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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.

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Speaker 1: I want to put you in a scenario a bit seasonal.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's the seasonal Halloween scenario. You do? You

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Speaker 1: want to go with me on a hike? Alright, it's

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Speaker 1: late October and you are on a solitary fall hike

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Speaker 1: through the woods, and the leaves are starting to turn

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Speaker 1: orange and red, the air is dry, and you feel

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Speaker 1: like an adventure, so you head off trail. Not always

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Speaker 1: a good idea, but let's just say you're brave. If

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Speaker 1: this is how all terrible stories start, how all tragedies begin,

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Speaker 1: you leave the trail, Well, it starts very nice. So

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Speaker 1: you're off trail and you find a little mountain brook

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Speaker 1: and it's twisting among the rocks, and you decide, oh,

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Speaker 1: how sweet, I'm gonna follow this upstream, maybe I'll find

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Speaker 1: its source. And on the way you come across a

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Speaker 1: cluster of what looked like oak trees, thick trunks with

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Speaker 1: roots spread out exposed over the bank of the brook,

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Speaker 1: and there's an odd smell it's a little bit sweet,

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Speaker 1: with just a hint of deep earthiness, kind of like

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Speaker 1: overripe fruit. So you approach the stand of trees and

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Speaker 1: the ground is covered with a mat of these beautifully

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Speaker 1: colored fallen leaves. And as you come near the trunk

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Speaker 1: of the nearest tree, your foot knocks against a smooth

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Speaker 1: stone tangled in the outer roots. But wait a second,

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Speaker 1: that's no stone. It's smooth and white, partially buried with

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Speaker 1: two eye shaped hollows. And then suddenly, with a rushing

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Speaker 1: sound and a scattering of leaves up into the air,

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Speaker 1: something envelopes you. The light gets blotted out. You feel

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Speaker 1: these wooden fibers pressing into your skin from all sides.

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Speaker 1: What's going on? You struggle to free yourself, but you

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Speaker 1: find that you're becoming sluggish, disoriented. There's a powerful smell.

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Speaker 1: Your throat burns, and then the digestive enzymes come. Another

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Speaker 1: visitor disappears into the grove of the killer tree. Ah.

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Speaker 1: I knew it was a killer tree once the digestive

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Speaker 1: enzymes in the woods started happening, because my first instinct

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Speaker 1: would be, oh, something was in the tree. I got

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Speaker 1: myself tangled, and then something was in the tree, and

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Speaker 1: it jumped down upon me some sort of predator of

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Speaker 1: some sort. I guess that's the more logical thing to think, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I list until the wood comes, or that somebody has

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Speaker 1: set some kind of trap for you. This is a

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Speaker 1: human design, That's probably what I would guess. But Robert, well,

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Speaker 1: what first comes to your mind when I say killer tree?

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you've got like a fictional anchor point that

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Speaker 1: you go to. Oh, I mean there's so many, uh,

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Speaker 1: there's so many examples of killer trees, and especially in fantasy, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean it makes you think of the ants or

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Speaker 1: especially like the dark sort of tree people from Dungeons

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Speaker 1: and Dragons. I'm not really familiar with those. Well, what

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Speaker 1: happens when you fight a tree person? Well, you know

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Speaker 1: they're big there, wooden, there, their lumbering. I think there

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Speaker 1: are a few a few different varieties. There's basically, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're animate trees and then they're sort of wooden people

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Speaker 1: and they're good, good ones, and they're bad ones. Of

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Speaker 1: course though the ants that we encounter and the Lord

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Speaker 1: of the Rings are are are good. So when you're

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Speaker 1: battling a tree person, do you like, do you have

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Speaker 1: to have a paladin with a blessed wood chipper or something.

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Speaker 1: I don't recall there being a requirement for magical weapons.

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Speaker 1: Of course, you know, some creatures can only be fought

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Speaker 1: with natural weapons, but with with magical weapons. But I

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Speaker 1: believe that the tree creatures in this case are just big,

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Speaker 1: tough trees, because that's the thing they're they're they're they're large,

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Speaker 1: They're flesh is different than us. So the idea of

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Speaker 1: them becoming animate, the idea of them turning against us

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Speaker 1: is terrifying. Uh, and they do turn against us. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we live in a very um tree friendly city, so

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Speaker 1: anytime the wind blows, anytime the anytime the rain freezes,

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Speaker 1: the trees rattle and threaten us. When they fall, they

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Speaker 1: can cause significant damage and even lost life. There is

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Speaker 1: a killer tree hanging over our house right now. Rachel

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Speaker 1: and I are working on getting something done about that.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, it's this old dead pecan tree. It just

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Speaker 1: looks like it is aching to plunge its killer branches

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Speaker 1: through somebody's roof. And so yeah, there, of course killer

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Speaker 1: trees in reality, But the kind we're thinking of are

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Speaker 1: the ones that are a little more conscious, with some

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Speaker 1: directed actions to the agency, maybe some arms, some tentacles,

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Speaker 1: some some gaping maws with thorn teeth. Of course one

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Speaker 1: of the big ones. And this one entered my mind

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Speaker 1: when you were taking me through descriptions. Of course, in

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Speaker 1: Poulter Guys, there's that just horrifying scene that scarred me

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Speaker 1: from an early age, where you have you have multiple

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Speaker 1: things going on it once, like there's the creepy clown

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Speaker 1: um doll on the bed, but then there's the tree

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Speaker 1: outside the window that's like trying to eat the child man.

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Speaker 1: So I haven't seen Poulter Guys in years. I honestly

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Speaker 1: don't remember this scene. I guess I got back one

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Speaker 1: of many. They they're a lot of nightmare imagree up

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Speaker 1: against the wall and up up their amount of it sticks.

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Speaker 1: So I gotta tell you that this episode. I wanted

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Speaker 1: to do this topic because I was inspired by having

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Speaker 1: recently watched the William Friedkin horror movie The Guardian from

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Speaker 1: nineteen for the first time. I remember the trailer for

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Speaker 1: this is like a creepy babysitter, creepy nanny, but I

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Speaker 1: never saw it, so I don't know what the what

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Speaker 1: the gimmick is. Well, i'll give you the premise. It's

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Speaker 1: about a couple who has a baby and they're looking

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Speaker 1: for a nanny because they both want to go right

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Speaker 1: back to work immediately, so they're looking for a nanny

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Speaker 1: to take care of their child, and they end up

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Speaker 1: going with Camilla, the British nanny, who unfortunately is a

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Speaker 1: druid who has got a tree friend, and her tree

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Speaker 1: friend is a killer tree friend, and she likes to

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Speaker 1: take babies to the tree sacrifice them to the tree.

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Speaker 1: Except it's this weird thing where the tree sort of

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Speaker 1: absorbs the baby and then you can see the baby's

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Speaker 1: face embedded in the surface of the tree. So I

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Speaker 1: guess that the baby kind of melts into the tree

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Speaker 1: and becomes petrified. Anyway, she she's an evil druid, kidnaps babies,

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Speaker 1: sacrifices them to a killer tree. There are scenes where

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Speaker 1: the tree kills people. There's like Camilla gets attacked in

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Speaker 1: the woods by some by some creeps who just happened

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Speaker 1: to be hanging out in the woods, and the tree

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Speaker 1: defends her by essentially smashing them and tearing them up.

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Speaker 1: So would you say this is part of the druids

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Speaker 1: floitation uh movement of the man if only there were

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Speaker 1: such a genre, I would be all over that. I

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Speaker 1: would be like a film scholar of the genre. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: so do I recommend this movie. It's not a good movie,

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Speaker 1: but it's William Friedkin, so it's like a well made

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Speaker 1: bad movie, if it makes any sense. Yeah, he there's

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Speaker 1: a there's a certain segment of his filmography that that

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Speaker 1: definitely fits that were always worth checking out if you're

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Speaker 1: a fan of his. But you know, maybe not Tough Shell.

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Speaker 1: I guess I'd say it's not good, but it's worth seeing,

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Speaker 1: especially since the spoiler alert the climax of the film

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Speaker 1: involves a chainsaw. Oh welcome, of course it would um,

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Speaker 1: of course, there are plenty of other cinematic examples of

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Speaker 1: animate trees murdering reason just murderous plants. Um. Aside from ants,

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Speaker 1: there's the the I don't know if anyone remembers the

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Speaker 1: sexy Matron tree from the Last Unicorn. The tree becomes

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Speaker 1: animate and attempts to love our hero to death, or

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Speaker 1: one of our two heroes, the male hero s Medrick.

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Speaker 1: I believe, and uh, this sounds troubling. She has like

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Speaker 1: huge bosoms and all um weird. It's a it's a weird.

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Speaker 1: It's a weird film when you look back on it.

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Speaker 1: That's the strange elements. Uh. Scott Smith's novel The Ruins

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Speaker 1: and the two doesn't movie adaptation of it that concerns

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Speaker 1: man eating vines. Yeah, and they're sort of infectious, right,

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Speaker 1: So it's not just that the vines reach out and

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Speaker 1: grab you, but that there's a spore element where they

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Speaker 1: contaminate you with some kind of plant germ cell I

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Speaker 1: think so, yeah, yeah, which is interesting when you start

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Speaker 1: getting into some of the technical possibilities of man eating plants. Um,

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Speaker 1: let's say already mentioned Poulter guys. There, of course the

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Speaker 1: vines and evil dead that are rather notorious. There's some

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Speaker 1: man eating plant action in Chinese Ghost Story, which I

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Speaker 1: have not seen yet. After reading a synopsis of part

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Speaker 1: of it yesterday, it's moved back up to the top

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Speaker 1: of my must watch list. You've got the Whamping Willow

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Speaker 1: and Harry Potter, you have you have a version of

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Speaker 1: the the evil dead vines that are mentioned in a

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Speaker 1: Cabin in the Woods, the quote angry molesting tree, which

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Speaker 1: I think you only see like a a just a

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Speaker 1: fragment of it as it like snatches a guard in

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Speaker 1: one scene, Man Cabin in the Woods is full of

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Speaker 1: just great little freeze frame moments. Oh yeah, tremendous. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They're various kaiju that, you know, giant monsters that have

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Speaker 1: had plant elements to them and certainly planning with fun

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Speaker 1: guy elements to them. And I believe one of Michael

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Speaker 1: Shay's Niffed stories features a carnivorous plant kind of like

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Speaker 1: a venus fly traffic such. It has a like a

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Speaker 1: humanoid female part in the middle to lure males inside it. Weird,

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Speaker 1: but I don't have a clear memory of that, so

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Speaker 1: maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems like the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that would be in one of his stories. Now,

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Speaker 1: almost all of these seem like modern fictional inventions. Do

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Speaker 1: are there are there animated trees, animated predatory trees or plants?

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Speaker 1: Going back in mythology, I would expect to find such

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Speaker 1: a thing. I expected to find some better examples, and

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Speaker 1: I was not able to find any. Um. Not to

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Speaker 1: say that I didn't miss something, but the closest, the

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Speaker 1: closest example that I came across and I got excited

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Speaker 1: about this was um is that is this example of

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Speaker 1: something called a jidra uh. And this is from the

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Speaker 1: traditions and folk beliefs of the Middle East. But here's

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Speaker 1: the caveat as related by medieval European travelers. And this

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Speaker 1: is a theme we're going to see time and time again.

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Speaker 1: The plants become animate and man killing only in foreign

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Speaker 1: environments entered by westerners, right, European and American travel writers

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Speaker 1: and cataloguers of things going on in places other than Europe,

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Speaker 1: in America and the America's talk about man eating plants,

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Speaker 1: and in this case as again as related by medieval

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Speaker 1: European travelers, and this was explained by Carol Rose and

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Speaker 1: are always excellent giants, monsters, and dragons Encyclopedia. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: idea is this thing emerges from the ground like a plant,

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Speaker 1: and and it's rooted in place, and it just consumes

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Speaker 1: anything in its vicinity, you know, cattle, small animals, and

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Speaker 1: of course humans. The only way to kill it is

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Speaker 1: to detach it from its root, essentially chop it down.

