Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
Speaker 1: I want to put you in a scenario a bit seasonal.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's the seasonal Halloween scenario. You do? You
Speaker 1: want to go with me on a hike? Alright, it's
Speaker 1: late October and you are on a solitary fall hike
Speaker 1: through the woods, and the leaves are starting to turn
Speaker 1: orange and red, the air is dry, and you feel
Speaker 1: like an adventure, so you head off trail. Not always
Speaker 1: a good idea, but let's just say you're brave. If
Speaker 1: this is how all terrible stories start, how all tragedies begin,
Speaker 1: you leave the trail, Well, it starts very nice. So
Speaker 1: you're off trail and you find a little mountain brook
Speaker 1: and it's twisting among the rocks, and you decide, oh,
Speaker 1: how sweet, I'm gonna follow this upstream, maybe I'll find
Speaker 1: its source. And on the way you come across a
Speaker 1: cluster of what looked like oak trees, thick trunks with
Speaker 1: roots spread out exposed over the bank of the brook,
Speaker 1: and there's an odd smell it's a little bit sweet,
Speaker 1: with just a hint of deep earthiness, kind of like
Speaker 1: overripe fruit. So you approach the stand of trees and
Speaker 1: the ground is covered with a mat of these beautifully
Speaker 1: colored fallen leaves. And as you come near the trunk
Speaker 1: of the nearest tree, your foot knocks against a smooth
Speaker 1: stone tangled in the outer roots. But wait a second,
Speaker 1: that's no stone. It's smooth and white, partially buried with
Speaker 1: two eye shaped hollows. And then suddenly, with a rushing
Speaker 1: sound and a scattering of leaves up into the air,
Speaker 1: something envelopes you. The light gets blotted out. You feel
Speaker 1: these wooden fibers pressing into your skin from all sides.
Speaker 1: What's going on? You struggle to free yourself, but you
Speaker 1: find that you're becoming sluggish, disoriented. There's a powerful smell.
Speaker 1: Your throat burns, and then the digestive enzymes come. Another
Speaker 1: visitor disappears into the grove of the killer tree. Ah.
Speaker 1: I knew it was a killer tree once the digestive
Speaker 1: enzymes in the woods started happening, because my first instinct
Speaker 1: would be, oh, something was in the tree. I got
Speaker 1: myself tangled, and then something was in the tree, and
Speaker 1: it jumped down upon me some sort of predator of
Speaker 1: some sort. I guess that's the more logical thing to think, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I list until the wood comes, or that somebody has
Speaker 1: set some kind of trap for you. This is a
Speaker 1: human design, That's probably what I would guess. But Robert, well,
Speaker 1: what first comes to your mind when I say killer tree?
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've got like a fictional anchor point that
Speaker 1: you go to. Oh, I mean there's so many, uh,
Speaker 1: there's so many examples of killer trees, and especially in fantasy, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes you think of the ants or
Speaker 1: especially like the dark sort of tree people from Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons. I'm not really familiar with those. Well, what
Speaker 1: happens when you fight a tree person? Well, you know
Speaker 1: they're big there, wooden, there, their lumbering. I think there
Speaker 1: are a few a few different varieties. There's basically, you know,
Speaker 1: they're animate trees and then they're sort of wooden people
Speaker 1: and they're good, good ones, and they're bad ones. Of
Speaker 1: course though the ants that we encounter and the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings are are are good. So when you're
Speaker 1: battling a tree person, do you like, do you have
Speaker 1: to have a paladin with a blessed wood chipper or something.
Speaker 1: I don't recall there being a requirement for magical weapons.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, some creatures can only be fought
Speaker 1: with natural weapons, but with with magical weapons. But I
Speaker 1: believe that the tree creatures in this case are just big,
Speaker 1: tough trees, because that's the thing they're they're they're they're large,
Speaker 1: They're flesh is different than us. So the idea of
Speaker 1: them becoming animate, the idea of them turning against us
Speaker 1: is terrifying. Uh, and they do turn against us. I mean,
Speaker 1: we live in a very um tree friendly city, so
Speaker 1: anytime the wind blows, anytime the anytime the rain freezes,
Speaker 1: the trees rattle and threaten us. When they fall, they
Speaker 1: can cause significant damage and even lost life. There is
Speaker 1: a killer tree hanging over our house right now. Rachel
Speaker 1: and I are working on getting something done about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's this old dead pecan tree. It just
Speaker 1: looks like it is aching to plunge its killer branches
Speaker 1: through somebody's roof. And so yeah, there, of course killer
Speaker 1: trees in reality, But the kind we're thinking of are
Speaker 1: the ones that are a little more conscious, with some
Speaker 1: directed actions to the agency, maybe some arms, some tentacles,
Speaker 1: some some gaping maws with thorn teeth. Of course one
Speaker 1: of the big ones. And this one entered my mind
Speaker 1: when you were taking me through descriptions. Of course, in
Speaker 1: Poulter Guys, there's that just horrifying scene that scarred me
Speaker 1: from an early age, where you have you have multiple
Speaker 1: things going on it once, like there's the creepy clown
Speaker 1: um doll on the bed, but then there's the tree
Speaker 1: outside the window that's like trying to eat the child man.
Speaker 1: So I haven't seen Poulter Guys in years. I honestly
Speaker 1: don't remember this scene. I guess I got back one
Speaker 1: of many. They they're a lot of nightmare imagree up
Speaker 1: against the wall and up up their amount of it sticks.
Speaker 1: So I gotta tell you that this episode. I wanted
Speaker 1: to do this topic because I was inspired by having
Speaker 1: recently watched the William Friedkin horror movie The Guardian from
Speaker 1: nineteen for the first time. I remember the trailer for
Speaker 1: this is like a creepy babysitter, creepy nanny, but I
Speaker 1: never saw it, so I don't know what the what
Speaker 1: the gimmick is. Well, i'll give you the premise. It's
Speaker 1: about a couple who has a baby and they're looking
Speaker 1: for a nanny because they both want to go right
Speaker 1: back to work immediately, so they're looking for a nanny
Speaker 1: to take care of their child, and they end up
Speaker 1: going with Camilla, the British nanny, who unfortunately is a
Speaker 1: druid who has got a tree friend, and her tree
Speaker 1: friend is a killer tree friend, and she likes to
Speaker 1: take babies to the tree sacrifice them to the tree.
Speaker 1: Except it's this weird thing where the tree sort of
Speaker 1: absorbs the baby and then you can see the baby's
Speaker 1: face embedded in the surface of the tree. So I
Speaker 1: guess that the baby kind of melts into the tree
Speaker 1: and becomes petrified. Anyway, she she's an evil druid, kidnaps babies,
Speaker 1: sacrifices them to a killer tree. There are scenes where
Speaker 1: the tree kills people. There's like Camilla gets attacked in
Speaker 1: the woods by some by some creeps who just happened
Speaker 1: to be hanging out in the woods, and the tree
Speaker 1: defends her by essentially smashing them and tearing them up.
Speaker 1: So would you say this is part of the druids
Speaker 1: floitation uh movement of the man if only there were
Speaker 1: such a genre, I would be all over that. I
Speaker 1: would be like a film scholar of the genre. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so do I recommend this movie. It's not a good movie,
Speaker 1: but it's William Friedkin, so it's like a well made
Speaker 1: bad movie, if it makes any sense. Yeah, he there's
Speaker 1: a there's a certain segment of his filmography that that
Speaker 1: definitely fits that were always worth checking out if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of his. But you know, maybe not Tough Shell.
Speaker 1: I guess I'd say it's not good, but it's worth seeing,
Speaker 1: especially since the spoiler alert the climax of the film
Speaker 1: involves a chainsaw. Oh welcome, of course it would um,
Speaker 1: of course, there are plenty of other cinematic examples of
Speaker 1: animate trees murdering reason just murderous plants. Um. Aside from ants,
Speaker 1: there's the the I don't know if anyone remembers the
Speaker 1: sexy Matron tree from the Last Unicorn. The tree becomes
Speaker 1: animate and attempts to love our hero to death, or
Speaker 1: one of our two heroes, the male hero s Medrick.
