they grow from a
Speaker 1: rhizome and those things pop up. But the plan itself,
Speaker 1: that's a fairly long lived plant. Yeah. So okay, so inside,
Speaker 1: so one thing I feel it is worth like explicitly
Speaker 1: mentioning here with the venus fly trip, You've got this
Speaker 1: open mouth and then when it closes, it converts into
Speaker 1: a stomach. It's kind of like one of those washer
Speaker 1: it's also a dryer once the wash cycles over. Right,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted one of those. Yeah, I think it'd
Speaker 1: be pretty cool. I've never heard if they actually like
Speaker 1: work or not. But maybe we'll just we'll we'll go
Speaker 1: in Dutch on one together, Okay, and see we'll just
Speaker 1: straight it off month to month. Well, we'll rent a
Speaker 1: I don't have room for it, neither do you. We'll
Speaker 1: rent a storage space, yes, and we'll just buy a
Speaker 1: little single unit. We'll hire an electrician and a plumber
Speaker 1: to come out and outfit it for a washer, dryer combo,
Speaker 1: and our our bunk beds from the old days will
Speaker 1: be moved in there, just for nostalgia. Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: time we'll be able to wash our sheets. So so
Speaker 1: in this, in this, what's went from the mouth now
Speaker 1: the stomach those digestive juices just enough to to melt
Speaker 1: basically the bug that's in there, based on its size
Speaker 1: and it's scormy nous. Um. They flood this thing and
Speaker 1: again over the course of like five to twelve days. Um,
Speaker 1: it's going to basically break down all the soft tissue
Speaker 1: inside that bug inside it's exoskeleton and basically liquefieding to
Speaker 1: goo until it just kind of mixes in with the
Speaker 1: digestive juices. Right. And then in this mouth that's now
Speaker 1: become a stomach, the nutrients that that fly or that
Speaker 1: spider that ant carried around with it, that became liquefied,
Speaker 1: are broken down into like really tiny basic particles like
Speaker 1: amino acids and stuff, not even like proteins, like even
Speaker 1: more basic than that. And then the plant absorbs it
Speaker 1: just like you do in your gut, right, and it
Speaker 1: uses those nutrients to do things like build cell walls
Speaker 1: or repair it's DNA, or to transport water throughout its body.
Speaker 1: Just not so stuff, right. And then there's one other trigger.
Speaker 1: There's one other signal that happens where when the digestive
Speaker 1: enzyme is basically all that's in there, all the nutrients
Speaker 1: have been sucked out. Somehow, it is able to UM
Speaker 1: to analyze the ratio of digestive juice to nutrients, and
Speaker 1: when there's basically nothing but digestive juice is left, it
Speaker 1: reabsorbs the digestive juice and that acts as a trigger
Speaker 1: for those cells to compress again and the mouth to
Speaker 1: come back open and then ideally a gentle breeze will
Speaker 1: blow away what's left. There's a little exoskeleton in there,
Speaker 1: and then Audrey's ready again. Uh, and you know again
Speaker 1: about a week to twelve days. It depends on how big.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a little ant, it's gonna be quicker.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that the juices get weaker, so if it's
Speaker 1: an older trap or set of lobes, it's gonna take
Speaker 1: a little longer. And then the temperature can actually speed
Speaker 1: it up a little bit. If it's itit's warmer and
Speaker 1: there's more heat, then there's gonna be a faster breakdown,
Speaker 1: so that will also speed it along. Just as amazing, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew it was going to be an
Speaker 1: amazing like topic, but I was even astounded by how
Speaker 1: it using these things are. But we're not done. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and
Speaker 1: tell you all about if you want to grow one
Speaker 1: of these monsters in your house, what you can do
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, if you're a fan of
Speaker 1: Broadway or Evolution or Charles Darwin or ancient folklore, or
Speaker 1: just freaking out your neighbor's kids or your own kids
Speaker 1: or grandkids and you want to venus fly trap in
Speaker 1: your house, you can do that. You don't have to
Speaker 1: live in the Carolinas. You just have to set up
Speaker 1: an environment that is like you're in the Carolinas in
Speaker 1: your home somewhere. Yes, you have to become a tar
Speaker 1: heels fan or outside your home. Yeah, because you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure in the Atlanta Piedmont, in probably
Speaker 1: parts of Alabama, in North Florida, you could probably grow
Speaker 1: these things in a pot outside probably so um. But
Speaker 1: if you live in um, say a much colder area, um,
Speaker 1: you know, above the Mason Dixon line probably, or in
Speaker 1: a much drier area like the Southwest, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to You're gonna have to unnaturalize it a little bit.