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Speaker 1: And if you do, then you get to harvest its bones,

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Speaker 1: because I guess it has bones, which would be valuable. Um,

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Speaker 1: it has bones, apparently that's according to the myth. So

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Speaker 1: I don't know, if this means that it literally has bones,

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Speaker 1: that it's a like a rooted mammal of creature vertebrate

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Speaker 1: creature of some sort, or if bones and by bones

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Speaker 1: we mean it's like it's it's would you know, you

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Speaker 1: know that does sound valuable because you could probably use

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Speaker 1: the bones of the jitdra to make a totally vegan stock, right,

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Speaker 1: so you roast the bones and then make it make

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Speaker 1: like you'd make a chicken ste or something, but this

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Speaker 1: would be vegan, I said, depending, well, depending on exactly

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Speaker 1: how you classify a monster like this. Now, I should

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Speaker 1: also add that it's thought that this myth probably also

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Speaker 1: derived from the man Drake, So you know, European influence

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Speaker 1: the idea of the man Drake, which is this kind

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Speaker 1: of like animal um vegetable hybrid creature, and then this

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Speaker 1: kind of evolves into this tale of the j dra Okay,

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Speaker 1: and I find it curious, though, you know, I looked

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Speaker 1: around for more examples, couldn't find it. I would have

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Speaker 1: expected plenty of the Elder, the noted first century Roman

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Speaker 1: historian who often spoke of foreign monstrosities, to have like

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Speaker 1: a clear cut example of a man eating plant in

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Speaker 1: foreign land. Oh yeah, plenty of the elders like the internet, right, like,

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Speaker 1: if you can think it up, it's on there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and if you can imagine it, plenty wrote about it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like people like beast people in other lands, the people

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Speaker 1: with the bellies, the with head that had mouths in them.

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Speaker 1: I mean all sorts of strange human aid monstrosities, beastly monstrosities, dragons, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: So why no man eating plants? I don't know, now, Robert,

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Speaker 1: did you ever see him night Shamalan's The Happening? I

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Speaker 1: did not. I saw the it happened. There was some happening,

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Speaker 1: and it happened, and it was about trees that were

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Speaker 1: trying to kill Mark Wahlberg. I have no idea why

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Speaker 1: they want to do that. But it wasn't really predatory behavior.

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Speaker 1: It was more like vindictive jerk behavior. So the trees

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Speaker 1: didn't want to eat us. They were like tired of

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Speaker 1: us being abusive to them. So it's even less in

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Speaker 1: less biologically sound, yes, than than any of the examples

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Speaker 1: we've looked at as far. So Yeah, obviously, this idea

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Speaker 1: of the killer tree the man eating plant is one

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Speaker 1: that captures our imagination very easily, and I think I've

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Speaker 1: got a theory as to while, and let me know

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Speaker 1: what you think about. I think the reason we like

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Speaker 1: the image of the killer tree and it shows up

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Speaker 1: in all these stories is because the idea of a

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Speaker 1: man eating plant has a certain level of why not

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Speaker 1: to it? Right, So, there are creatures in nature that

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Speaker 1: all large animals with claws and teeth and tentacles and

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Speaker 1: venom and such, and plants have things that are equivalent

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Speaker 1: to this. They've got thorns, vine, tendrils, poisons. Trees are

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Speaker 1: much larger than us, and then one sense they are

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Speaker 1: apt to be much quote stronger than any animal prey

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Speaker 1: that would try to resist them. So why not you know,

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Speaker 1: if the continent of Australia can produce an animal that

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Speaker 1: has the fur of a mammal in the bill of

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Speaker 1: a duck, why couldn't some deep, unexplored forest harbor a

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Speaker 1: tree that can reach out with a vine covered in

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Speaker 1: venomous thorns and snatch a hiker, wrap them up, roll

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Speaker 1: tight until he turns blue, and then pull him down

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Speaker 1: into a crevice in the roots structure and treat him

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Speaker 1: like a soft, salty meal. Yeah, I agree, I think

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Speaker 1: on on on one hand, certainly we look at all

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Speaker 1: the variety of nature. We see what's possible within nature,

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Speaker 1: and you ask yourself, well, why doesn't this exist? Maybe

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Speaker 1: it does exist, maybe some you know, a third or

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Speaker 1: fourth hand tail that I've heard about a man eating

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Speaker 1: plant is from a traveler is actually true. And the

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Speaker 1: other hand, I think the reason it's so appealing is

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Speaker 1: because it's abhorrent, the idea it's crossing category exactly inherent taboo. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because I find myself kind of like if I see

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Speaker 1: an example of an insect preying on a on a vertebrate,

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Speaker 1: like invertebrates eating vertebrates is something that kind of like,

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Speaker 1: it's wrong. The spiders got a frog, and it's well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like that. You're not supposed to move in that

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Speaker 1: direction because to stick to your your own invertebrate kind.

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Speaker 1: But of course it happens. Now, of course I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: actually blame the spider for that. I think that's perfectly fine.

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Speaker 1: But no, no, no, no no judgments spiders. But but

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Speaker 1: from our human standpoints, even more important, because we've largely

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Speaker 1: removed ourselves from the risk of predation like which is

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Speaker 1: a pretty remarkable thing in the grand scheme of things, right,

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Speaker 1: and so we don't have to worry about other animals

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Speaker 1: eating us. And the idea of another animal eating us

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Speaker 1: is strange and awful and terrifying. Even more so the

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Speaker 1: idea that a tree could do it. Yeah, yeah, totally.

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Speaker 1: You see, it goes backwards on the chain, the food chain, right,

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Speaker 1: it's reversing the food chain. That's it's not supposed to

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Speaker 1: be this way. So, except for the fact that we've

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Speaker 1: never seen things like this happened, at an intuitive level,

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Speaker 1: it's like, what's so implausible about it? Uh? Then at

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Speaker 1: the same time, I think we may be able to

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Speaker 1: come up with some good biological reasons we don't actually

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Speaker 1: see organisms like this. But according to some we must say,

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Speaker 1: not very credible accounts, there is nothing all that implausible

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Speaker 1: about the man eating tree, the killer tree, because people

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Speaker 1: have written about these things as if they actually exist

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Speaker 1: within the past few hundred years, and that hearsay was

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Speaker 1: more more powerful previous exactly. So I want to talk

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Speaker 1: about one source, a very weird biology book from the

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighties called Sea and Land, written by a guy

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Speaker 1: named James William Buell. Now, just glancing through this thing

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Speaker 1: and looking at the author's introduction it is obvious that

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Speaker 1: this is not a source of credible scientific information. It's

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Speaker 1: more are one of those nineteenth century natural wonders books.

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Speaker 1: You've ever seen these kind of things where they're you know, like, wow,

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Speaker 1: look at all these illustrations of animals in their natural habitats.

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Speaker 1: But they're all grossly inaccurate. And it's really not all

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Speaker 1: that different from various versions of Plenty's work from previous time,

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Speaker 1: exactly except it's you know, eight years later whenever Plenty

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Speaker 1: was living. Uh yeah, exactly so. But it's got all

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Speaker 1: these allegations of weird sensational creatures mingled in with reports

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Speaker 1: about real animals, and I have to also says like

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Speaker 1: a very Eurocentric sense of exoticism about the planet. So

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Speaker 1: there's that kind of unsavory element to it. But it's

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Speaker 1: also full of gruesome and probably highly inaccurate illustrations about

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Speaker 1: various animals and attack modes. And some of these illustrations

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Speaker 1: are great. There's a good one of an orangutang apparently

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Speaker 1: kicking a man to death, one of a swordfish stabbing

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Speaker 1: at a sailor through the hull of a boat. Not impossible,

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Speaker 1: extremely rare, but as we've discussed in our Jumping Fish episode.

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Speaker 1: It has happened, okay, well, or well, individuals have been stabbed,

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Speaker 1: boats have been stabbed. I don't know if anyone, I don't,

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Speaker 1: I don't remember, of both happened would be really bad luck. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, in this case, it looks like the swordfish

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Speaker 1: is trying to kill the guy. Okay, but in any case,

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Speaker 1: there's another one that's awesome. It's a giant crab hanging

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Speaker 1: from a tree, lifting a goat up into the tree

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Speaker 1: with its claw as if to devour it. But then

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Speaker 1: finally a tree with tentacles pulling a human victim into

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Speaker 1: the crown of its trunk. I have to say these

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Speaker 1: different accounts here. I couldn't help but think of a

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Speaker 1: Simpson episode and I don't even remember the context, but

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Speaker 1: they're being a scene where like a gorilla is in

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Speaker 1: a tree and a shark comes out of the river

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Speaker 1: underneath it and eats the gorilla as an example of

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Speaker 1: like natural predation or something. Oh wow, but yeah, So anyway,

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Speaker 1: so Buell says that travelers have told him stories of

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Speaker 1: a carnivorous plant that grows in Central Africa and South America,

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Speaker 1: and he says it's so voracious that even resorts to

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Speaker 1: eating humans. And I want to read a quote from

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Speaker 1: the book. He says, quote, this marvelous vegetable minotaur is

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Speaker 1: represented as having a short, thick trunk, from the top

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Speaker 1: of which radiate giant spines, narrow and flexible but of

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Speaker 1: extraordinary tenaciousness, the edges of which are armed with barbs

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Speaker 1: or dagger like teeth. Instead of growing upright or at

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Speaker 1: an inclined angle from the trunk, these spines lay their

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Speaker 1: outer ends upon the ground, And so gracefully are they

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Speaker 1: distributed that the trunk resembles an easy couch with green

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Speaker 1: drapery around it. Uh. Then he goes on to say

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Speaker 1: that the unfortunate traveler will come along and quote the

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Speaker 1: moment his feet are set within the circle of horrid spines,

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Speaker 1: they rise up like gigantic serpents and entwine themselves about

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Speaker 1: him until he is drawn upon the stump, when they

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Speaker 1: speedily drive their daggers into his body and thus complete

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Speaker 1: the massacre. The body is crushed until every drop of

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Speaker 1: blood is squeezed out of it and becomes absorbed orbbed

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Speaker 1: again by the gore loving plant. When the dry carcass

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Speaker 1: is thrown out, and the horrid trap is set again.

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Speaker 1: I'm some elements of that sound reasonable, especially later when

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Speaker 1: we get into real world carnivorous plants and the idea

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Speaker 1: that plants are living things that that live and move

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Speaker 1: at an entirely different speed. And therefore when you see

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Speaker 1: like fast moving actions such as from a venus fly trap,

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Speaker 1: it is very much like a like a crossbow, a

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Speaker 1: heavy crossbow that's been painstakingly loaded over time and then sprung.