Speaker 1: I believe, and uh, this sounds troubling. She has like
Speaker 1: huge bosoms and all um weird. It's a it's a weird.
Speaker 1: It's a weird film when you look back on it.
Speaker 1: That's the strange elements. Uh. Scott Smith's novel The Ruins
Speaker 1: and the two doesn't movie adaptation of it that concerns
Speaker 1: man eating vines. Yeah, and they're sort of infectious, right,
Speaker 1: So it's not just that the vines reach out and
Speaker 1: grab you, but that there's a spore element where they
Speaker 1: contaminate you with some kind of plant germ cell I
Speaker 1: think so, yeah, yeah, which is interesting when you start
Speaker 1: getting into some of the technical possibilities of man eating plants. Um,
Speaker 1: let's say already mentioned Poulter guys. There, of course the
Speaker 1: vines and evil dead that are rather notorious. There's some
Speaker 1: man eating plant action in Chinese Ghost Story, which I
Speaker 1: have not seen yet. After reading a synopsis of part
Speaker 1: of it yesterday, it's moved back up to the top
Speaker 1: of my must watch list. You've got the Whamping Willow
Speaker 1: and Harry Potter, you have you have a version of
Speaker 1: the the evil dead vines that are mentioned in a
Speaker 1: Cabin in the Woods, the quote angry molesting tree, which
Speaker 1: I think you only see like a a just a
Speaker 1: fragment of it as it like snatches a guard in
Speaker 1: one scene, Man Cabin in the Woods is full of
Speaker 1: just great little freeze frame moments. Oh yeah, tremendous. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're various kaiju that, you know, giant monsters that have
Speaker 1: had plant elements to them and certainly planning with fun
Speaker 1: guy elements to them. And I believe one of Michael
Speaker 1: Shay's Niffed stories features a carnivorous plant kind of like
Speaker 1: a venus fly traffic such. It has a like a
Speaker 1: humanoid female part in the middle to lure males inside it. Weird,
Speaker 1: but I don't have a clear memory of that, so
Speaker 1: maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems like the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that would be in one of his stories. Now,
Speaker 1: almost all of these seem like modern fictional inventions. Do
Speaker 1: are there are there animated trees, animated predatory trees or plants?
Speaker 1: Going back in mythology, I would expect to find such
Speaker 1: a thing. I expected to find some better examples, and
Speaker 1: I was not able to find any. Um. Not to
Speaker 1: say that I didn't miss something, but the closest, the
Speaker 1: closest example that I came across and I got excited
Speaker 1: about this was um is that is this example of
Speaker 1: something called a jidra uh. And this is from the
Speaker 1: traditions and folk beliefs of the Middle East. But here's
Speaker 1: the caveat as related by medieval European travelers. And this
Speaker 1: is a theme we're going to see time and time again.
Speaker 1: The plants become animate and man killing only in foreign
Speaker 1: environments entered by westerners, right, European and American travel writers
Speaker 1: and cataloguers of things going on in places other than Europe,
Speaker 1: in America and the America's talk about man eating plants,
Speaker 1: and in this case as again as related by medieval
Speaker 1: European travelers, and this was explained by Carol Rose and
Speaker 1: are always excellent giants, monsters, and dragons Encyclopedia. Uh. The
Speaker 1: idea is this thing emerges from the ground like a plant,
Speaker 1: and and it's rooted in place, and it just consumes
Speaker 1: anything in its vicinity, you know, cattle, small animals, and
Speaker 1: of course humans. The only way to kill it is
Speaker 1: to detach it from its root, essentially chop it down.
Speaker 1: And if you do, then you get to harvest its bones,
Speaker 1: because I guess it has bones, which would be valuable. Um,
Speaker 1: it has bones, apparently that's according to the myth. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, if this means that it literally has bones,
Speaker 1: that it's a like a rooted mammal of creature vertebrate
Speaker 1: creature of some sort, or if bones and by bones
Speaker 1: we mean it's like it's it's would you know, you
Speaker 1: know that does sound valuable because you could probably use
Speaker 1: the bones of the jitdra to make a totally vegan stock, right,
Speaker 1: so you roast the bones and then make it make
Speaker 1: like you'd make a chicken ste or something, but this
Speaker 1: would be vegan, I said, depending, well, depending on exactly
Speaker 1: how you classify a monster like this. Now, I should
Speaker 1: also add that it's thought that this myth probably also
Speaker 1: derived from the man Drake, So you know, European influence
Speaker 1: the idea of the man Drake, which is this kind
Speaker 1: of like animal um vegetable hybrid creature, and then this
Speaker 1: kind of evolves into this tale of the j dra Okay,
Speaker 1: and I find it curious, though, you know, I looked
Speaker 1: around for more examples, couldn't find it. I would have
Speaker 1: expected plenty of the Elder, the noted first century Roman
Speaker 1: historian who often spoke of foreign monstrosities, to have like
Speaker 1: a clear cut example of a man eating plant in
Speaker 1: foreign land. Oh yeah, plenty of the elders like the internet, right, like,
Speaker 1: if you can think it up, it's on there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you can imagine it, plenty wrote about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like people like beast people in other lands, the people
Speaker 1: with the bellies, the with head that had mouths in them.
Speaker 1: I mean all sorts of strange human aid monstrosities, beastly monstrosities, dragons, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So why no man eating plants? I don't know, now, Robert,
Speaker 1: did you ever see him night Shamalan's The Happening? I
Speaker 1: did not. I saw the it happened. There was some happening,
Speaker 1: and it happened, and it was about trees that were
Speaker 1: trying to kill Mark Wahlberg. I have no idea why
Speaker 1: they want to do that. But it wasn't really predatory behavior.
Speaker 1: It was more like vindictive jerk behavior. So the trees
Speaker 1: didn't want to eat us. They were like tired of
Speaker 1: us being abusive to them. So it's even less in
Speaker 1: less biologically sound, yes, than than any of the examples
Speaker 1: we've looked at as far. So Yeah, obviously, this idea
Speaker 1: of the killer tree the man eating plant is one
Speaker 1: that captures our imagination very easily, and I think I've
Speaker 1: got a theory as to while, and let me know
Speaker 1: what you think about. I think the reason we like
Speaker 1: the image of the killer tree and it shows up
Speaker 1: in all these stories is because the idea of a
Speaker 1: man eating plant has a certain level of why not
Speaker 1: to it? Right, So, there are creatures in nature that
Speaker 1: all large animals with claws and teeth and tentacles and
Speaker 1: venom and such, and plants have things that are equivalent
Speaker 1: to this. They've got thorns, vine, tendrils, poisons. Trees are
Speaker 1: much larger than us, and then one sense they are
Speaker 1: apt to be much quote stronger than any animal prey
Speaker 1: that would try to resist them. So why not you know,
Speaker 1: if the continent of Australia can produce an animal that
Speaker 1: has the fur of a mammal in the bill of
Speaker 1: a duck, why couldn't some deep, unexplored forest harbor a
Speaker 1: tree that can reach out with a vine covered in
Speaker 1: venomous thorns and snatch a hiker, wrap them up, roll
Speaker 1: tight until he turns blue, and then pull him down
Speaker 1: into a crevice in the roots structure and treat him
Speaker 1: like a soft, salty meal. Yeah, I agree, I think
Speaker 1: on on on one hand, certainly we look at all
Speaker 1: the variety of nature. We see what's possible within nature,
Speaker 1: and you ask yourself, well, why doesn't this exist? Maybe
Speaker 1: it does exist, maybe some you know, a third or
Speaker 1: fourth hand tail that I've heard about a man eating
Speaker 1: plant is from a traveler is actually true. And the
Speaker 1: other hand, I think the reason it's so appealing is
Speaker 1: because it's abhorrent, the idea it's crossing category exactly inherent taboo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I find myself kind of like if I see
Speaker 1: an example of an insect preying on a on a vertebrate,
Speaker 1: like invertebrates eating vertebrates is something that kind of like,
Speaker 1: it's wrong. The spiders got a frog, and it's well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that. You're not supposed to move in that
Speaker 1: direction because to stick to your your own invertebrate kind.
Speaker 1: But of course it happens. Now, of course I wouldn't
Speaker 1: actually blame the spider for that. I think that's perfectly fine.