Speaker 1: For example, if you live in a low humidity area,
Speaker 1: you would want to probably put this thing in a
Speaker 1: terra arium. Yeah, and that's I've always wanted a terra aium.
Speaker 1: I think they're fun. Sure, So uh get a ru aium,
Speaker 1: make it wet in there. Uh, you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think about a four inch
Speaker 1: pot is a decent starter pot and you may not
Speaker 1: need anything else actually, because they're really not that big,
Speaker 1: like you said, and you gotta keep checking that soil.
Speaker 1: You don't want it, um you don't want it swimming
Speaker 1: in water, but you definitely don't want it to dry
Speaker 1: out at any point. Yeah, and you also don't want
Speaker 1: to um water it from above. I didn't see why,
Speaker 1: but I suspect that it might, like a rain drop,
Speaker 1: could conceivably cause it to um to close accidentally if
Speaker 1: you've got enough water splattering on it and triggering those
Speaker 1: those trigger hairs. Oh. I wonder if they grow in
Speaker 1: the wild under more densely covered areas to prevent that.
Speaker 1: That's possible. But um, so what you do is you
Speaker 1: you water them from the bottom up. You place them
Speaker 1: in a pan of or a little tray of standing
Speaker 1: water about a third of an inch or a centimeter deep.
Speaker 1: What watering tips with jobs? Well, listen, there's one of
Speaker 1: there's something else that you want to keep in mind.
Speaker 1: I think most people wouldn't realize. It's like you can't
Speaker 1: you can't water these guys with tap water. Um Oh,
Speaker 1: I just got what reference you are making? You cutter?
Speaker 1: Do we need like a million feet worth those of water?
Speaker 1: Like you, you basically want to make sure that your
Speaker 1: house is completely flooded with water to make these things live. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: you bring a good point, though it needs you can't.
Speaker 1: Like tap water is no good and probably most of
Speaker 1: the filter water using is probably no good either. No,
Speaker 1: because the salts and nutrients will build up in the
Speaker 1: soil and these things have evolved not to use that
Speaker 1: stuff and like it will actually harm them for the
Speaker 1: same reason you don't want to use fertilizer either. They
Speaker 1: don't need fertilize or they any bugs. Basically, yeah, they said,
Speaker 1: and I thought this is really cool. Just collect some rainwater,
Speaker 1: and that's that's your best bet. If you can't collect enough.
Speaker 1: If you, you know, live in Phoenix and you want
Speaker 1: to grow a venus fly trap, you're already kind of
Speaker 1: growing upstream. But um, you may not be able to
Speaker 1: collect that rainwater either. So at least get some deionized water,
Speaker 1: maybe some distilled water, or if you've got a reverse
Speaker 1: osmosis system, which you might in Phoenix, then you can
Speaker 1: use that stuff too. You can use that stuff, and
Speaker 1: if you don't have a reverse ostomosis system, you can
Speaker 1: buy it. Usually at any aquarium store they sell that. Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: so the water is the important what kind of water
Speaker 1: you use again, don't use fertilizer um and apparently uh,
Speaker 1: because they grow in areas that get cold in the winter.
Speaker 1: If you are growing when in a tra areum from
Speaker 1: November to February, you want to take it out of
Speaker 1: a tra areum and like put it in a window
Speaker 1: in your garage or something like that, Like let it
Speaker 1: actually get cold, and you're gonna get freaked out because
Speaker 1: the plant will actually die back to the rhizome and
Speaker 1: it'll look like you lost it or something like that.
Speaker 1: But then come March, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised when
Speaker 1: it comes bouncing right back. Yeah, and you can treat
Speaker 1: it like any plant that you overwinter that kind of
Speaker 1: goes dormant. You can clip off the dead detritus and
Speaker 1: it'll grow back. How many how many of those are
Speaker 1: we gonna get per plant? Like four or five? I
Speaker 1: think it's a five to tend somewhere, oh, five to
Speaker 1: ten even Okay, that's what I saw, but I could
Speaker 1: be making that up. There's a lot of numbers flying
Speaker 1: around in this one um. But what about the feeding?