360
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Speaker 1: So I could I could see this idea of like

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Speaker 1: a sprung trap working within the conceivably working within the

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Speaker 1: confines of of of actual botany. Yeah. Yeah, with a

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Speaker 1: certain type of movement, you can imagine it less so

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Speaker 1: when especially with something we're gonna hear about in the

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Speaker 1: second though. I also want to add a funny note that,

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Speaker 1: in contrast to the passage I just read that in

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Speaker 1: the introduction, Buell says his purpose in writing the book

368
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Speaker 1: is to quote bring us into a closer relation with

369
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Speaker 1: and a better understanding and appreciation of the mysterious and

370
00:20:05,040 --> 00:20:10,520
Speaker 1: infinite wisdom of Nature's God. I mean that certainly sounds

371
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Speaker 1: like a devil created tree. There ever is such a thing,

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Speaker 1: But anyway, um So Mule says that a gentleman of

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Speaker 1: his acquaintance who lived sometime in Central America affirms the

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Speaker 1: existence of a plant like this there, except with a

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Speaker 1: few variations. So he says that instead of lying on

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Speaker 1: the ground, the filaments of the plant quote moved themselves

377
00:20:31,400 --> 00:20:34,399
Speaker 1: constantly in the air, like so many huge serpents in

378
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Speaker 1: an angry discussion, occasionally darting from side to side as

379
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Speaker 1: if striking at an imaginary foe. Now that sounds completely

380
00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:44,440
Speaker 1: that sounds like not a plant. Yeah, I mean the

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Speaker 1: closest thing I can think of that is, say, like

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Speaker 1: a pussy willow with with the wind blowing through it,

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00:20:49,280 --> 00:20:51,719
Speaker 1: you know, right. But anyway, He goes on to describe

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Speaker 1: how this tree would crush its prey and an embraceive spines,

385
00:20:54,680 --> 00:20:57,800
Speaker 1: and he compares it to the method of execution from

386
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Speaker 1: alleged medieval torture dungeons known as the iron maiden. He

387
00:21:01,760 --> 00:21:04,480
Speaker 1: also claims that in some regions the locals are said

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Speaker 1: to punish criminals by casting them into the tree, which is,

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00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:10,800
Speaker 1: to anybody practicing witchcraft, you go straight into the tree,

390
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Speaker 1: and that the plant is known as yatte vo Spanish

391
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Speaker 1: for I see you, though I double checked the translation.

392
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Speaker 1: Apparently it has a tensed inflection really meaning I already

393
00:21:21,119 --> 00:21:24,199
Speaker 1: see you, which is even a little creepier. I do

394
00:21:24,359 --> 00:21:28,280
Speaker 1: like that a and almost certainly non existent man eating plant.

395
00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:32,160
Speaker 1: The comparison is made to the almost certainly non existent,

396
00:21:32,800 --> 00:21:36,800
Speaker 1: at least functional and functional terms iron maiden. Yeah, yeah,

397
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:39,000
Speaker 1: that that is the case, right, Like I've heard, there's

398
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:42,199
Speaker 1: no good evidence that iron maidens were actually used. That

399
00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:45,720
Speaker 1: is my understanding. That they became kind of you know,

400
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:48,680
Speaker 1: they became it. They were an invention and then took

401
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:50,960
Speaker 1: on a new life. Is kind of a fetish item

402
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:56,160
Speaker 1: for those that wish to possess tortuous objects. Weird anyway.

403
00:21:56,200 --> 00:21:57,600
Speaker 1: I hate to be a downer, but I think we

404
00:21:57,640 --> 00:22:00,240
Speaker 1: can be pretty certain that this is all about of

405
00:22:00,280 --> 00:22:05,280
Speaker 1: nonsense like this. This just sounds like complete fabrication. There

406
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:09,600
Speaker 1: may be maybe or maybe massive, massive exaggerations of something

407
00:22:09,720 --> 00:22:12,680
Speaker 1: people actually saw that was in reality, nothing like what's

408
00:22:12,680 --> 00:22:16,600
Speaker 1: being described. There are no trees with killer squid tentacles

409
00:22:16,600 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 1: that we know of, and I don't even I think

410
00:22:19,359 --> 00:22:21,600
Speaker 1: we can just say there are no such trees, because

411
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:24,479
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any biological sense to have trees with

412
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Speaker 1: writhing tentacles that move around constantly. Yeah. The closest thing

413
00:22:28,040 --> 00:22:29,399
Speaker 1: I can think after this would it would be the

414
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 1: fact that, yes, vines grow on the ground, and you

415
00:22:31,280 --> 00:22:34,119
Speaker 1: could trip over a vine, you're like becoming tangled, and

416
00:22:34,119 --> 00:22:35,960
Speaker 1: you could hit your head on a rock or Yeah,

417
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:39,199
Speaker 1: sort of passive entrapment. That makes more sense, but hardly

418
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 1: a scenario that that I could see plants evolving to

419
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:47,840
Speaker 1: utilize as part of their you know, their primary survival

420
00:22:48,359 --> 00:22:52,959
Speaker 1: um tactic. Right. But we will talk about the biological

421
00:22:53,040 --> 00:22:57,120
Speaker 1: possibilities of such a you know, megafauna eating plant later

422
00:22:57,160 --> 00:23:00,040
Speaker 1: on in this episode. But we should say that the

423
00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:02,840
Speaker 1: Yatte Veo and and Bules accounts here are not the

424
00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:06,560
Speaker 1: only supposedly true accounts, or at least presented as true

425
00:23:06,600 --> 00:23:10,600
Speaker 1: by the by the recounters of of these man eating

426
00:23:10,600 --> 00:23:13,200
Speaker 1: plants or these giant killer trees. Yeah, and these next

427
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:18,200
Speaker 1: two examples, like our previous two examples, are exotic trees

428
00:23:18,359 --> 00:23:22,000
Speaker 1: and a foreign land as experienced or at least related

429
00:23:22,320 --> 00:23:25,920
Speaker 1: by Westerners. So there's the Madagascar tree. And this is

430
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:29,040
Speaker 1: something of a sensation at the time, appearing in publications

431
00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:32,240
Speaker 1: of the eighteen seventies. The idea here was that you

432
00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:37,040
Speaker 1: had Western missionaries led by a German explorer called Carl Leachy,

433
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,800
Speaker 1: and they accounted a tribe of cave dwelling tribespeople in

434
00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:45,399
Speaker 1: Madagascar who made sacrifices to a man eating plant um.

435
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:49,000
Speaker 1: There's a fun quote from this so where we talk

436
00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:52,600
Speaker 1: about the atrocious cannibal tree that had been so inert

437
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:56,400
Speaker 1: and dead came to sudden savage life, the slender, delicate

438
00:23:56,400 --> 00:24:00,960
Speaker 1: palpy with the fury of starved serpents. Ever, the moment

439
00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 1: over her head then, as if instinct with demonic intelligence,

440
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 1: fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her

441
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 1: neck and arms. Then while her awful screams and yet

442
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 1: more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down

443
00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:20,680
Speaker 1: again into a gurgling moan. The tendrils, one after another,

444
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:25,160
Speaker 1: like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity,

445
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:29,320
Speaker 1: rose retracted themselves and wrapped her about in fold after fold,

446
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anaconda's

447
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:39,920
Speaker 1: fastening upon their prey. And whoever wrote it, because that's

448
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:44,119
Speaker 1: one tremendous run on sentence, I love it. It's true.

449
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,600
Speaker 1: You can't stop for a breath. That that is obviously

450
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:50,119
Speaker 1: some sensational detail that does not sound like like an

451
00:24:50,119 --> 00:24:54,440
Speaker 1: account intending on clinical accuracy. Yeah, I I do not

452
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:57,240
Speaker 1: buy it for seconds. Though some people have the plant

453
00:24:57,240 --> 00:25:00,560
Speaker 1: has achieved something of cryptid status. Even the only seventh

454
00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 1: governor of Michigan, Chase Osborne, claimed that it was legit,

455
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:06,639
Speaker 1: but no evidence has ever been presented, and it seems

456
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: to have been a little more than a literary fabrication. Yeah.

457
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:11,119
Speaker 1: That just seems like another one of those kind of

458
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:15,960
Speaker 1: like Eurocentric stories of the exotic weirdness of other lands. Yeah,

459
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 1: I mean another example, and I'm not going to go

460
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:20,440
Speaker 1: into the video on this one, but Phil Robinson in

461
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:24,639
Speaker 1: eighty one, writing in Under the Punka described tales of

462
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 1: man eating trees in southern Egypt, and this one is

463
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 1: called the Nubian tree Um. Yeah. I all these accounts,

464
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:36,160
Speaker 1: they really they have this sort of ickiness to it of, oh, well,

465
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:39,359
Speaker 1: a Westerner of being. Westerners live in a special land

466
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:42,400
Speaker 1: where trees know their place and we're we're above even

467
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 1: predation by by other vertebrates. But but it's like everybody

468
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: wants these things to exist, Like you can't stand the

469
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:51,639
Speaker 1: idea that they're not real. You just don't want them

470
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:54,120
Speaker 1: to be near you. They're they're hidden in some other

471
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:56,959
Speaker 1: place where you don't live, a savage land full of

472
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: savage people, according to these recounter. Yeah, and I'm not

473
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 1: trying to say that that's like the the only element

474
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:06,040
Speaker 1: at play here. I mean, also, just like the idea

475
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:08,439
Speaker 1: of man eating plants is really cool. I don't want

476
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:11,159
Speaker 1: to suggest that the desire to encounter a man eating

477
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: tree is necessarily linked to some kind of colonial xenophobia, right,

478
00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:18,440
Speaker 1: but but I feel like there are some elements there

479
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:21,680
Speaker 1: that are that are little achy to to modern readers.

480
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 1: All Right, well, you know, on that note, let's take

481
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:28,400
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back, we will

482
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:31,280
Speaker 1: we will ask the question, indeed, a question that the

483
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:34,480
Speaker 1: glen Danzig may have asked, Uh, why do plants kill?

484
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Tell me, Joe, why do why

485
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 1: do the plants kill? Well, that is a good question

486
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:47,960
Speaker 1: because in the realm of the well known, of course,

487
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 1: there are plants that kill. Right, So we've been talking

488
00:26:51,359 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 1: about trees that prey on humans in in these legendary

489
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:58,560
Speaker 1: accounts that are pretty obviously false. But there are plants

490
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 1: that kill, not just with defend sieve toxins and thorns,

491
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 1: but with predatory tactics. They've got specially designed morphological features

492
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 1: to trap, poison, paralyzed, dissolve, and digest prey animals, generally insects.

493
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 1: These are the predatory flora, if you will, the eaters.

494
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:22,240
Speaker 1: So let's discuss a few scientific facts about the eaters. First,

495
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 1: I think we should ask the question why would a

496
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:28,240
Speaker 1: plant kill to eat? I mean, think about it for

497
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: a second. A defining feature of what makes a plant

498
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 1: the plant kingdom is the fact that plants, unlike us,

499
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 1: are autotrophs. They make their own food, so the energy

500
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: that they need to survive they get from photosynthesis. There's

501
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 1: energy and the sunlight coming down from the sky, and

502
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: they use that energy from pure sunlight to create a

503
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:50,680
Speaker 1: chemical reaction where they react carbon dioxide from the air

504
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: and water in the end producing chemical energy in the

505
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:56,479
Speaker 1: form of glucose sugars. I mean, when you look at

506
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:00,400
Speaker 1: the the energy economy of life on Earth, generally speaking,

507
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: plants are the only ones with a with an ethical

508
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: get out of jail free card, right like well, I mean,

509
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:08,920
Speaker 1: I guess you also microorganisms that are tropes. But but

510
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: but everything else is having to consume something else for

511
00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:14,879
Speaker 1: its energy, has to steal its energy. But here we

512
00:28:14,920 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 1: have all these plants getting the energy from the sun. Well,

513
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:19,080
Speaker 1: it seems cutting dry. I wouldn't let him off the

514
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: hook too much for the for the ethical quandaries, because

515
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:25,200
Speaker 1: plants and will not necessarily plants, but auto tropes did

516
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:28,639
Speaker 1: some atmospheric engineering that led to great extinction events and

517
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: killed probably more organisms than any mediat or ever has.