Speaker 1: But no, no, no, no no judgments spiders. But but
Speaker 1: from our human standpoints, even more important, because we've largely
Speaker 1: removed ourselves from the risk of predation like which is
Speaker 1: a pretty remarkable thing in the grand scheme of things, right,
Speaker 1: and so we don't have to worry about other animals
Speaker 1: eating us. And the idea of another animal eating us
Speaker 1: is strange and awful and terrifying. Even more so the
Speaker 1: idea that a tree could do it. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: You see, it goes backwards on the chain, the food chain, right,
Speaker 1: it's reversing the food chain. That's it's not supposed to
Speaker 1: be this way. So, except for the fact that we've
Speaker 1: never seen things like this happened, at an intuitive level,
Speaker 1: it's like, what's so implausible about it? Uh? Then at
Speaker 1: the same time, I think we may be able to
Speaker 1: come up with some good biological reasons we don't actually
Speaker 1: see organisms like this. But according to some we must say,
Speaker 1: not very credible accounts, there is nothing all that implausible
Speaker 1: about the man eating tree, the killer tree, because people
Speaker 1: have written about these things as if they actually exist
Speaker 1: within the past few hundred years, and that hearsay was
Speaker 1: more more powerful previous exactly. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about one source, a very weird biology book from the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties called Sea and Land, written by a guy
Speaker 1: named James William Buell. Now, just glancing through this thing
Speaker 1: and looking at the author's introduction it is obvious that
Speaker 1: this is not a source of credible scientific information. It's
Speaker 1: more are one of those nineteenth century natural wonders books.
Speaker 1: You've ever seen these kind of things where they're you know, like, wow,
Speaker 1: look at all these illustrations of animals in their natural habitats.
Speaker 1: But they're all grossly inaccurate. And it's really not all
Speaker 1: that different from various versions of Plenty's work from previous time,
Speaker 1: exactly except it's you know, eight years later whenever Plenty
Speaker 1: was living. Uh yeah, exactly so. But it's got all
Speaker 1: these allegations of weird sensational creatures mingled in with reports
Speaker 1: about real animals, and I have to also says like
Speaker 1: a very Eurocentric sense of exoticism about the planet. So
Speaker 1: there's that kind of unsavory element to it. But it's
Speaker 1: also full of gruesome and probably highly inaccurate illustrations about
Speaker 1: various animals and attack modes. And some of these illustrations
Speaker 1: are great. There's a good one of an orangutang apparently
Speaker 1: kicking a man to death, one of a swordfish stabbing
Speaker 1: at a sailor through the hull of a boat. Not impossible,
Speaker 1: extremely rare, but as we've discussed in our Jumping Fish episode.
Speaker 1: It has happened, okay, well, or well, individuals have been stabbed,
Speaker 1: boats have been stabbed. I don't know if anyone, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't remember, of both happened would be really bad luck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, in this case, it looks like the swordfish
Speaker 1: is trying to kill the guy. Okay, but in any case,
Speaker 1: there's another one that's awesome. It's a giant crab hanging
Speaker 1: from a tree, lifting a goat up into the tree
Speaker 1: with its claw as if to devour it. But then
Speaker 1: finally a tree with tentacles pulling a human victim into
Speaker 1: the crown of its trunk. I have to say these
Speaker 1: different accounts here. I couldn't help but think of a
Speaker 1: Simpson episode and I don't even remember the context, but
Speaker 1: they're being a scene where like a gorilla is in
Speaker 1: a tree and a shark comes out of the river
Speaker 1: underneath it and eats the gorilla as an example of
Speaker 1: like natural predation or something. Oh wow, but yeah, So anyway,
Speaker 1: so Buell says that travelers have told him stories of
Speaker 1: a carnivorous plant that grows in Central Africa and South America,
Speaker 1: and he says it's so voracious that even resorts to
Speaker 1: eating humans. And I want to read a quote from
Speaker 1: the book. He says, quote, this marvelous vegetable minotaur is
Speaker 1: represented as having a short, thick trunk, from the top
Speaker 1: of which radiate giant spines, narrow and flexible but of
Speaker 1: extraordinary tenaciousness, the edges of which are armed with barbs
Speaker 1: or dagger like teeth. Instead of growing upright or at
Speaker 1: an inclined angle from the trunk, these spines lay their
Speaker 1: outer ends upon the ground, And so gracefully are they
Speaker 1: distributed that the trunk resembles an easy couch with green
Speaker 1: drapery around it. Uh. Then he goes on to say
Speaker 1: that the unfortunate traveler will come along and quote the
Speaker 1: moment his feet are set within the circle of horrid spines,
Speaker 1: they rise up like gigantic serpents and entwine themselves about
Speaker 1: him until he is drawn upon the stump, when they
Speaker 1: speedily drive their daggers into his body and thus complete
Speaker 1: the massacre. The body is crushed until every drop of
Speaker 1: blood is squeezed out of it and becomes absorbed orbbed
Speaker 1: again by the gore loving plant. When the dry carcass
Speaker 1: is thrown out, and the horrid trap is set again.
Speaker 1: I'm some elements of that sound reasonable, especially later when
Speaker 1: we get into real world carnivorous plants and the idea
Speaker 1: that plants are living things that that live and move
Speaker 1: at an entirely different speed. And therefore when you see
Speaker 1: like fast moving actions such as from a venus fly trap,
Speaker 1: it is very much like a like a crossbow, a
Speaker 1: heavy crossbow that's been painstakingly loaded over time and then sprung.
Speaker 1: So I could I could see this idea of like
Speaker 1: a sprung trap working within the conceivably working within the
Speaker 1: confines of of of actual botany. Yeah. Yeah, with a
Speaker 1: certain type of movement, you can imagine it less so
Speaker 1: when especially with something we're gonna hear about in the
Speaker 1: second though. I also want to add a funny note that,
Speaker 1: in contrast to the passage I just read that in
Speaker 1: the introduction, Buell says his purpose in writing the book
Speaker 1: is to quote bring us into a closer relation with
Speaker 1: and a better understanding and appreciation of the mysterious and
Speaker 1: infinite wisdom of Nature's God. I mean that certainly sounds
Speaker 1: like a devil created tree. There ever is such a thing,
Speaker 1: But anyway, um So Mule says that a gentleman of
Speaker 1: his acquaintance who lived sometime in Central America affirms the
Speaker 1: existence of a plant like this there, except with a
Speaker 1: few variations. So he says that instead of lying on
Speaker 1: the ground, the filaments of the plant quote moved themselves
Speaker 1: constantly in the air, like so many huge serpents in
Speaker 1: an angry discussion, occasionally darting from side to side as
Speaker 1: if striking at an imaginary foe. Now that sounds completely
Speaker 1: that sounds like not a plant. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: closest thing I can think of that is, say, like
Speaker 1: a pussy willow with with the wind blowing through it,
Speaker 1: you know, right. But anyway, He goes on to describe
Speaker 1: how this tree would crush its prey and an embraceive spines,
Speaker 1: and he compares it to the method of execution from
Speaker 1: alleged medieval torture dungeons known as the iron maiden. He
Speaker 1: also claims that in some regions the locals are said
Speaker 1: to punish criminals by casting them into the tree, which is,
Speaker 1: to anybody practicing witchcraft, you go straight into the tree,
Speaker 1: and that the plant is known as yatte vo Spanish
Speaker 1: for I see you, though I double checked the translation.
Speaker 1: Apparently it has a tensed inflection really meaning I already
Speaker 1: see you, which is even a little creepier. I do
Speaker 1: like that a and almost certainly non existent man eating plant.
Speaker 1: The comparison is made to the almost certainly non existent,
Speaker 1: at least functional and functional terms iron maiden. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is the case, right, Like I've heard, there's
Speaker 1: no good evidence that iron maidens were actually used. That
Speaker 1: is my understanding. That they became kind of you know,
Speaker 1: they became it. They were an invention and then took
Speaker 1: on a new life. Is kind of a fetish item
Speaker 1: for those that wish to possess tortuous objects. Weird anyway.