Speaker 1: You know, it's uh, if you have this thing in
Speaker 1: your house or in a tru Areum, you're not just
Speaker 1: going to count on a rando fly that got in
Speaker 1: or or akucaracha to walk into its midst. So just
Speaker 1: like if you have a constrictor and you've gotta you know,
Speaker 1: go to the pet store to pick up some mice,
Speaker 1: you have to feed this thing. Yeah, apparently, um, you
Speaker 1: can feed it live bugs, but you know there's problems
Speaker 1: with live bugs. Apparently, live meal worms can actually burrow
Speaker 1: their way out of the plant, which is not pleasant
Speaker 1: for the plan. I'm sure. Um, crickets can easily get
Speaker 1: too big or can stick a leg out which will
Speaker 1: keep that seal from getting air tight, so they can
Speaker 1: um they can decompose uh from bacteria that gets slipped
Speaker 1: in that can actually make the plant decomposed to So
Speaker 1: your best bet is to get some freeze dried meal worms,
Speaker 1: blood worms or crickets, Uh, put a little water on there,
Speaker 1: stir them up, and then put it uh drop it
Speaker 1: on the the plant in its mouth basically and so
Speaker 1: um you might get a closure response from just dropping
Speaker 1: it in there because it might hit a couple of sillia.
Speaker 1: But don't forget like it's not going to start releasing
Speaker 1: those digestive enzymes until it's sillia. The little trigger hairs
Speaker 1: are stimulated once it's closed, So you actually have to
Speaker 1: have like a little toothpick or something like that and
Speaker 1: just very lightly, very gently kind of rub those sillia
Speaker 1: so that it'll close fully and release those digestive enzymes. Right,
Speaker 1: And like you said earlier, don't uh invite your neighbors
Speaker 1: kids over to trigger this thing for fun because it
Speaker 1: only gets tinner twelve with those closures, and you're you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're literally shortening the lifespan of that lobe
Speaker 1: if you're doing so for fun. Uh, So you gotta
Speaker 1: drop an insect. You probably won't be able to catch
Speaker 1: any flies. Even if you're good with those chopsticks. Man,
Speaker 1: very few can accomplish that feed. You have to be
Speaker 1: friends with Pat Morita. And they got to be small,
Speaker 1: remember about a third the size. I told you I
Speaker 1: worked with Pat Marida once, right. Uh. No music video, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think you have to want to say it was.
Speaker 1: It was one Emily producer and I worked for it
Speaker 1: was I think it was alien Ant Farm and they
Speaker 1: did a Karate kids send up and Pat Morita starred
Speaker 1: and um I was Pat Marita's guy that day to
Speaker 1: to get him what he needed in his trailer, and
Speaker 1: he was as nice as he could be. R I
Speaker 1: p God rest his soul. And I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a big deal to say that Pat Marita loved sipping
Speaker 1: on Chardonnay during the day on a shoot. Oh he
Speaker 1: didn't get plaster or anything, but he he wanted a
Speaker 1: bottle of wine, a nice bottle of white chardonnay. And
Speaker 1: he was just a lovely guy, how positively cultured. You know.
Speaker 1: I heard Mr T likes to drink huge cups of um.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was he was drinking, but
Speaker 1: he would he'd like to drink on set as well
Speaker 1: during the day. Oh. Really interesting. I did a Wye
Speaker 1: Cliff video one time, and uh, he and his his
Speaker 1: crew they really drank. Oh yeah. But I mean sometimes
Speaker 1: those music videos that was just sort of the um
Speaker 1: it was just sort of a party atmosphere, like they
Speaker 1: would use as an excuse to be like, all right,
Speaker 1: all my friends are coming here for twenty four hours
Speaker 1: and we're just gonna get down. And um. I also
Speaker 1: had one of the coolest experiences of the music video
Speaker 1: life on that whye cliff job, and that I was
Speaker 1: standing kind of right next to a and I'm just
Speaker 1: so square. I don't know what it's called. When they're
Speaker 1: improv rapping and like dissing each other like the competition style.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that's called. It's called a mile Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called an eight mile face off. Okay, that's what
Speaker 1: I said. I went, Hey, guys, nice eight mile face on. Um.