518
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:36,280
Speaker 1: But anyway, so plants get most of their energy from

519
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,520
Speaker 1: this harmless process, why would they ever need to trap

520
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: and insect and digest it. That just seems like it's uh,

521
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: it's redundant. It doesn't make any sense. And to find

522
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 1: the answer, we can look at where these carnivorous plants

523
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,400
Speaker 1: usually live. So most often you're going to find them

524
00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 1: in inhospitable growing conditions, the nutrient poor soil of bogs,

525
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 1: fins and swamps, places where there might be plenty of

526
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: access to sunlight, hopefully water too. But in the words

527
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: of the old man from pet cemetery, the ground is sour.

528
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: There is not enough nutrition in the ground. And so

529
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 1: what does nutrition mean for a plant? This is the

530
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:18,959
Speaker 1: first fact, by the way, Carnivorous plants eat for nutrients,

531
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:22,320
Speaker 1: not for energy. They don't need the chemical energy within you.

532
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:26,440
Speaker 1: They need your compounds or your molecules. So, just like

533
00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: human beings, plants rely on the environment for essential nutrients. Right, So,

534
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: if you're stuck in an environment where you get plenty

535
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: of food energy through sugar, but you have no dietary

536
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 1: access to some essential nutrient like vitamin C, your health

537
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:44,760
Speaker 1: will deteriorate. You've probably read about this on on old

538
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: like ships, you know, the sailors or whatever. Exactly, So,

539
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: without vitamin C, you're gonna start to experience some not

540
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 1: so great symptoms. You're gonna have dry splitting hair, rough

541
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:02,680
Speaker 1: scaly skin, inflamed gums and gum, bleeding, nose bleeds, wounds,

542
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: and bruises that won't heal. This is all because your

543
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:08,480
Speaker 1: body can't synthesize vitamin C on its own. You have

544
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 1: to get it from your diet, and eventually, if your

545
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: diet is really deficient in vitamin C, you're gonna develop scurvy,

546
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 1: in which you experience extreme fatigue, loss of strengthen the

547
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: connective tissues all over your body. Like, your body needs

548
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: vitamin C in order to make collagen these for these

549
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: connecting tissues and uh, and you're also gonna have fragility

550
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 1: in the walls of your blood vessels, which is as

551
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: not good as it sounds. Likewise, plants need essential nutrients

552
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: to write that. They can't make everything they need to

553
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:41,280
Speaker 1: survive within their bodies. They have to get it from

554
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:45,280
Speaker 1: their environment. And one example of this is nitrogen. So

555
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: most plants get nitrogen through their roots from the soil

556
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: around them. They reach out into the ground with all

557
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:53,760
Speaker 1: of their roots and they pull up these molecules. They

558
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: pull up these nitrogen atoms from the ground. And if

559
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: the soil is nitrogen poor or it gets robbed of

560
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 1: nitrogen somehow, like apparently this can happen if there's over

561
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 1: introduction of carbon into the soil, plants in the area

562
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: can suffer nitrogen deficiency, which is kind of a scurvy

563
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 1: for plants. You see with the stunted growth, leaves turning

564
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 1: yellow and pale, and body structures that look kind of

565
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: wilted or sick. So, if you are the plant equivalent

566
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 1: of a vitamin C starved sailor with bleeding gums and

567
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 1: fragile joints living in this nutrient poor soil. Where do

568
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:31,520
Speaker 1: you get your essential nutrients? Well, you could snatch up

569
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:35,200
Speaker 1: and digest something that has plenty of nutritious molecules in it,

570
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: like an insect. You know. And and we discussed in

571
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:41,120
Speaker 1: a previous episode, the Weird Mushroom episode that you see

572
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:45,160
Speaker 1: this exact scenario play out with with oyster mushrooms in

573
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: which there's a nitrogen deficiency and therefore they have adapted

574
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: to prey on nematodes and in some cases spiders. I

575
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And then of

576
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 1: course we turn arounderneath the oyster mushrooms. Well, they are delicious.

577
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 1: You never eat a spider on purpose, but who knows

578
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 1: how many times you you get one down the chain.

579
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:11,760
Speaker 1: That's the old myth, right, the average person eats sixty

580
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 1: spiders at night. I think it's crawl right in there.

581
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: That's a myth, right, that's not true. That's an Yeah,

582
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: that's an exaggeration of the myth on my part Alright,

583
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: So okay, so here's another fact about carnivorous plants. Uh So,

584
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: the this trick, this insect eating trick, in order to

585
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 1: get nitrogen and other nutrients that the plant needs. It's

586
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: a good trick, and for that reason, the carnivorous phenotype

587
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:40,840
Speaker 1: evolved multiple times independently, so there was no one carnivorous

588
00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:44,480
Speaker 1: ancestor plant that all carnivorous plants today can be traced

589
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 1: back to. This is an example, or scientists think this

590
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: is an example of what's known as convergent evolution. So

591
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: it would be kind of like flight. There's no one

592
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: flying animal that all flying animals today evolved from. Flight

593
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 1: is a solution that was reached by evolution in different

594
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: branches of the tree of life, independently and at different times.

595
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 1: Uh coast three different times. Yeah, carnivory in in plants

596
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: is the same way. It's a survival strategy that's so good.

597
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: Different branches on the tree of life adopted separately in

598
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: separate evolutionary contexts. Uh. Let's let's go to a third

599
00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 1: fact related to the previous one. Carnivorous plants come in

600
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 1: a lot of different varieties. You're probably familiar with venus

601
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: fly traps, but the superstars, Yeah, but they're not the

602
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: only ones. There are multiple different types of carnivorous plants.

603
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:36,520
Speaker 1: It actually occurs in According to one source, I found

604
00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 1: at least nine families, nineteen genera and six hundred species

605
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:43,960
Speaker 1: of plant, and so it could be more by now. Yeah,

606
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 1: I think just a few years ago it was I

607
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: saw a source saying five hundreds. So apparently just continually

608
00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:52,480
Speaker 1: or discovering new examples. Yeah, So what are the different

609
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: types of carnivorous plants. Well, you have a few different models,

610
00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: a few different methods out there. First of all, snap

611
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: trap plants, venus fly traps, water wheel plants. This is

612
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 1: the the iconic example of the little trap that slowly

613
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,080
Speaker 1: opens and then a fly lights in the middle and

614
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: the gates close over it. So it'skind of a trigger

615
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 1: plate kind of yeah, which exactly has a trigger plate.

616
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:17,959
Speaker 1: It works very much like a like like I said,

617
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:20,200
Speaker 1: like a like a wolf trap or a fox trap

618
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:23,279
Speaker 1: or a bear trap. Right, and uh, and these are

619
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 1: you know, these are famous because they're beautiful, they're they're

620
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: relatively easy to cultivate or at least by the store

621
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 1: and keep alive for a certain period of time in

622
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:33,439
Speaker 1: your home. I had one when I was a kid

623
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: one time, and I think consolation for the fact that

624
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 1: my mom took me to a very long, boring time

625
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 1: at a plant nursery where she was buying some flowers

626
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 1: or something. I asked and returned to get this venus

627
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:48,320
Speaker 1: fly trap, and I got it and it was very cool.

628
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 1: But I recall I got at home and I couldn't

629
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 1: get it to close on anything. Oh yeah, I remember

630
00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: being I never had one as a kid, though certainly

631
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 1: it would be the only plant I would have been

632
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:00,200
Speaker 1: interested in as a child. I had. I had one

633
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:03,480
Speaker 1: for a while, maybe ten years ago. My wife and

634
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:06,439
Speaker 1: I had one called Monster Tom, and we kept hoping

635
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 1: it would catch flies, like would be one of those

636
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 1: things where you would let a fly live in the

637
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:11,879
Speaker 1: house because you're like, all right, let Monster Time take

638
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:13,319
Speaker 1: care of it. I don't think the Monster Time ever

639
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: ate a single fly, but it was still a beautiful

640
00:35:15,120 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 1: little plant afp around. I wonder if the domesticated venus

641
00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: fly traps have gotten soft, you know, maybe they just

642
00:35:21,520 --> 00:35:23,359
Speaker 1: don't prey on flies, like they just know they've got

643
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:25,879
Speaker 1: to have like big beautiful eyelashes, right, I mean, because

644
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 1: but of course, these these are known as the snap

645
00:35:29,640 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: trap plants, and they're not the only kind of This

646
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:35,280
Speaker 1: also includes water wheel plants, right do we say that? Yes? Okay,

647
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but there are plenty of other kinds too, well,

648
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:42,800
Speaker 1: like how about pitfall traps. Oh yeah. The main example

649
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 1: of this being picture plants, which is which is one.

650
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: I believe they have them in Newfoundland, Canada, and that's

651
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 1: where I kind of encountered them early on when Yeah,

652
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:54,479
Speaker 1: or at least some variety of them, because they're pretty

653
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 1: widespread and these are lovely specimens. The leaves fold into

654
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 1: deep slip repools field with digestive ensigns, So it's essentially

655
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:08,160
Speaker 1: a champagne flute that's filled with insect death. Yeah, but

656
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: with it's got the slippery slide going down into it. Yeah,

657
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:13,759
Speaker 1: so the the insect light slides down Scott and the

658
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: goo and dissolves, So it's it's it's kind of monstrous,

659
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 1: but also be their beautiful plants. So you seem like

660
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,280
Speaker 1: a lot of botanical gardens. I'm always seeing them, often

661
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 1: with some kind of chemical attractant to to bring the

662
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: insects in, to lure them down. Uh. And then there

663
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: there's something I've read about the special surfaces, right, like

664
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:35,240
Speaker 1: the surfaces on the lip of the picture plant becomes

665
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 1: slippery when wet, so it's hard to scramble back up

666
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 1: them and just kind of slide, uh, intellectably down into

667
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:45,920
Speaker 1: the pit. Yeah, and of course it's worth worth reminding everyone,

668
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:48,480
Speaker 1: Like one of the key things here is that is

669
00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:52,320
Speaker 1: that plants and insects and have had a long history

670
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: with insects serving as pollinators for for so for so

671
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:59,360
Speaker 1: many different plant variety. Oh yeah, there's actually a study

672
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:01,440
Speaker 1: about that I want to mention in a few minutes here.

673
00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:05,439
Speaker 1: But anyway, the picture plants, Yeah, that's so they're they're,

674
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 1: they're they're numerous varieties of this. And the earliest fossil

675
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:13,359
Speaker 1: evidence of a carnivorous plant might be a picture plant, uh,

676
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: the mid early Cretaceous uh Archaeomorpha longa servia uh was

677
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: discovered in what's now northeastern China, and researchers are now

678
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: split on the matter, with newer research arguing than it

679
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:29,360
Speaker 1: might not be a picture plan at all, some of

680
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,840
Speaker 1: the others, especially earlier papers, saying that, oh this, this

681
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: is definitely it is a picture plan or at least

682
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 1: sort of a proto picture plant, And so it's it's

683
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 1: kind of a problematic fossil right now. But there's a

684
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,719
Speaker 1: possibility other than that that there's not a whole lot

685
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: of fossil evidence of carnivorous plants. So any dreams you

686
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:49,840
Speaker 1: might have out there listeners for a for like a

687
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:54,839
Speaker 1: prehistoric thinking out like a giant one that's eating dinosaurs

688
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 1: or prehistoric mammals. Uh, well, it's not in the fossil

689
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: record at any rate. Man, that's bummer free. History gives

690
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: us giant toads, giant scorpions, but no giant carnivorous plants.

691
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 1: Of course, there are other varieties of carnivorous plants as well.

692
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 1: There are lobster trap plants. Oh, these are great, these

693
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:15,879
Speaker 1: are They go by the pickle jar principle, right, Yeah,

694
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:18,279
Speaker 1: you reach in, you grab the pickles and you can't

695
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:20,360
Speaker 1: get your hand back out right or indeed, as the

696
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 1: name applies, lobster traps various crab traps. Does anyone who's

697
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 1: ever used these know that the creature crawls in, but

698
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:29,320
Speaker 1: then it can't quit get out again. And that's exactly

699
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: how these plants that do that with the through special

700
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: structures m that that end up trapping the creature. Yeah.