Speaker 1: I hate to be a downer, but I think we
Speaker 1: can be pretty certain that this is all about of
Speaker 1: nonsense like this. This just sounds like complete fabrication. There
Speaker 1: may be maybe or maybe massive, massive exaggerations of something
Speaker 1: people actually saw that was in reality, nothing like what's
Speaker 1: being described. There are no trees with killer squid tentacles
Speaker 1: that we know of, and I don't even I think
Speaker 1: we can just say there are no such trees, because
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any biological sense to have trees with
Speaker 1: writhing tentacles that move around constantly. Yeah. The closest thing
Speaker 1: I can think after this would it would be the
Speaker 1: fact that, yes, vines grow on the ground, and you
Speaker 1: could trip over a vine, you're like becoming tangled, and
Speaker 1: you could hit your head on a rock or Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of passive entrapment. That makes more sense, but hardly
Speaker 1: a scenario that that I could see plants evolving to
Speaker 1: utilize as part of their you know, their primary survival
Speaker 1: um tactic. Right. But we will talk about the biological
Speaker 1: possibilities of such a you know, megafauna eating plant later
Speaker 1: on in this episode. But we should say that the
Speaker 1: Yatte Veo and and Bules accounts here are not the
Speaker 1: only supposedly true accounts, or at least presented as true
Speaker 1: by the by the recounters of of these man eating
Speaker 1: plants or these giant killer trees. Yeah, and these next
Speaker 1: two examples, like our previous two examples, are exotic trees
Speaker 1: and a foreign land as experienced or at least related
Speaker 1: by Westerners. So there's the Madagascar tree. And this is
Speaker 1: something of a sensation at the time, appearing in publications
Speaker 1: of the eighteen seventies. The idea here was that you
Speaker 1: had Western missionaries led by a German explorer called Carl Leachy,
Speaker 1: and they accounted a tribe of cave dwelling tribespeople in
Speaker 1: Madagascar who made sacrifices to a man eating plant um.
Speaker 1: There's a fun quote from this so where we talk
Speaker 1: about the atrocious cannibal tree that had been so inert
Speaker 1: and dead came to sudden savage life, the slender, delicate
Speaker 1: palpy with the fury of starved serpents. Ever, the moment
Speaker 1: over her head then, as if instinct with demonic intelligence,
Speaker 1: fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her
Speaker 1: neck and arms. Then while her awful screams and yet
Speaker 1: more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down
Speaker 1: again into a gurgling moan. The tendrils, one after another,
Speaker 1: like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity,
Speaker 1: rose retracted themselves and wrapped her about in fold after fold,
Speaker 1: ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anaconda's
Speaker 1: fastening upon their prey. And whoever wrote it, because that's
Speaker 1: one tremendous run on sentence, I love it. It's true.
Speaker 1: You can't stop for a breath. That that is obviously
Speaker 1: some sensational detail that does not sound like like an
Speaker 1: account intending on clinical accuracy. Yeah, I I do not
Speaker 1: buy it for seconds. Though some people have the plant
Speaker 1: has achieved something of cryptid status. Even the only seventh
Speaker 1: governor of Michigan, Chase Osborne, claimed that it was legit,
Speaker 1: but no evidence has ever been presented, and it seems
Speaker 1: to have been a little more than a literary fabrication. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That just seems like another one of those kind of
Speaker 1: like Eurocentric stories of the exotic weirdness of other lands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean another example, and I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into the video on this one, but Phil Robinson in
Speaker 1: eighty one, writing in Under the Punka described tales of
Speaker 1: man eating trees in southern Egypt, and this one is
Speaker 1: called the Nubian tree Um. Yeah. I all these accounts,
Speaker 1: they really they have this sort of ickiness to it of, oh, well,
Speaker 1: a Westerner of being. Westerners live in a special land
Speaker 1: where trees know their place and we're we're above even
Speaker 1: predation by by other vertebrates. But but it's like everybody
Speaker 1: wants these things to exist, Like you can't stand the
Speaker 1: idea that they're not real. You just don't want them
Speaker 1: to be near you. They're they're hidden in some other
Speaker 1: place where you don't live, a savage land full of
Speaker 1: savage people, according to these recounter. Yeah, and I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to say that that's like the the only element
Speaker 1: at play here. I mean, also, just like the idea
Speaker 1: of man eating plants is really cool. I don't want
Speaker 1: to suggest that the desire to encounter a man eating
Speaker 1: tree is necessarily linked to some kind of colonial xenophobia, right,
Speaker 1: but but I feel like there are some elements there
Speaker 1: that are that are little achy to to modern readers.
Speaker 1: All Right, well, you know, on that note, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back, we will
Speaker 1: we will ask the question, indeed, a question that the
Speaker 1: glen Danzig may have asked, Uh, why do plants kill?
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Tell me, Joe, why do why
Speaker 1: do the plants kill? Well, that is a good question
Speaker 1: because in the realm of the well known, of course,
Speaker 1: there are plants that kill. Right, So we've been talking
Speaker 1: about trees that prey on humans in in these legendary
Speaker 1: accounts that are pretty obviously false. But there are plants
Speaker 1: that kill, not just with defend sieve toxins and thorns,
Speaker 1: but with predatory tactics. They've got specially designed morphological features
Speaker 1: to trap, poison, paralyzed, dissolve, and digest prey animals, generally insects.
Speaker 1: These are the predatory flora, if you will, the eaters.
Speaker 1: So let's discuss a few scientific facts about the eaters. First,
Speaker 1: I think we should ask the question why would a
Speaker 1: plant kill to eat? I mean, think about it for
Speaker 1: a second. A defining feature of what makes a plant
Speaker 1: the plant kingdom is the fact that plants, unlike us,
Speaker 1: are autotrophs. They make their own food, so the energy
Speaker 1: that they need to survive they get from photosynthesis. There's
Speaker 1: energy and the sunlight coming down from the sky, and
Speaker 1: they use that energy from pure sunlight to create a
Speaker 1: chemical reaction where they react carbon dioxide from the air
Speaker 1: and water in the end producing chemical energy in the
Speaker 1: form of glucose sugars. I mean, when you look at
Speaker 1: the the energy economy of life on Earth, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: plants are the only ones with a with an ethical
Speaker 1: get out of jail free card, right like well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you also microorganisms that are tropes. But but
Speaker 1: but everything else is having to consume something else for
Speaker 1: its energy, has to steal its energy. But here we
Speaker 1: have all these plants getting the energy from the sun. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems cutting dry. I wouldn't let him off the
Speaker 1: hook too much for the for the ethical quandaries, because
Speaker 1: plants and will not necessarily plants, but auto tropes did
Speaker 1: some atmospheric engineering that led to great extinction events and
Speaker 1: killed probably more organisms than any mediat or ever has.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so plants get most of their energy from
Speaker 1: this harmless process, why would they ever need to trap
Speaker 1: and insect and digest it. That just seems like it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's redundant. It doesn't make any sense. And to find
Speaker 1: the answer, we can look at where these carnivorous plants
Speaker 1: usually live. So most often you're going to find them
Speaker 1: in inhospitable growing conditions, the nutrient poor soil of bogs,
Speaker 1: fins and swamps, places where there might be plenty of
Speaker 1: access to sunlight, hopefully water too. But in the words
Speaker 1: of the old man from pet cemetery, the ground is sour.
Speaker 1: There is not enough nutrition in the ground. And so
Speaker 1: what does nutrition mean for a plant? This is the
Speaker 1: first fact, by the way, Carnivorous plants eat for nutrients,
Speaker 1: not for energy. They don't need the chemical energy within you.