Speaker 1: But I got to kind of witness one of those
Speaker 1: in person, and I was like, oh my god, it's
Speaker 1: like the ellen is just off the chart. So it
Speaker 1: was good because sometimes those things are really not good. No,
Speaker 1: I mean these were these were pros. Oh good man,
Speaker 1: I'll bet that was cool to see. It was fun,
Speaker 1: but they were they were fun too. Wow. Uh did
Speaker 1: we say everything there is to say about Venus fly traps.
Speaker 1: I also had to put a joint in Buster Rhymes lips.
Speaker 1: I think I've told that story. He smokes marijuana, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, because he was in a in a
Speaker 1: video for Gimme Some O. He was fake tied to
Speaker 1: the train tracks in one scene, so he was he
Speaker 1: was couldn't move and he was on the ground and
Speaker 1: he would always ask me. I would stand by and
Speaker 1: hold the burning blunt and I would put it in
Speaker 1: his lips every you know, probably eight seconds. Good lord,
Speaker 1: it was great. Like, those are the fun things you
Speaker 1: can do as a p A. Sometimes I recommend it.
Speaker 1: Those are some cool stories, Chuck, you can really get
Speaker 1: in the mix. There's nothing to do with penus fly traps,
Speaker 1: so but it does. Now well, if you want him
Speaker 1: about venus fly traps, go buy one. You can buy
Speaker 1: one online, although supposedly you should probably go to a
Speaker 1: nursery that specializes in carnivorous plants because they actually know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. So let's start there. Okay, can
Speaker 1: you grow them from seed? You can? You can go
Speaker 1: from seed. You can also divide them, like as they
Speaker 1: get to be adult size, right before they come out
Speaker 1: of their winter dormancy is a good time to divide them.
Speaker 1: So they make great gifts. I love it. Uh And
Speaker 1: since Chuck said he loves it, of course, everybody, it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener Mayo, I'm gonna call this Clark
Speaker 1: me a listener mail. Okay, did you see this one?
Speaker 1: It sounds familiar. It's from a few weeks ago. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I just want to tell you that I've been subtly
Speaker 1: leaving Clark as a verb in the conversations with my
Speaker 1: family for the last three weeks. Uh, this is Leslie,
Speaker 1: this is mom that's doing this. At first, I did
Speaker 1: it just to be funny and see what they would say.
Speaker 1: None of them had heard that particular episode and don't
Speaker 1: even know about clarking, but no one questioned it. I
Speaker 1: asked my husband to clark me a ten dollar bill,
Speaker 1: and I told my son I would clark him a
Speaker 1: notebook for school, and it's told. I told one of
Speaker 1: my daughters that someone could clark her a phone charger.
Speaker 1: Everyone just proceeded as if I'd said nothing out of
Speaker 1: the ordinary, and it was totally surreal. Anyway, I just
Speaker 1: had to share that with you guys, because I feel
Speaker 1: like I have a hilarious inside joke but no one
Speaker 1: to laugh about it with. If you do read this
Speaker 1: on the air, and how could we not? Uh, will
Speaker 1: you please shout out my husband, Clint and my kids Jackson. Uh,
Speaker 1: it looks like Emma and Grace it maybe m E,
Speaker 1: M m E. Thanks for what you do. I'm a
Speaker 1: longtime listener to love your show so much It's perfect
Speaker 1: for those like me who have a love of learning
Speaker 1: and laughing. And that is from Leslie and her family
Speaker 1: just sound wonderful and I it says something about how
Speaker 1: much they're listening to you, Leslie. I hate to break
Speaker 1: into you. That's pretty great. Or they're just like moms
Speaker 1: on off a rocker. I guess we'll just go with it.
Speaker 1: What a great email. I'm going to guess the middle
Speaker 1: kid's name is Emmy. Okay, so we've got m Emmy
Speaker 1: and Emma. I don't think we can miss Chuck unless
Speaker 1: it's just the artist formerly known as Well. Thanks again, Leslie,
Speaker 1: that was a great email, one of the all time greats.
Speaker 1: If you ask me, and if you want to throw
Speaker 1: in your two cents and see if you can compete
Speaker 1: with Leslie's email, we would love to hear it. You
Speaker 1: can send it to us at stuff podcast at iHeart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.