701
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:39,759
Speaker 1: I think there's a certain element of this, and I

702
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 1: think it's actually a type of picture plant, but it

703
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,440
Speaker 1: had there's an element of easier to get in and

704
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: apparently easy to get out until you're inside. In uh

705
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 1: in the cobra lily, this cool example of an American

706
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:54,319
Speaker 1: carnivorous plant that I found. It goes in I think

707
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:58,400
Speaker 1: northern California and southern Oregon. Uh And it's this beautiful

708
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:02,279
Speaker 1: looking plant that has a has a picture and is

709
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 1: in some way carnivorous. But it's got an opening on

710
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:07,600
Speaker 1: the bottom and then the top. It's kind of translucent

711
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: so the light can come through, so I assume to

712
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 1: an insect, it looks kind of like you can exit

713
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 1: through the top until you get inside, all right. Up next,

714
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 1: we have sticky traps a k a. Fly paper traps,

715
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,360
Speaker 1: and examples here include sun dues and butterwartz. So the

716
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 1: leaves exude a uh, sticky substance that catches lighting insects.

717
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:31,480
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty basic, but hey, it's a winning design. I mean,

718
00:39:31,600 --> 00:39:33,840
Speaker 1: I've I've got the willies from glue traps because I

719
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:35,840
Speaker 1: know the stories of people who have you tried to

720
00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 1: use glue traps to catch rodents in their house? And

721
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 1: that's just a sad. Yeah. The tragedy of glue traps

722
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:45,239
Speaker 1: is that they sound humane on the surface. Of things

723
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 1: not but they're they're not at all, especially when you

724
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 1: when you realize that reptiles that gets caught in them,

725
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: they're gonna suffer a long time because they've evolved to

726
00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:58,839
Speaker 1: to to go a long time between meals. Uh so, hey,

727
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:01,359
Speaker 1: if you do. I have had to remove a snake

728
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:03,800
Speaker 1: from a glue trap before, and if you use oil,

729
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 1: that will really help. I think I think we used

730
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:09,640
Speaker 1: olive oil and we're able to free a specimen. Yeah,

731
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:13,239
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Well, well, I don't know, it's amazing. I

732
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:15,759
Speaker 1: didn't know you were such a hero. Robert. Well it was.

733
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: I feel like, can you come get my cat out

734
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:20,279
Speaker 1: of the tree? Can you come get my snake out

735
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,840
Speaker 1: of a glue trap? Well? I have you. I have

736
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:24,840
Speaker 1: found that if I am if I encounter an animal

737
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:27,880
Speaker 1: with my son, I'm often even more humane, Like not

738
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 1: not so much snakes, because I generally am going to

739
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: be cool with snakes. But this most recent trip, we

740
00:40:32,760 --> 00:40:36,439
Speaker 1: came across some blackwood of spiders and like, actually three

741
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:39,799
Speaker 1: you're like really close to um to a house, and uh,

742
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: you know, normally once the instinct that I grew up

743
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:45,279
Speaker 1: with is if you find a blackwoodo of spider. You

744
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 1: go ahead and kill it because it's you know, it's

745
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:50,320
Speaker 1: a highly it's it's not a good animal have around.

746
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 1: You don't want that thing bite me, right, I feel

747
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:55,440
Speaker 1: like we should learn to resist that impulse. I think

748
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 1: so too. I like, you know, if it's not hurting us,

749
00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:01,319
Speaker 1: then we shouldn't crush it. So we just checked it out.

750
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 1: We actually caught one and put it in a little

751
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: glass and looked at it for a little bit and

752
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: then released it further away from the house. But then,

753
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:10,800
Speaker 1: of course, there is one other major type of of

754
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:15,640
Speaker 1: of carniversus plant, right, these suction traps. Yes, these involve

755
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,279
Speaker 1: highly modified leaves in the shape of a bladder with

756
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: a hinge door lined with trigger hairs. Uh. So these

757
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 1: are the ones, if I'm picturing them correctly. Um, these

758
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:27,520
Speaker 1: are the ones that kind of remind one of of

759
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 1: pipe organs with a little bit on the top, like

760
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: a little lid on the top of the organ. Huh pipe. Yeah, Okay,

761
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:37,799
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen that, or maybe it's

762
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: more like no, no, it's more like the I'm I'm

763
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 1: comparing it to cartoons. I think in my mind, we

764
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:45,400
Speaker 1: have like a steam engine or something, and they have

765
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 1: the little top that flips up on the top of

766
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 1: the thesaft pipe. Yea, yeah, kind of similar to that. Okay,

767
00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: uh so hey, let's hit the next fact about carniversus plants.

768
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:58,440
Speaker 1: Among the killer plants, You've got a couple of different

769
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 1: major varieties, right, So got carnivores and then you've got

770
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: the proto carnivores proto carnivorous plants. So what would what

771
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:09,320
Speaker 1: would we mean by that? A proto carnivorous plant is

772
00:42:09,360 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 1: a plant that has the tendency to catch and kill prey,

773
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: but doesn't yet have the capacity to directly digest the meal. So,

774
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 1: for example, there are some picture plants that do not

775
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,759
Speaker 1: produce their own digestive enzymes, but rely on bacteria to

776
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 1: dissolve organic matter in the traps. And some botanists would

777
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,320
Speaker 1: class proto carnivorous plants as taxons that are part of

778
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 1: the way. They're right there on the evolutionary path to

779
00:42:34,560 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 1: becoming carnivores. Yeah, it's interesting when we consider that that

780
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:44,280
Speaker 1: many carnivore lineages, you know, they enter into the carnivore

781
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 1: game via proto carnivore lifestyle. So yeah, it's it's it's

782
00:42:48,960 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 1: it's kind of like seeing evolution in action. Uh, and

783
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:55,320
Speaker 1: I can't help it. To consider the relationship between figs

784
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 1: and fig wass that's interesting, which I think is a

785
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 1: great example of you know, complex relationship, really a mutualistic

786
00:43:02,680 --> 00:43:09,000
Speaker 1: relationship between plant and a particular insects species. I've never

787
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:12,359
Speaker 1: heard this mentioned as an example of of a carnivorous plant.

788
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: But Robert tell us how it goes down. What's the relationship?

789
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:18,320
Speaker 1: All right? Well, uh, again, it's a mutualistic relationship, but

790
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 1: there there's some there's some nutrients absorbed to at the

791
00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 1: end of the story. So, but the basic scenario here

792
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:28,880
Speaker 1: is that fig trees need wasps to transport pollen from

793
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:31,279
Speaker 1: one plant to the other. The plant provides a fig

794
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 1: wasp with their only source of food and shelter. Um.

795
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 1: What we call a fig is actually a structure called

796
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:41,640
Speaker 1: a seconium, and it's really more of an inverted flower

797
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:44,360
Speaker 1: than a fruit, with all its reproductive parts located inside.

798
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: And after a female fig wasp flies over from her

799
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: home fig plant, she has to travel to the center

800
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 1: of the seconium to lay her eggs, and to get

801
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 1: there she climbs down a narrow passage called the osteo passage,

802
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:00,279
Speaker 1: is so cramped that she scrapes off her wings and

803
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:02,600
Speaker 1: her antenna during the descent. It's just a real, real

804
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:05,919
Speaker 1: nightmare scenario. And then once inside, there's no getting back

805
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 1: out and flying to another plant. Uh, it's like like

806
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:11,439
Speaker 1: finding a narrow hole in a cemetery and climbing down

807
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: into a grave, just ripping a bunch of skin off

808
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:16,399
Speaker 1: in the process. And then when she's down there, well,

809
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:18,799
Speaker 1: she better hope she's in the right place because fig

810
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 1: plants boast two kinds of figs, male caprifigs and then

811
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:25,440
Speaker 1: female edible figs. If she if she winds up an

812
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 1: inedible fig, she eventually dies from exhaustion or starvation. She

813
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 1: can't lay her eggs there, the stylus is in the way,

814
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:34,759
Speaker 1: but she at least delivers the pollens, which is kind

815
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:37,880
Speaker 1: of a cool cruel trick, right. Um, we see the

816
00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:41,959
Speaker 1: mutualistic aspect here, but it also kind of breaking down

817
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 1: right like the right the plant gets what it wants,

818
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 1: but the wasp doesn't get what it wants. Now she

819
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,880
Speaker 1: enters the male caprifig, she'll find male flower parts perfectly

820
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 1: shaped to hold the eggs. She'll eventually lay The eggs

821
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:56,239
Speaker 1: grow into larva, which is then developed into male and

822
00:44:56,280 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: female wasps, which emerge after hat ing. The blind wingless,

823
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:04,440
Speaker 1: wingless male wasp will spend the remainder of their lives

824
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 1: digging tunnels through the fig. The female wasp then emerge

825
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: through these tunnels and fly have to find a new fig,

826
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: carrying pollen with them. Now, and that is a crazy process, Yeah,

827
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:19,399
Speaker 1: it is. It's it's it's wondrous, wondrous. I had figs

828
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: in in my backyard this this year, and uh, I

829
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:24,279
Speaker 1: thought about it every time I went out there to

830
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:26,759
Speaker 1: check on them. Well, wait, then, is it accurate to

831
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:29,879
Speaker 1: say that in some sense the fig tree is consuming

832
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: the wasp that is stuck inside it. Yes, because this

833
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:38,360
Speaker 1: is what happens in the death fig um when a

834
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: female wasp dies inside an edible fig, and enzyme in

835
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: the fig called king breaks down her carcass into protein.

836
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:49,880
Speaker 1: So the fig basically digests the dead insect, making it

837
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:53,280
Speaker 1: a part of the resulting ripened fruit and the crunchy

838
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:57,160
Speaker 1: crunchy bits and the figs, though or seeds, not anatomical

839
00:45:57,239 --> 00:45:59,200
Speaker 1: parts of the wasp case. And he was wondering, now,

840
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 1: one thing I do you think about here, is that

841
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:05,440
Speaker 1: a fig tree doesn't seem to me to be something

842
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 1: that is suffering from a lack of nitrogen or some

843
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: other nutrient or or is it. I mean that that's

844
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: not my understanding that it's necessarily suffering, but it just

845
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 1: gets some kind of maybe even if it could survive

846
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:22,200
Speaker 1: without these wasps, I'm not saying I know that it could,

847
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:24,359
Speaker 1: but even if it could, it just gets a little

848
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:27,120
Speaker 1: extra boost. I guess it's like using every part of

849
00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: the buffalo, right, I mean, the wasp is in there,

850
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: it's it's not going anywhere. Why not digested? Why not digested?