Speaker 1: They need your compounds or your molecules. So, just like
Speaker 1: human beings, plants rely on the environment for essential nutrients. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you're stuck in an environment where you get plenty
Speaker 1: of food energy through sugar, but you have no dietary
Speaker 1: access to some essential nutrient like vitamin C, your health
Speaker 1: will deteriorate. You've probably read about this on on old
Speaker 1: like ships, you know, the sailors or whatever. Exactly, So,
Speaker 1: without vitamin C, you're gonna start to experience some not
Speaker 1: so great symptoms. You're gonna have dry splitting hair, rough
Speaker 1: scaly skin, inflamed gums and gum, bleeding, nose bleeds, wounds,
Speaker 1: and bruises that won't heal. This is all because your
Speaker 1: body can't synthesize vitamin C on its own. You have
Speaker 1: to get it from your diet, and eventually, if your
Speaker 1: diet is really deficient in vitamin C, you're gonna develop scurvy,
Speaker 1: in which you experience extreme fatigue, loss of strengthen the
Speaker 1: connective tissues all over your body. Like, your body needs
Speaker 1: vitamin C in order to make collagen these for these
Speaker 1: connecting tissues and uh, and you're also gonna have fragility
Speaker 1: in the walls of your blood vessels, which is as
Speaker 1: not good as it sounds. Likewise, plants need essential nutrients
Speaker 1: to write that. They can't make everything they need to
Speaker 1: survive within their bodies. They have to get it from
Speaker 1: their environment. And one example of this is nitrogen. So
Speaker 1: most plants get nitrogen through their roots from the soil
Speaker 1: around them. They reach out into the ground with all
Speaker 1: of their roots and they pull up these molecules. They
Speaker 1: pull up these nitrogen atoms from the ground. And if
Speaker 1: the soil is nitrogen poor or it gets robbed of
Speaker 1: nitrogen somehow, like apparently this can happen if there's over
Speaker 1: introduction of carbon into the soil, plants in the area
Speaker 1: can suffer nitrogen deficiency, which is kind of a scurvy
Speaker 1: for plants. You see with the stunted growth, leaves turning
Speaker 1: yellow and pale, and body structures that look kind of
Speaker 1: wilted or sick. So, if you are the plant equivalent
Speaker 1: of a vitamin C starved sailor with bleeding gums and
Speaker 1: fragile joints living in this nutrient poor soil. Where do
Speaker 1: you get your essential nutrients? Well, you could snatch up
Speaker 1: and digest something that has plenty of nutritious molecules in it,
Speaker 1: like an insect. You know. And and we discussed in
Speaker 1: a previous episode, the Weird Mushroom episode that you see
Speaker 1: this exact scenario play out with with oyster mushrooms in
Speaker 1: which there's a nitrogen deficiency and therefore they have adapted
Speaker 1: to prey on nematodes and in some cases spiders. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And then of
Speaker 1: course we turn arounderneath the oyster mushrooms. Well, they are delicious.
Speaker 1: You never eat a spider on purpose, but who knows
Speaker 1: how many times you you get one down the chain.
Speaker 1: That's the old myth, right, the average person eats sixty
Speaker 1: spiders at night. I think it's crawl right in there.
Speaker 1: That's a myth, right, that's not true. That's an Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an exaggeration of the myth on my part Alright,
Speaker 1: So okay, so here's another fact about carnivorous plants. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the this trick, this insect eating trick, in order to
Speaker 1: get nitrogen and other nutrients that the plant needs. It's
Speaker 1: a good trick, and for that reason, the carnivorous phenotype
Speaker 1: evolved multiple times independently, so there was no one carnivorous
Speaker 1: ancestor plant that all carnivorous plants today can be traced
Speaker 1: back to. This is an example, or scientists think this
Speaker 1: is an example of what's known as convergent evolution. So
Speaker 1: it would be kind of like flight. There's no one
Speaker 1: flying animal that all flying animals today evolved from. Flight
Speaker 1: is a solution that was reached by evolution in different
Speaker 1: branches of the tree of life, independently and at different times.
Speaker 1: Uh coast three different times. Yeah, carnivory in in plants
Speaker 1: is the same way. It's a survival strategy that's so good.
Speaker 1: Different branches on the tree of life adopted separately in
Speaker 1: separate evolutionary contexts. Uh. Let's let's go to a third
Speaker 1: fact related to the previous one. Carnivorous plants come in
Speaker 1: a lot of different varieties. You're probably familiar with venus
Speaker 1: fly traps, but the superstars, Yeah, but they're not the
Speaker 1: only ones. There are multiple different types of carnivorous plants.
Speaker 1: It actually occurs in According to one source, I found
Speaker 1: at least nine families, nineteen genera and six hundred species
Speaker 1: of plant, and so it could be more by now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think just a few years ago it was I
Speaker 1: saw a source saying five hundreds. So apparently just continually
Speaker 1: or discovering new examples. Yeah, So what are the different
Speaker 1: types of carnivorous plants. Well, you have a few different models,
Speaker 1: a few different methods out there. First of all, snap
Speaker 1: trap plants, venus fly traps, water wheel plants. This is
Speaker 1: the the iconic example of the little trap that slowly
Speaker 1: opens and then a fly lights in the middle and
Speaker 1: the gates close over it. So it'skind of a trigger
Speaker 1: plate kind of yeah, which exactly has a trigger plate.
Speaker 1: It works very much like a like like I said,
Speaker 1: like a like a wolf trap or a fox trap
Speaker 1: or a bear trap. Right, and uh, and these are
Speaker 1: you know, these are famous because they're beautiful, they're they're
Speaker 1: relatively easy to cultivate or at least by the store
Speaker 1: and keep alive for a certain period of time in
Speaker 1: your home. I had one when I was a kid
Speaker 1: one time, and I think consolation for the fact that
Speaker 1: my mom took me to a very long, boring time
Speaker 1: at a plant nursery where she was buying some flowers
Speaker 1: or something. I asked and returned to get this venus
Speaker 1: fly trap, and I got it and it was very cool.
Speaker 1: But I recall I got at home and I couldn't
Speaker 1: get it to close on anything. Oh yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: being I never had one as a kid, though certainly
Speaker 1: it would be the only plant I would have been
Speaker 1: interested in as a child. I had. I had one
Speaker 1: for a while, maybe ten years ago. My wife and
Speaker 1: I had one called Monster Tom, and we kept hoping
Speaker 1: it would catch flies, like would be one of those
Speaker 1: things where you would let a fly live in the
Speaker 1: house because you're like, all right, let Monster Time take
Speaker 1: care of it. I don't think the Monster Time ever
Speaker 1: ate a single fly, but it was still a beautiful
Speaker 1: little plant afp around. I wonder if the domesticated venus
Speaker 1: fly traps have gotten soft, you know, maybe they just
Speaker 1: don't prey on flies, like they just know they've got
Speaker 1: to have like big beautiful eyelashes, right, I mean, because
Speaker 1: but of course, these these are known as the snap
Speaker 1: trap plants, and they're not the only kind of This
Speaker 1: also includes water wheel plants, right do we say that? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but there are plenty of other kinds too, well,
Speaker 1: like how about pitfall traps. Oh yeah. The main example
Speaker 1: of this being picture plants, which is which is one.
Speaker 1: I believe they have them in Newfoundland, Canada, and that's
Speaker 1: where I kind of encountered them early on when Yeah,
Speaker 1: or at least some variety of them, because they're pretty
Speaker 1: widespread and these are lovely specimens. The leaves fold into
Speaker 1: deep slip repools field with digestive ensigns, So it's essentially
Speaker 1: a champagne flute that's filled with insect death. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: with it's got the slippery slide going down into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the the insect light slides down Scott and the
Speaker 1: goo and dissolves, So it's it's it's kind of monstrous,
Speaker 1: but also be their beautiful plants. So you seem like
Speaker 1: a lot of botanical gardens. I'm always seeing them, often
Speaker 1: with some kind of chemical attractant to to bring the
Speaker 1: insects in, to lure them down. Uh. And then there
Speaker 1: there's something I've read about the special surfaces, right, like
Speaker 1: the surfaces on the lip of the picture plant becomes
Speaker 1: slippery when wet, so it's hard to scramble back up
Speaker 1: them and just kind of slide, uh, intellectably down into
Speaker 1: the pit. Yeah, and of course it's worth worth reminding everyone,
Speaker 1: Like one of the key things here is that is
Speaker 1: that plants and insects and have had a long history
Speaker 1: with insects serving as pollinators for for so for so
Speaker 1: many different plant variety. Oh yeah, there's actually a study
Speaker 1: about that I want to mention in a few minutes here.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the picture plants, Yeah, that's so they're they're,
Speaker 1: they're they're numerous varieties of this. And the earliest fossil
Speaker 1: evidence of a carnivorous plant might be a picture plant, uh,
Speaker 1: the mid early Cretaceous uh Archaeomorpha longa servia uh was
Speaker 1: discovered in what's now northeastern China, and researchers are now
Speaker 1: split on the matter, with newer research arguing than it
Speaker 1: might not be a picture plan at all, some of
Speaker 1: the others, especially earlier papers, saying that, oh this, this
Speaker 1: is definitely it is a picture plan or at least
Speaker 1: sort of a proto picture plant, And so it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a problematic fossil right now. But there's a
Speaker 1: possibility other than that that there's not a whole lot
Speaker 1: of fossil evidence of carnivorous plants. So any dreams you
Speaker 1: might have out there listeners for a for like a
Speaker 1: prehistoric thinking out like a giant one that's eating dinosaurs
Speaker 1: or prehistoric mammals. Uh, well, it's not in the fossil
Speaker 1: record at any rate. Man, that's bummer free. History gives
Speaker 1: us giant toads, giant scorpions, but no giant carnivorous plants.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are other varieties of carnivorous plants as well.