851
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 1: I mean to sort of anthromorpi anthropomorphize the the evolutionary

852
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: process here of that. But it's it's an interesting example

853
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:45,719
Speaker 1: I think of certainly a complex relationship, a mutualistic relationship

854
00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:49,759
Speaker 1: where it's kind of like thinking of it as a corporation. Right,

855
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,840
Speaker 1: So you have you have fig Tree Corp. Or you know,

856
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: and they have all these different departments, and most of

857
00:46:56,480 --> 00:47:01,000
Speaker 1: the departments are related to fruit production and and and

858
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 1: wasp relations. But there is definitely a wasp dissolving and

859
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:10,359
Speaker 1: digesting department. It's not the primary department it's on the basement. Yeah,

860
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:12,879
Speaker 1: it's in the basement, but it still plays a role

861
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:16,399
Speaker 1: in the overall company structure. Okay, okay, uh, and it's

862
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 1: you always got to put the payroll in now. I

863
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 1: wanted to see if there was any interesting new research

864
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 1: from this year on on carnivorous plants, and I can

865
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:27,560
Speaker 1: across one paper I thought was kind of interesting. It's

866
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:31,960
Speaker 1: called Pollinator prey conflicts and carnivorous Plants when flower and

867
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 1: trap properties mean life or death? From scientific reports published

868
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: this year in and it was studying uh, plants of

869
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: the genus Drosera, which are the sun does right. We

870
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:46,200
Speaker 1: talked about those the sticky trap plants, and its studied

871
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:49,399
Speaker 1: how the plants solve a particular problem if you've thought

872
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 1: about this, If you're a carnivorous plant that wants to

873
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:56,440
Speaker 1: draw insects into a death trap, but you're also a

874
00:47:56,560 --> 00:48:00,600
Speaker 1: flowering plant that wants insects to spread your pollen for reproduction,

875
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:02,840
Speaker 1: how do you make sure that you don't trap and

876
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 1: kill the insects that you need to pollinate your flowers. Um,

877
00:48:08,120 --> 00:48:10,279
Speaker 1: I'm about to say a metaphor for this that might

878
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 1: be the worst metaphor I've ever tried on this show,

879
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:15,319
Speaker 1: so so stop me if I'm going off the rails. Well,

880
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: it's kind of like if if you couldn't have sex

881
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:24,759
Speaker 1: without the help of a certain species of live wild rat,

882
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:28,600
Speaker 1: but you also have rat traps all over your house,

883
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:33,200
Speaker 1: like kill traps, this would seem to lower your reproductive fitness.

884
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 1: So instead, what the drosera plants do and study is

885
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: that they offer different visual, spatial, and chemical signals that

886
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:46,680
Speaker 1: selectively attract nonpollinators to the traps, so that they've adapted

887
00:48:47,120 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 1: to have selective appeals in the traps versus in the

888
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:55,319
Speaker 1: pollinating structures. What's kind of like imagining these um, these

889
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 1: hotels and horror movies where they cannibalize the guests, Like

890
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 1: you gotta keep your yelp rating up enough where you

891
00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 1: get more guests. Exactly, You've got to have enough real guests,

892
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:06,480
Speaker 1: but then at the same time, you need guests to eat,

893
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:09,040
Speaker 1: so you've got to find that balance. Yeah, so in

894
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:11,200
Speaker 1: in my horrible analogy, it would be sort of like

895
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,880
Speaker 1: having traps that are designed to to kill all the

896
00:49:15,000 --> 00:49:18,480
Speaker 1: rats except your sex rat that you need for reproduction.

897
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:22,360
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's let's discuss the real carnivorous plants, the

898
00:49:22,440 --> 00:49:26,319
Speaker 1: plants that really do prey on vertebrates. Okay, well we've

899
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:30,399
Speaker 1: got to start by discussing the alleged ones that prey

900
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: on vertebrates. So the one I want to start with

901
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:36,040
Speaker 1: is the Puya chill Insis. So, this is a bromiliad

902
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 1: plant that grows in the arid parts of the Andes

903
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 1: in South America. It's known as Puya chill insists. And

904
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:44,120
Speaker 1: it's sort of because it's a bromiliad, it's going to

905
00:49:44,160 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 1: be a cousin of like the pineapple, and it kind

906
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 1: of looks like a pineapple. It looks like a giant,

907
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 1: woody pineapple with yellow green spikes extending out at an

908
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:57,480
Speaker 1: inclined angle from the trunk. And it has been widely

909
00:49:57,600 --> 00:50:00,640
Speaker 1: reported on popular websites and a few new sources that

910
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 1: this plant is known as the quote sheep eating plant

911
00:50:05,239 --> 00:50:09,320
Speaker 1: because it sometimes feeds on the carcasses of livestock caught

912
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:14,000
Speaker 1: in its spines. For example, there's ABC news piece about

913
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:17,719
Speaker 1: how the Royal Horticultural Society and Great Britain managed to

914
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:20,240
Speaker 1: grow one of these plants in a greenhouse in Surrey,

915
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:23,000
Speaker 1: and the story was about how the plant was about

916
00:50:23,040 --> 00:50:24,880
Speaker 1: to flower. I think it takes a long time to

917
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 1: do that. But the article claims quote in the andies

918
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,920
Speaker 1: it uses its sharp spines to snare and trap sheep

919
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:35,960
Speaker 1: and other animals, which slowly starved to death. The animals

920
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:38,799
Speaker 1: then decay at the base of the plant, acting as

921
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 1: a fertilizer. The RHS feeds its specimen on liquid fertilizer,

922
00:50:43,560 --> 00:50:45,800
Speaker 1: and then they quote a horticulture is saying that obviously

923
00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:48,399
Speaker 1: it would be problematic to feed this plant quote its

924
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:54,000
Speaker 1: natural diet um. So despite these reports, most of which

925
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:58,280
Speaker 1: sort of repeat the same thin summary claims over another,

926
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:01,960
Speaker 1: over and over, I have been unable to find any

927
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 1: evidence in the scientific literature that these plants are really

928
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:07,760
Speaker 1: known to do this to trap and kill large animals

929
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: like sheep, And honestly, looking at a bunch of pictures

930
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:13,239
Speaker 1: of them, I'm also having a hard time seeing how

931
00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:16,400
Speaker 1: this would happen, Like they look like they would be

932
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: painful to fall into, but not deadly traps. Also, I've

933
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:22,480
Speaker 1: read a few accounts of people who claim to work

934
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:26,440
Speaker 1: around the puya and don't report anything about this, So

935
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: this makes it seem to me like this phenomenon of

936
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:33,520
Speaker 1: sheep becoming trapped in puya growth, dying and then fertilizing

937
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:37,280
Speaker 1: the base of the plant is something that maybe conceivably

938
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:40,760
Speaker 1: could happen by coincidence. Like I guess you could accept

939
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:44,640
Speaker 1: that rotting animal flesh is generally a decent fertilizer, but

940
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:48,320
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't happen often enough to qualify as a

941
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:52,000
Speaker 1: real evolutionary adaptation by the plant. Yeah. And plus, I mean,

942
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:53,680
Speaker 1: there are plenty of animals that are already going to

943
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:56,359
Speaker 1: play prey on a sheep. And then if you were

944
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:01,759
Speaker 1: having sheep that are raised and basically an artificial population

945
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 1: of sheep, if they're gonna be there's gonna be a

946
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: higher susceptibility to stranger on natural deaths. Right. Yeah, So

947
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:10,640
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical of this one. I think unless somebody can

948
00:52:10,719 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 1: send us some really good evidence that this actually takes place,

949
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 1: I'm going to say this one actually looks like a

950
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:18,480
Speaker 1: myth to me that has somehow made it into news reports.

951
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:21,719
Speaker 1: I think that is a safe bet. But then there's

952
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:24,320
Speaker 1: another one that is definitely not a myth, though we

953
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 1: have to be a little careful and how we characterize it.

954
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:30,800
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about nepenthes, the tropical picture plants.

955
00:52:31,600 --> 00:52:34,359
Speaker 1: So these are pitfall traps, right, Like we've talked about

956
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:37,080
Speaker 1: picture plants where they've got a uh, they've got a

957
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:40,279
Speaker 1: deep well that has some killer fluids in it, and

958
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:42,840
Speaker 1: they want you to fall in and get stuck and

959
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 1: die and dissolve. Now it's it's definitely worth saying that

960
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:51,480
Speaker 1: the natural prey of these plants are invertebrates. They're going

961
00:52:51,520 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 1: to be insects. But some of these traps can grow

962
00:52:55,480 --> 00:52:58,400
Speaker 1: like more than forty centimeters deep or hold up to

963
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 1: two liters of aggestive fluid. That's huge, looks like a

964
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a big soda bottle. Like with

965
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 1: some of its various species having traps this big, it's

966
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:13,880
Speaker 1: sort of natural to wonder if anything bigger than an

967
00:53:13,960 --> 00:53:17,480
Speaker 1: insect ever gets digested, And I'd say the answer appears

968
00:53:17,560 --> 00:53:21,439
Speaker 1: to be both no and yes, and so like I said,

969
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 1: first of all, invertebrates are clearly the main prey of

970
00:53:24,840 --> 00:53:30,680
Speaker 1: these plants. Um they appear insectivorous by evolutionary design, but

971
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:33,279
Speaker 1: animals come into the picture as well well. One one

972
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:36,680
Speaker 1: sense is more mutualistic, Like there are several picture plants

973
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:40,360
Speaker 1: that seem to have this non predatory symbiotic relationship with

974
00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:44,360
Speaker 1: vertebrates like birds, bats, and shrews. And it works like this.

975
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:48,080
Speaker 1: You've got a picture and it's got sweet nectar all

976
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:51,560
Speaker 1: along the outer surface, and a bird or a forest

977
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:54,880
Speaker 1: rodent comes along besides, I want some of that nectar,

978
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:57,239
Speaker 1: And while it's hanging out of the opening of the

979
00:53:57,320 --> 00:54:01,640
Speaker 1: picture plant, it just happens to deposit some seas inside. Now,

980
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:04,279
Speaker 1: normally you would not expect an organism to have an

981
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:08,839
Speaker 1: adaptation that incentivizes animals to poop inside it. But guess

982
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:13,400
Speaker 1: what those feces are rich in nitrogen. Yeah, exactly the

983
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:16,080
Speaker 1: nutrients that the plant would normally need to get by

984
00:54:16,200 --> 00:54:20,400
Speaker 1: killing insects. So there are types of picture plants that

985
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 1: also seem to provide like a roosting shelter for bats

986
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:25,440
Speaker 1: as well, and the bats to do the same thing.

987
00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:28,120
Speaker 1: They poop into the plant and the plant gets some

988
00:54:28,200 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 1: sweet nitrogen out of it. But with some of the

989
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 1: larger tropical pictures, what if a small mammal were two

990
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:40,239
Speaker 1: fall all the way in, would it be able to

991
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 1: get out? And if not, would the plant eat it?

992
00:54:43,880 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: I think the answer is ding, ding, ding. You bet.

993
00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: This is this nightmare scenario. I encounter anytime I use

994
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:54,040
Speaker 1: a composting toilet. Oh no, those things smell bad enough anyway, yea,

995
00:54:54,120 --> 00:54:55,680
Speaker 1: even when they go. I was in a really good

996
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:58,359
Speaker 1: one last week. Oh, I shouldn't bad mouth thought. I'm sorry.