Speaker 1: There are lobster trap plants. Oh, these are great, these
Speaker 1: are They go by the pickle jar principle, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you reach in, you grab the pickles and you can't
Speaker 1: get your hand back out right or indeed, as the
Speaker 1: name applies, lobster traps various crab traps. Does anyone who's
Speaker 1: ever used these know that the creature crawls in, but
Speaker 1: then it can't quit get out again. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: how these plants that do that with the through special
Speaker 1: structures m that that end up trapping the creature. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's a certain element of this, and I
Speaker 1: think it's actually a type of picture plant, but it
Speaker 1: had there's an element of easier to get in and
Speaker 1: apparently easy to get out until you're inside. In uh
Speaker 1: in the cobra lily, this cool example of an American
Speaker 1: carnivorous plant that I found. It goes in I think
Speaker 1: northern California and southern Oregon. Uh And it's this beautiful
Speaker 1: looking plant that has a has a picture and is
Speaker 1: in some way carnivorous. But it's got an opening on
Speaker 1: the bottom and then the top. It's kind of translucent
Speaker 1: so the light can come through, so I assume to
Speaker 1: an insect, it looks kind of like you can exit
Speaker 1: through the top until you get inside, all right. Up next,
Speaker 1: we have sticky traps a k a. Fly paper traps,
Speaker 1: and examples here include sun dues and butterwartz. So the
Speaker 1: leaves exude a uh, sticky substance that catches lighting insects.
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty basic, but hey, it's a winning design. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've I've got the willies from glue traps because I
Speaker 1: know the stories of people who have you tried to
Speaker 1: use glue traps to catch rodents in their house? And
Speaker 1: that's just a sad. Yeah. The tragedy of glue traps
Speaker 1: is that they sound humane on the surface. Of things
Speaker 1: not but they're they're not at all, especially when you
Speaker 1: when you realize that reptiles that gets caught in them,
Speaker 1: they're gonna suffer a long time because they've evolved to
Speaker 1: to to go a long time between meals. Uh so, hey,
Speaker 1: if you do. I have had to remove a snake
Speaker 1: from a glue trap before, and if you use oil,
Speaker 1: that will really help. I think I think we used
Speaker 1: olive oil and we're able to free a specimen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Well, well, I don't know, it's amazing. I
Speaker 1: didn't know you were such a hero. Robert. Well it was.
Speaker 1: I feel like, can you come get my cat out
Speaker 1: of the tree? Can you come get my snake out
Speaker 1: of a glue trap? Well? I have you. I have
Speaker 1: found that if I am if I encounter an animal
Speaker 1: with my son, I'm often even more humane, Like not
Speaker 1: not so much snakes, because I generally am going to
Speaker 1: be cool with snakes. But this most recent trip, we
Speaker 1: came across some blackwood of spiders and like, actually three
Speaker 1: you're like really close to um to a house, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, normally once the instinct that I grew up
Speaker 1: with is if you find a blackwoodo of spider. You
Speaker 1: go ahead and kill it because it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: a highly it's it's not a good animal have around.
Speaker 1: You don't want that thing bite me, right, I feel
Speaker 1: like we should learn to resist that impulse. I think
Speaker 1: so too. I like, you know, if it's not hurting us,
Speaker 1: then we shouldn't crush it. So we just checked it out.
Speaker 1: We actually caught one and put it in a little
Speaker 1: glass and looked at it for a little bit and
Speaker 1: then released it further away from the house. But then,
Speaker 1: of course, there is one other major type of of
Speaker 1: of carniversus plant, right, these suction traps. Yes, these involve
Speaker 1: highly modified leaves in the shape of a bladder with
Speaker 1: a hinge door lined with trigger hairs. Uh. So these
Speaker 1: are the ones, if I'm picturing them correctly. Um, these
Speaker 1: are the ones that kind of remind one of of
Speaker 1: pipe organs with a little bit on the top, like
Speaker 1: a little lid on the top of the organ. Huh pipe. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen that, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: more like no, no, it's more like the I'm I'm
Speaker 1: comparing it to cartoons. I think in my mind, we
Speaker 1: have like a steam engine or something, and they have
Speaker 1: the little top that flips up on the top of
Speaker 1: the thesaft pipe. Yea, yeah, kind of similar to that. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh so hey, let's hit the next fact about carniversus plants.
Speaker 1: Among the killer plants, You've got a couple of different
Speaker 1: major varieties, right, So got carnivores and then you've got
Speaker 1: the proto carnivores proto carnivorous plants. So what would what
Speaker 1: would we mean by that? A proto carnivorous plant is
Speaker 1: a plant that has the tendency to catch and kill prey,
Speaker 1: but doesn't yet have the capacity to directly digest the meal. So,
Speaker 1: for example, there are some picture plants that do not
Speaker 1: produce their own digestive enzymes, but rely on bacteria to
Speaker 1: dissolve organic matter in the traps. And some botanists would
Speaker 1: class proto carnivorous plants as taxons that are part of
Speaker 1: the way. They're right there on the evolutionary path to
Speaker 1: becoming carnivores. Yeah, it's interesting when we consider that that
Speaker 1: many carnivore lineages, you know, they enter into the carnivore
Speaker 1: game via proto carnivore lifestyle. So yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like seeing evolution in action. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I can't help it. To consider the relationship between figs
Speaker 1: and fig wass that's interesting, which I think is a
Speaker 1: great example of you know, complex relationship, really a mutualistic
Speaker 1: relationship between plant and a particular insects species. I've never
Speaker 1: heard this mentioned as an example of of a carnivorous plant.
Speaker 1: But Robert tell us how it goes down. What's the relationship?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, uh, again, it's a mutualistic relationship, but
Speaker 1: there there's some there's some nutrients absorbed to at the
Speaker 1: end of the story. So, but the basic scenario here
Speaker 1: is that fig trees need wasps to transport pollen from
Speaker 1: one plant to the other. The plant provides a fig
Speaker 1: wasp with their only source of food and shelter. Um.
Speaker 1: What we call a fig is actually a structure called
Speaker 1: a seconium, and it's really more of an inverted flower
Speaker 1: than a fruit, with all its reproductive parts located inside.
Speaker 1: And after a female fig wasp flies over from her
Speaker 1: home fig plant, she has to travel to the center
Speaker 1: of the seconium to lay her eggs, and to get
Speaker 1: there she climbs down a narrow passage called the osteo passage,
Speaker 1: is so cramped that she scrapes off her wings and
Speaker 1: her antenna during the descent. It's just a real, real
Speaker 1: nightmare scenario. And then once inside, there's no getting back
Speaker 1: out and flying to another plant. Uh, it's like like
Speaker 1: finding a narrow hole in a cemetery and climbing down
Speaker 1: into a grave, just ripping a bunch of skin off
Speaker 1: in the process. And then when she's down there, well,
Speaker 1: she better hope she's in the right place because fig
Speaker 1: plants boast two kinds of figs, male caprifigs and then
Speaker 1: female edible figs. If she if she winds up an
Speaker 1: inedible fig, she eventually dies from exhaustion or starvation. She
Speaker 1: can't lay her eggs there, the stylus is in the way,
Speaker 1: but she at least delivers the pollens, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a cool cruel trick, right. Um, we see the
Speaker 1: mutualistic aspect here, but it also kind of breaking down
Speaker 1: right like the right the plant gets what it wants,
Speaker 1: but the wasp doesn't get what it wants. Now she
Speaker 1: enters the male caprifig, she'll find male flower parts perfectly
Speaker 1: shaped to hold the eggs. She'll eventually lay The eggs
Speaker 1: grow into larva, which is then developed into male and
Speaker 1: female wasps, which emerge after hat ing. The blind wingless,
Speaker 1: wingless male wasp will spend the remainder of their lives
Speaker 1: digging tunnels through the fig. The female wasp then emerge
Speaker 1: through these tunnels and fly have to find a new fig,
Speaker 1: carrying pollen with them. Now, and that is a crazy process, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It's it's it's wondrous, wondrous. I had figs
Speaker 1: in in my backyard this this year, and uh, I
Speaker 1: thought about it every time I went out there to
Speaker 1: check on them. Well, wait, then, is it accurate to
Speaker 1: say that in some sense the fig tree is consuming
Speaker 1: the wasp that is stuck inside it. Yes, because this
Speaker 1: is what happens in the death fig um when a
Speaker 1: female wasp dies inside an edible fig, and enzyme in
Speaker 1: the fig called king breaks down her carcass into protein.
Speaker 1: So the fig basically digests the dead insect, making it
Speaker 1: a part of the resulting ripened fruit and the crunchy
Speaker 1: crunchy bits and the figs, though or seeds, not anatomical
Speaker 1: parts of the wasp case. And he was wondering, now,
Speaker 1: one thing I do you think about here, is that
Speaker 1: a fig tree doesn't seem to me to be something
Speaker 1: that is suffering from a lack of nitrogen or some
Speaker 1: other nutrient or or is it. I mean that that's
Speaker 1: not my understanding that it's necessarily suffering, but it just
Speaker 1: gets some kind of maybe even if it could survive
Speaker 1: without these wasps, I'm not saying I know that it could,
Speaker 1: but even if it could, it just gets a little
Speaker 1: extra boost. I guess it's like using every part of
Speaker 1: the buffalo, right, I mean, the wasp is in there,
Speaker 1: it's it's not going anywhere. Why not digested? Why not digested?
Speaker 1: I mean to sort of anthromorpi anthropomorphize the the evolutionary
Speaker 1: process here of that. But it's it's an interesting example
Speaker 1: I think of certainly a complex relationship, a mutualistic relationship
Speaker 1: where it's kind of like thinking of it as a corporation. Right,
Speaker 1: So you have you have fig Tree Corp. Or you know,
Speaker 1: and they have all these different departments, and most of
Speaker 1: the departments are related to fruit production and and and
Speaker 1: wasp relations. But there is definitely a wasp dissolving and
Speaker 1: digesting department. It's not the primary department it's on the basement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in the basement, but it still plays a role
Speaker 1: in the overall company structure. Okay, okay, uh, and it's
Speaker 1: you always got to put the payroll in now. I
Speaker 1: wanted to see if there was any interesting new research
Speaker 1: from this year on on carnivorous plants, and I can
Speaker 1: across one paper I thought was kind of interesting. It's
Speaker 1: called Pollinator prey conflicts and carnivorous Plants when flower and
Speaker 1: trap properties mean life or death? From scientific reports published
Speaker 1: this year in and it was studying uh, plants of
Speaker 1: the genus Drosera, which are the sun does right. We
Speaker 1: talked about those the sticky trap plants, and its studied
Speaker 1: how the plants solve a particular problem if you've thought
Speaker 1: about this, If you're a carnivorous plant that wants to
Speaker 1: draw insects into a death trap, but you're also a
Speaker 1: flowering plant that wants insects to spread your pollen for reproduction,
Speaker 1: how do you make sure that you don't trap and
Speaker 1: kill the insects that you need to pollinate your flowers. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm about to say a metaphor for this that might
Speaker 1: be the worst metaphor I've ever tried on this show,
Speaker 1: so so stop me if I'm going off the rails. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like if if you couldn't have sex
Speaker 1: without the help of a certain species of live wild rat,
Speaker 1: but you also have rat traps all over your house,
Speaker 1: like kill traps, this would seem to lower your reproductive fitness.
Speaker 1: So instead, what the drosera plants do and study is
Speaker 1: that they offer different visual, spatial, and chemical signals that
Speaker 1: selectively attract nonpollinators to the traps, so that they've adapted
Speaker 1: to have selective appeals in the traps versus in the
Speaker 1: pollinating structures. What's kind of like imagining these um, these
Speaker 1: hotels and horror movies where they cannibalize the guests, Like
Speaker 1: you gotta keep your yelp rating up enough where you
Speaker 1: get more guests. Exactly, You've got to have enough real guests,
Speaker 1: but then at the same time, you need guests to eat,
Speaker 1: so you've got to find that balance. Yeah, so in
Speaker 1: in my horrible analogy, it would be sort of like
Speaker 1: having traps that are designed to to kill all the
Speaker 1: rats except your sex rat that you need for reproduction.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's let's discuss the real carnivorous plants, the
Speaker 1: plants that really do prey on vertebrates. Okay, well we've
Speaker 1: got to start by discussing the alleged ones that prey
Speaker 1: on vertebrates. So the one I want to start with
Speaker 1: is the Puya chill Insis. So, this is a bromiliad
Speaker 1: plant that grows in the arid parts of the Andes
Speaker 1: in South America. It's known as Puya chill insists. And
Speaker 1: it's sort of because it's a bromiliad, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a cousin of like the pineapple, and it kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a pineapple. It looks like a giant,
Speaker 1: woody pineapple with yellow green spikes extending out at an
Speaker 1: inclined angle from the trunk. And it has been widely
Speaker 1: reported on popular websites and a few new sources that
Speaker 1: this plant is known as the quote sheep eating plant
Speaker 1: because it sometimes feeds on the carcasses of livestock caught
Speaker 1: in its spines. For example, there's ABC news piece about
Speaker 1: how the Royal Horticultural Society and Great Britain managed to
Speaker 1: grow one of these plants in a greenhouse in Surrey,
Speaker 1: and the story was about how the plant was about
Speaker 1: to flower. I think it takes a long time to
Speaker 1: do that. But the article claims quote in the andies
Speaker 1: it uses its sharp spines to snare and trap sheep
Speaker 1: and other animals, which slowly starved to death. The animals
Speaker 1: then decay at the base of the plant, acting as
Speaker 1: a fertilizer. The RHS feeds its specimen on liquid fertilizer,
Speaker 1: and then they quote a horticulture is saying that obviously
Speaker 1: it would be problematic to feed this plant quote its
Speaker 1: natural diet um. So despite these reports, most of which
Speaker 1: sort of repeat the same thin summary claims over another,
Speaker 1: over and over, I have been unable to find any
Speaker 1: evidence in the scientific literature that these plants are really
Speaker 1: known to do this to trap and kill large animals
Speaker 1: like sheep, And honestly, looking at a bunch of pictures
Speaker 1: of them, I'm also having a hard time seeing how
Speaker 1: this would happen, Like they look like they would be
Speaker 1: painful to fall into, but not deadly traps. Also, I've
Speaker 1: read a few accounts of people who claim to work
Speaker 1: around the puya and don't report anything about this, So
Speaker 1: this makes it seem to me like this phenomenon of
Speaker 1: sheep becoming trapped in puya growth, dying and then fertilizing
Speaker 1: the base of the plant is something that maybe conceivably
Speaker 1: could happen by coincidence. Like I guess you could accept
Speaker 1: that rotting animal flesh is generally a decent fertilizer, but
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't happen often enough to qualify as a
Speaker 1: real evolutionary adaptation by the plant. Yeah. And plus, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of animals that are already going to
Speaker 1: play prey on a sheep. And then if you were
Speaker 1: having sheep that are raised and basically an artificial population
Speaker 1: of sheep, if they're gonna be there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: higher susceptibility to stranger on natural deaths. Right. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical of this one. I think unless somebody can
Speaker 1: send us some really good evidence that this actually takes place,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say this one actually looks like a
Speaker 1: myth to me that has somehow made it into news reports.