997
00:54:58,360 --> 00:55:00,960
Speaker 1: I've been near one that's old. Really, but it's still

998
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: horrifying because especially like in my case, I'm putting my

999
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:06,120
Speaker 1: son on it, and I was like, oh, he could

1000
00:55:06,160 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 1: just fall right down there, and then I guess I

1001
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:10,839
Speaker 1: have to go down there too, like the fluke man, right, yeah,

1002
00:55:11,719 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 1: oh man, this is a horrifying scenario falling into a

1003
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:19,440
Speaker 1: picture trap. God. So here's the evidence. There is a

1004
00:55:19,520 --> 00:55:24,960
Speaker 1: photo and video documentation online of a Nepenthes research expedition

1005
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:29,480
Speaker 1: that took place first in October, and they were going

1006
00:55:29,560 --> 00:55:32,680
Speaker 1: to Mount Victoria and the Philippines, and they were studying

1007
00:55:32,880 --> 00:55:36,160
Speaker 1: specimens of Nepenthes at in Borough e I when named

1008
00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:40,400
Speaker 1: after our our favorite at Inburg, endemic to the region

1009
00:55:40,640 --> 00:55:44,759
Speaker 1: and with the species not and not Attenburgh. But they

1010
00:55:44,840 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 1: found one picture of this plant that contained a wild

1011
00:55:49,200 --> 00:55:52,400
Speaker 1: caught dead tree shrew, and they showed it in photos

1012
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:55,319
Speaker 1: and on video, and a return expedition two months later

1013
00:55:55,520 --> 00:55:59,200
Speaker 1: showed the skeletal remains of the shrew covered in a

1014
00:55:59,280 --> 00:56:01,560
Speaker 1: sort of layer of first So essentially all the soft

1015
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:05,160
Speaker 1: tissues of the tree shrew appeared to have been digested

1016
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:09,920
Speaker 1: by the plant. So does the picture plant naturally target

1017
00:56:10,160 --> 00:56:13,960
Speaker 1: vertebrate mammals as prey. Probably not, but if there's one

1018
00:56:14,040 --> 00:56:17,160
Speaker 1: on offer, yeah, I don't mind if I do. That

1019
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:19,840
Speaker 1: seems to be the approach. But now the real question

1020
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:23,600
Speaker 1: is could it be possible for a real world plant

1021
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:27,040
Speaker 1: to be the man eating tree, that the killer tree

1022
00:56:27,120 --> 00:56:30,520
Speaker 1: that would trap and kill large megafauna like a deer

1023
00:56:30,920 --> 00:56:35,400
Speaker 1: or a bear or a human being mm hmm, or

1024
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 1: even something like a raccoon, right, I mean, oh yeah,

1025
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:40,560
Speaker 1: it's settling for a raccoon medium size because because the

1026
00:56:41,280 --> 00:56:44,400
Speaker 1: even the the bat possibility and the shrew possibility is

1027
00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:47,800
Speaker 1: kind of iffy, right, So anything larger than that it

1028
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:52,000
Speaker 1: becomes increasingly fantastic. Yeah. So I will say, first of all,

1029
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:54,880
Speaker 1: I found no evidence that a plant like this already exists.

1030
00:56:54,960 --> 00:56:56,880
Speaker 1: We'll start with the bad news. But the good news,

1031
00:56:57,120 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 1: or maybe the bad news, who knows what's good and bad,

1032
00:56:59,320 --> 00:57:02,280
Speaker 1: It depends where he's stand on plants killing and eating humans.

1033
00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:04,719
Speaker 1: Is that there's some interesting leads. So, first of all,

1034
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:08,160
Speaker 1: I want to consider the possibility of a proto carnivorous

1035
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:11,960
Speaker 1: bramble trap. So I watched a video blog and this

1036
00:57:12,160 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 1: is not scientific information. This was a video blog by

1037
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:19,640
Speaker 1: an Irish sheep farmer, and this guy was personally insisting

1038
00:57:20,280 --> 00:57:24,440
Speaker 1: that the BlackBerry brambles on his land are carnivorous, or

1039
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: he called them carnivorous. I think more accurately you would

1040
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 1: call them proto carnivorous. But if he's correct, But here's

1041
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:36,160
Speaker 1: his argument. He says by demonstrating how his sheep become

1042
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:38,920
Speaker 1: trapped in these brambles all the time, they get like

1043
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:42,000
Speaker 1: they get their wooly coats caught in the hook like thorns,

1044
00:57:42,640 --> 00:57:44,560
Speaker 1: and then they struggle and they get more and more

1045
00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:48,680
Speaker 1: tangled in the branches as they struggle to escape. That's

1046
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. I guess the idea is that they

1047
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:54,760
Speaker 1: get caught, they can't escape, they die. It's kind of

1048
00:57:54,880 --> 00:57:58,200
Speaker 1: like what was being alleged with the Puya chilensis, that

1049
00:57:58,320 --> 00:58:00,840
Speaker 1: they would fall down near the base the plant rought

1050
00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:04,160
Speaker 1: and fertilize the soil. Well, even if they in doing this,

1051
00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:07,400
Speaker 1: if they didn't kill the animal outright, if they even

1052
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: if they didn't allow starvation to occur. They could conceivably,

1053
00:58:11,480 --> 00:58:14,160
Speaker 1: you could conceivably have the plant just holding it long

1054
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 1: enough for a predator to come take advantage of it,

1055
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:20,240
Speaker 1: eat part of it, and then but they'll leave portions

1056
00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:22,440
Speaker 1: of the creature to rot. Oh that's interesting too. I

1057
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:25,120
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about that now. I do want to say

1058
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:28,680
Speaker 1: I'm not going to endorse the hypothesis of carnivorous brambles

1059
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:31,520
Speaker 1: here because I think we don't have evidence that that's

1060
00:58:31,640 --> 00:58:35,200
Speaker 1: necessarily what's going on. I think you'd have to demonstrate

1061
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:38,880
Speaker 1: that this is actually an adaptation towards which bramble evolution

1062
00:58:39,040 --> 00:58:42,680
Speaker 1: was shaped, like where they're similar wooly animals native to

1063
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:46,480
Speaker 1: the regions wherever these plants evolved. Would one of these

1064
00:58:46,520 --> 00:58:48,919
Speaker 1: animals rotting at the base of the bramble plant really

1065
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:53,240
Speaker 1: provide enough nutrition incentive to make a major difference in

1066
00:58:53,320 --> 00:58:57,520
Speaker 1: survival and reproduction? Like are it would? The would the

1067
00:58:57,640 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 1: nutrients it provides matter enough for this to be an

1068
00:59:00,920 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 1: evolved trade that is targeted by selection. Yeah, Because to

1069
00:59:04,320 --> 00:59:06,960
Speaker 1: come back to the fig tree scenario, think of it

1070
00:59:07,000 --> 00:59:11,040
Speaker 1: as a well run corporation. At what point does do

1071
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:14,240
Speaker 1: the do the masters do the do the CEOs of

1072
00:59:14,280 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 1: the border directors or whatever, we're going to invest in

1073
00:59:16,640 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: the processing division. Yeah, it's like, tell me more about this, uh, this, this,

1074
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 1: this sheep eating division that you're working on this project. Alright,

1075
00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:26,920
Speaker 1: let's hire some more people, let's let's invest more in that,

1076
00:59:27,080 --> 00:59:29,880
Speaker 1: and let's bump it up in the overall hierarchy exactly.

1077
00:59:30,000 --> 00:59:32,160
Speaker 1: So I haven't seen evidence that that's what's going on

1078
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:34,280
Speaker 1: at the brambles. Yeah, but given all these questions, I

1079
00:59:34,320 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 1: do want to say I could believe it's possible that

1080
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:41,960
Speaker 1: some bramble type plant could establish an evolutionary pathway toward

1081
00:59:42,040 --> 00:59:47,040
Speaker 1: proto carnivary and eventually full carnivalary, starting with accidental snaggings,

1082
00:59:47,080 --> 00:59:50,480
Speaker 1: accidental snagging of sheep and other unfortunate creatures that are

1083
00:59:50,600 --> 00:59:54,480
Speaker 1: covered in suicide vel crow. You know, this reminds me

1084
00:59:54,560 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 1: of of a specimen the ninencountered in Arizona last week,

1085
00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:00,400
Speaker 1: and that's the Death's claw or harvardgap item, also known

1086
01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 1: as a grapple plant or a wood spider wood spider.

1087
01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:10,160
Speaker 1: They're pretty gnarly looking. Um. They they're from the sesame family,

1088
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:13,760
Speaker 1: but they're a hooked fruit. So it starts when it's growing.

1089
01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:16,320
Speaker 1: Initially it kind of looks like a weird green banana,

1090
01:00:16,840 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 1: and apparently it can be consumed. Uh we did. I

1091
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:21,720
Speaker 1: did not eat one, but I was told that, yes,

1092
01:00:21,840 --> 01:00:25,120
Speaker 1: some people have things they can do with these. Um.

1093
01:00:26,360 --> 01:00:28,600
Speaker 1: But it starts off like a banana and then it

1094
01:00:28,680 --> 01:00:30,600
Speaker 1: kind of splits in the middle, and so it ends

1095
01:00:30,680 --> 01:00:32,960
Speaker 1: up like you imagine you're like your hand making the

1096
01:00:33,040 --> 01:00:36,280
Speaker 1: devil horns and then imagine if you had super long,

1097
01:00:36,360 --> 01:00:41,760
Speaker 1: curvy fingernails on both of the protruding fingers. Yeah. And

1098
01:00:41,920 --> 01:00:45,160
Speaker 1: so what it does is when a a mule deer

1099
01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:47,280
Speaker 1: or a prong horn a horse or even a human

1100
01:00:47,400 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 1: comes along, Uh, it latches onto the ankle. These these

1101
01:00:52,120 --> 01:00:55,720
Speaker 1: these the devil horns here latch around and it becomes

1102
01:00:55,800 --> 01:01:00,560
Speaker 1: and it carries the the fruit across you know, long distances, um,

1103
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:04,200
Speaker 1: and it doesn't does not hurt the animal in question.

1104
01:01:04,240 --> 01:01:07,080
Speaker 1: And actually they seem to have anti inflammatory properties that

1105
01:01:07,120 --> 01:01:11,160
Speaker 1: are utilized in some folk medicines. But if this is possible, yeah,

1106
01:01:11,240 --> 01:01:15,439
Speaker 1: why not a grappling mammal killing root as well? Yeah. Again,

1107
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:17,160
Speaker 1: I guess we'd have to come back to the question

1108
01:01:17,240 --> 01:01:20,960
Speaker 1: of is the incentive there is the evolutionary incentive big

1109
01:01:21,120 --> 01:01:25,400
Speaker 1: enough to work on these powerful structures. Another way to

1110
01:01:25,440 --> 01:01:28,480
Speaker 1: ask this question, another scenario for this. How about a

1111
01:01:28,560 --> 01:01:31,840
Speaker 1: human sized snap trap, sort of like what I pictured

1112
01:01:31,920 --> 01:01:34,200
Speaker 1: in the grove of the killer tree at the beginning.

1113
01:01:34,960 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 1: So imagine this. It's a venus fly trap, large enough

1114
01:01:37,920 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 1: to capture and digest a deer or a bear or

1115
01:01:41,800 --> 01:01:44,520
Speaker 1: a human like, not not so much necessarily like a

1116
01:01:44,600 --> 01:01:48,120
Speaker 1: little shop Ahara's Audrey too, but just a giant venus

1117
01:01:48,160 --> 01:01:51,880
Speaker 1: fly trap. Just a trap doesn't mean a thing. Yeah,

1118
01:01:51,880 --> 01:01:54,400
Speaker 1: it doesn't sing or a leap out, but just large

1119
01:01:54,520 --> 01:01:58,240
Speaker 1: enough to lay a trap that could snag a larger creature. Yeah.

1120
01:01:58,560 --> 01:02:01,959
Speaker 1: So there are obviously plants that move quickly. The venus

1121
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:04,560
Speaker 1: fly trap is one example of them. There's you know,

1122
01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:08,720
Speaker 1: plants usually exhibit very slow motion motion that's expressed through

1123
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:13,120
Speaker 1: growth patterns rather than through uh fast moving of plant tissues.

1124
01:02:13,160 --> 01:02:15,160
Speaker 1: But there are plants that have fast moving tissues. You

1125
01:02:15,280 --> 01:02:17,880
Speaker 1: touch a fern and sometimes the leaves can close. The

1126
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:21,720
Speaker 1: venus flytrap can snap closed. I'm not sure how big

1127
01:02:22,160 --> 01:02:25,360
Speaker 1: and how sturdy you can scale up those fast movements

1128
01:02:25,440 --> 01:02:29,000
Speaker 1: and plants like I've never seen a plant with huge,

1129
01:02:29,520 --> 01:02:33,200
Speaker 1: strong structures that exhibit fast movement. All the all the

1130
01:02:33,240 --> 01:02:35,800
Speaker 1: ones I know of with fast moving body parts tend

1131
01:02:35,840 --> 01:02:39,919
Speaker 1: to be pretty small. Yeah. Yeah, anytime you you see

1132
01:02:39,920 --> 01:02:41,800
Speaker 1: the same thing when you're talking about johnet Gerrillas right,

1133
01:02:42,040 --> 01:02:45,560
Speaker 1: anytime you scale up morphology, you're gonna run into various

1134
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 1: engineering limits and you end up having to change the

1135
01:02:49,320 --> 01:02:52,920
Speaker 1: design in order to make it conceivably work. And then

1136
01:02:52,960 --> 01:02:57,200
Speaker 1: in some cases, is it even possible to upscale that design? Yeah,

1137
01:02:57,320 --> 01:03:00,400
Speaker 1: but let's just imagine. Let's say, okay, imagine you can

1138
01:03:00,560 --> 01:03:04,160
Speaker 1: scale up fast moving plant body parts. Uh, still a

1139
01:03:04,200 --> 01:03:07,040
Speaker 1: couple of problems here. It doesn't take a lot of

1140
01:03:07,400 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 1: compression strength to hold in a fly or a spider,

1141
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:13,160
Speaker 1: but imagine how many pounds of compression force it would

1142
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:15,439
Speaker 1: take to hold in a human or a bear that's

1143
01:03:15,520 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: fighting to get out of a trap. This would have

1144
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:22,800
Speaker 1: to be a really strong, big, powerful plant. And I

1145
01:03:22,840 --> 01:03:25,560
Speaker 1: guess my question is why would a plant evolves such

1146
01:03:25,600 --> 01:03:29,360
Speaker 1: an extravagant morphological contrivance and does it even make sense

1147
01:03:29,400 --> 01:03:33,480
Speaker 1: to imagine how it gets to there? Because remember, carnivorous

1148
01:03:33,480 --> 01:03:36,800
Speaker 1: plants tend to practice animal predation in order to offset

1149
01:03:37,040 --> 01:03:39,800
Speaker 1: nutrient deficiencies in the soil. Right, That's the whole reason.

1150
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:42,880
Speaker 1: We go back to their growing in inhospitable conditions. They

1151
01:03:42,880 --> 01:03:45,280
Speaker 1: can't get the nitrogen or some of their nutrients they need,

1152
01:03:45,760 --> 01:03:48,640
Speaker 1: so they need to prey on animals to get those little,

1153
01:03:48,760 --> 01:03:52,320
Speaker 1: those little molecules. But what would an organism grown in

1154
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:56,400
Speaker 1: such poor soil be able to attain human trapping size

1155
01:03:56,480 --> 01:03:59,080
Speaker 1: to begin with? Like, how does it get that big

1156
01:03:59,160 --> 01:04:01,880
Speaker 1: and that powerful if it hasn't been trapping humans the

1157
01:04:01,920 --> 01:04:03,920
Speaker 1: whole way would have it would have to sort of

1158
01:04:04,040 --> 01:04:07,160
Speaker 1: like be scaling up as it goes, catching bigger and

1159
01:04:07,240 --> 01:04:10,160
Speaker 1: bigger animals as it gets bigger. Yeah, And why would

1160
01:04:10,200 --> 01:04:13,200
Speaker 1: you why would it? Why would it evolve to depend

1161
01:04:13,280 --> 01:04:17,720
Speaker 1: on increasingly larger and increasingly um, you know, more rare

1162
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:21,360
Speaker 1: uh specimens? Why why would it would be making it's

1163
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 1: it's there would be there would be a tipping point

1164
01:04:23,680 --> 01:04:25,960
Speaker 1: where it would just be making its work harder for itself,

1165
01:04:26,640 --> 01:04:30,360
Speaker 1: and and therefore there would be less uh less, it

1166
01:04:30,360 --> 01:04:33,840
Speaker 1: would be less advantageous to its evolutionary ascent. Yeah. And

1167
01:04:34,000 --> 01:04:36,480
Speaker 1: another thing to remember, as we've said on the show before,

1168
01:04:36,880 --> 01:04:39,000
Speaker 1: in evolution, we've always got to keep in mind, bigger

1169
01:04:39,120 --> 01:04:42,520
Speaker 1: is not necessarily better. It seems better to us because

1170
01:04:42,640 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 1: we like bigger trucks, but bigger bodies are not necessarily better.

1171
01:04:46,840 --> 01:04:49,560
Speaker 1: Organisms will not tend to grow larger unless there's a

1172
01:04:49,600 --> 01:04:52,920
Speaker 1: clear survival advantage or reproduction advantage, Right, it comes down

1173
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:56,160
Speaker 1: to what the environment will bear, what's competitive. I just

1174
01:04:56,560 --> 01:04:59,480
Speaker 1: just a few seconds ago, I I said evolutionary ascent,

1175
01:04:59,560 --> 01:05:01,800
Speaker 1: which we all and us and talking about humans. But

1176
01:05:02,080 --> 01:05:04,480
Speaker 1: that's kind of a misnomer because evolution, but in the

1177
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:08,640
Speaker 1: same way that there's no evolving, evolution is not an

1178
01:05:08,720 --> 01:05:11,920
Speaker 1: upward or downward movement. It is just a movement um.

1179
01:05:12,400 --> 01:05:14,360
Speaker 1: And yeah, if you start thinking about it in terms

1180
01:05:14,400 --> 01:05:18,920
Speaker 1: of there being a goal other than survival, other than propagation,

1181
01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:22,720
Speaker 1: than muddy the waters. So yeah, the the human sized

1182
01:05:22,720 --> 01:05:24,880
Speaker 1: snap trap, I'm going to say that that's something that

1183
01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:28,280
Speaker 1: maybe could be engineered. You know, I could imagine in

1184
01:05:28,360 --> 01:05:31,320
Speaker 1: the future if you're you're tinkering with plant genomes trying

1185
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:34,320
Speaker 1: to create something weird. It's possible that that that's sort

1186
01:05:34,360 --> 01:05:38,400
Speaker 1: of a a physical uh, something that's physically attainable and

1187
01:05:38,480 --> 01:05:40,720
Speaker 1: plant morphology. I don't know, it might not even be that,

1188
01:05:40,960 --> 01:05:43,240
Speaker 1: but even assuming it is that, it doesn't seem like

1189
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:45,920
Speaker 1: something that would arise in nature, right, it would need

1190
01:05:45,960 --> 01:05:48,840
Speaker 1: to be a mad scientist who decided, you know, he

1191
01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:53,080
Speaker 1: or she wanted a large man eating plant. Maybe you know,

1192
01:05:53,360 --> 01:05:56,000
Speaker 1: an evil dictator who wanted it to live it at

1193
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:59,520
Speaker 1: the bottom of a trap door or continue feeding witches too. Yeah,

1194
01:05:59,840 --> 01:06:02,840
Speaker 1: or or how about this, how about a bio toilet

1195
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:07,080
Speaker 1: for for spaceship gardens. So going back to the picture

1196
01:06:07,120 --> 01:06:10,520
Speaker 1: plan idea encouraging animals to poop in it like a

1197
01:06:10,680 --> 01:06:16,479
Speaker 1: compos bio biological compost, biologically engineered compost toilet. Or maybe

1198
01:06:16,560 --> 01:06:19,760
Speaker 1: it's engineered by a British nanny who is a druid

1199
01:06:20,160 --> 01:06:22,920
Speaker 1: who has had her tree killed with the chainsaw that

1200
01:06:23,120 --> 01:06:25,360
Speaker 1: she used to worship for years. She needs a new god,

1201
01:06:25,800 --> 01:06:29,080
Speaker 1: and so she genetically she studies genetics, she you know,

1202
01:06:29,320 --> 01:06:32,240
Speaker 1: masters the art of crisper gene editing, and then she

1203
01:06:32,400 --> 01:06:35,600
Speaker 1: makes this thing. Or as she just merely entered into

1204
01:06:35,680 --> 01:06:40,160
Speaker 1: contract with the space toilets who overthrew another alien species

1205
01:06:40,200 --> 01:06:42,960
Speaker 1: because they were tired of just being pooped into. Okay, Robert,

1206
01:06:42,960 --> 01:06:44,920
Speaker 1: I think we're done. Yeah, we've got off the deep

1207
01:06:45,040 --> 01:06:48,600
Speaker 1: end here, but I think we've covered some We've covered

1208
01:06:48,640 --> 01:06:51,680
Speaker 1: some fictional ground here. We've covered covered some mythological, some

1209
01:06:51,800 --> 01:06:55,440
Speaker 1: cryptid ground as well as the the the the, the

1210
01:06:55,560 --> 01:07:00,479
Speaker 1: more solid soil of of actual scientific inquiry, and nothing

1211
01:07:00,560 --> 01:07:02,880
Speaker 1: aid us in the process. So I guess we're doing okay.

1212
01:07:04,640 --> 01:07:07,440
Speaker 1: It would be a good way to go, though, it

1213
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:09,600
Speaker 1: would be a noteworthy way to go, not a pleasant

1214
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:12,439
Speaker 1: way to go. But yeah, it'd be good to be remembered. Yeah. Yeah,

1215
01:07:12,440 --> 01:07:14,680
Speaker 1: because none of these scenarios, I think we can agree,

1216
01:07:14,960 --> 01:07:18,360
Speaker 1: none of the scenarios of carnivorous plants actually sounds pleasant.

1217
01:07:18,440 --> 01:07:21,440
Speaker 1: All of it takes place, that death ends up occurring

1218
01:07:21,520 --> 01:07:25,440
Speaker 1: at the slow rate that is uh, that is typical

1219
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:29,680
Speaker 1: of the of the plant's slower approach to life. You'd

1220
01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:32,520
Speaker 1: really be hoping a bear would come along and get

1221
01:07:32,560 --> 01:07:36,000
Speaker 1: into you. Yeah, all right, So there you have a

1222
01:07:36,080 --> 01:07:39,520
Speaker 1: carnivorous plants um. Hey, if you want to learn more

1223
01:07:39,520 --> 01:07:41,520
Speaker 1: about this topic, if you want to discover other topics

1224
01:07:41,560 --> 01:07:43,520
Speaker 1: than we've done, heading over to stuff to Blow your

1225
01:07:43,520 --> 01:07:45,160
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we will

1226
01:07:45,160 --> 01:07:48,680
Speaker 1: find all the podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, links out

1227
01:07:48,720 --> 01:07:54,480
Speaker 1: to our various social media accounts. Does include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, tumbler, uh,

1228
01:07:54,560 --> 01:07:56,720
Speaker 1: and who knows what will evolve in the future, will

1229
01:07:56,760 --> 01:07:58,680
Speaker 1: probably sign up for those as well and give you

1230
01:07:58,720 --> 01:08:01,800
Speaker 1: another way to interact with and indeed tell us about

1231
01:08:01,920 --> 01:08:05,360
Speaker 1: any fictional carnivorous plants that we may have missed or

1232
01:08:05,400 --> 01:08:08,520
Speaker 1: we should explore, as well as your thoughts on the

1233
01:08:08,640 --> 01:08:12,760
Speaker 1: possibility of a man eating plant. And of course, if

1234
01:08:12,800 --> 01:08:14,680
Speaker 1: you would like to continue to get tangled in the

1235
01:08:14,800 --> 01:08:17,280
Speaker 1: killer vines of this subject, you can email us with

1236
01:08:17,360 --> 01:08:20,280
Speaker 1: your thoughts about it and any feedback on this episode

1237
01:08:20,360 --> 01:08:23,120
Speaker 1: or others that blow the mind at how stuff works

1238
01:08:23,320 --> 01:08:35,280
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1239
01:08:35,560 --> 01:08:36,920
Speaker 1: Is that how stuff works dot com.