Speaker 1: I think that is a safe bet. But then there's
Speaker 1: another one that is definitely not a myth, though we
Speaker 1: have to be a little careful and how we characterize it.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about nepenthes, the tropical picture plants.
Speaker 1: So these are pitfall traps, right, Like we've talked about
Speaker 1: picture plants where they've got a uh, they've got a
Speaker 1: deep well that has some killer fluids in it, and
Speaker 1: they want you to fall in and get stuck and
Speaker 1: die and dissolve. Now it's it's definitely worth saying that
Speaker 1: the natural prey of these plants are invertebrates. They're going
Speaker 1: to be insects. But some of these traps can grow
Speaker 1: like more than forty centimeters deep or hold up to
Speaker 1: two liters of aggestive fluid. That's huge, looks like a
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a big soda bottle. Like with
Speaker 1: some of its various species having traps this big, it's
Speaker 1: sort of natural to wonder if anything bigger than an
Speaker 1: insect ever gets digested, And I'd say the answer appears
Speaker 1: to be both no and yes, and so like I said,
Speaker 1: first of all, invertebrates are clearly the main prey of
Speaker 1: these plants. Um they appear insectivorous by evolutionary design, but
Speaker 1: animals come into the picture as well well. One one
Speaker 1: sense is more mutualistic, Like there are several picture plants
Speaker 1: that seem to have this non predatory symbiotic relationship with
Speaker 1: vertebrates like birds, bats, and shrews. And it works like this.
Speaker 1: You've got a picture and it's got sweet nectar all
Speaker 1: along the outer surface, and a bird or a forest
Speaker 1: rodent comes along besides, I want some of that nectar,
Speaker 1: And while it's hanging out of the opening of the
Speaker 1: picture plant, it just happens to deposit some seas inside. Now,
Speaker 1: normally you would not expect an organism to have an
Speaker 1: adaptation that incentivizes animals to poop inside it. But guess
Speaker 1: what those feces are rich in nitrogen. Yeah, exactly the
Speaker 1: nutrients that the plant would normally need to get by
Speaker 1: killing insects. So there are types of picture plants that
Speaker 1: also seem to provide like a roosting shelter for bats
Speaker 1: as well, and the bats to do the same thing.
Speaker 1: They poop into the plant and the plant gets some
Speaker 1: sweet nitrogen out of it. But with some of the
Speaker 1: larger tropical pictures, what if a small mammal were two
Speaker 1: fall all the way in, would it be able to
Speaker 1: get out? And if not, would the plant eat it?
Speaker 1: I think the answer is ding, ding, ding. You bet.
Speaker 1: This is this nightmare scenario. I encounter anytime I use
Speaker 1: a composting toilet. Oh no, those things smell bad enough anyway, yea,
Speaker 1: even when they go. I was in a really good
Speaker 1: one last week. Oh, I shouldn't bad mouth thought. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I've been near one that's old. Really, but it's still
Speaker 1: horrifying because especially like in my case, I'm putting my
Speaker 1: son on it, and I was like, oh, he could
Speaker 1: just fall right down there, and then I guess I
Speaker 1: have to go down there too, like the fluke man, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, this is a horrifying scenario falling into a
Speaker 1: picture trap. God. So here's the evidence. There is a
Speaker 1: photo and video documentation online of a Nepenthes research expedition
Speaker 1: that took place first in October, and they were going
Speaker 1: to Mount Victoria and the Philippines, and they were studying
Speaker 1: specimens of Nepenthes at in Borough e I when named
Speaker 1: after our our favorite at Inburg, endemic to the region
Speaker 1: and with the species not and not Attenburgh. But they
Speaker 1: found one picture of this plant that contained a wild
Speaker 1: caught dead tree shrew, and they showed it in photos
Speaker 1: and on video, and a return expedition two months later
Speaker 1: showed the skeletal remains of the shrew covered in a
Speaker 1: sort of layer of first So essentially all the soft
Speaker 1: tissues of the tree shrew appeared to have been digested
Speaker 1: by the plant. So does the picture plant naturally target
Speaker 1: vertebrate mammals as prey. Probably not, but if there's one
Speaker 1: on offer, yeah, I don't mind if I do. That
Speaker 1: seems to be the approach. But now the real question
Speaker 1: is could it be possible for a real world plant
Speaker 1: to be the man eating tree, that the killer tree
Speaker 1: that would trap and kill large megafauna like a deer
Speaker 1: or a bear or a human being mm hmm, or
Speaker 1: even something like a raccoon, right, I mean, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's settling for a raccoon medium size because because the
Speaker 1: even the the bat possibility and the shrew possibility is
Speaker 1: kind of iffy, right, So anything larger than that it
Speaker 1: becomes increasingly fantastic. Yeah. So I will say, first of all,
Speaker 1: I found no evidence that a plant like this already exists.
Speaker 1: We'll start with the bad news. But the good news,
Speaker 1: or maybe the bad news, who knows what's good and bad,
Speaker 1: It depends where he's stand on plants killing and eating humans.
Speaker 1: Is that there's some interesting leads. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: I want to consider the possibility of a proto carnivorous
Speaker 1: bramble trap. So I watched a video blog and this
Speaker 1: is not scientific information. This was a video blog by
Speaker 1: an Irish sheep farmer, and this guy was personally insisting
Speaker 1: that the BlackBerry brambles on his land are carnivorous, or
Speaker 1: he called them carnivorous. I think more accurately you would
Speaker 1: call them proto carnivorous. But if he's correct, But here's
Speaker 1: his argument. He says by demonstrating how his sheep become
Speaker 1: trapped in these brambles all the time, they get like
Speaker 1: they get their wooly coats caught in the hook like thorns,
Speaker 1: and then they struggle and they get more and more
Speaker 1: tangled in the branches as they struggle to escape. That's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. I guess the idea is that they
Speaker 1: get caught, they can't escape, they die. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like what was being alleged with the Puya chilensis, that
Speaker 1: they would fall down near the base the plant rought
Speaker 1: and fertilize the soil. Well, even if they in doing this,
Speaker 1: if they didn't kill the animal outright, if they even
Speaker 1: if they didn't allow starvation to occur. They could conceivably,
Speaker 1: you could conceivably have the plant just holding it long
Speaker 1: enough for a predator to come take advantage of it,
Speaker 1: eat part of it, and then but they'll leave portions
Speaker 1: of the creature to rot. Oh that's interesting too. I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about that now. I do want to say
Speaker 1: I'm not going to endorse the hypothesis of carnivorous brambles
Speaker 1: here because I think we don't have evidence that that's
Speaker 1: necessarily what's going on. I think you'd have to demonstrate
Speaker 1: that this is actually an adaptation towards which bramble evolution
Speaker 1: was shaped, like where they're similar wooly animals native to
Speaker 1: the regions wherever these plants evolved. Would one of these
Speaker 1: animals rotting at the base of the bramble plant really
Speaker 1: provide enough nutrition incentive to make a major difference in
Speaker 1: survival and reproduction? Like are it would? The would the
Speaker 1: nutrients it provides matter enough for this to be an
Speaker 1: evolved trade that is targeted by selection. Yeah, Because to
Speaker 1: come back to the fig tree scenario, think of it
Speaker 1: as a well run corporation. At what point does do
Speaker 1: the do the masters do the do the CEOs of
Speaker 1: the border directors or whatever, we're going to invest in
Speaker 1: the processing division. Yeah, it's like, tell me more about this, uh, this, this,
Speaker 1: this sheep eating division that you're working on this project. Alright,
Speaker 1: let's hire some more people, let's let's invest more in that,
Speaker 1: and let's bump it up in the overall hierarchy exactly.
Speaker 1: So I haven't seen evidence that that's what's going on
Speaker 1: at the brambles. Yeah, but given all these questions, I
Speaker 1: do want to say I could believe it's possible that
Speaker 1: some bramble type plant could establish an evolutionary pathway toward
Speaker 1: proto carnivary and eventually full carnivalary, starting with accidental snaggings,
Speaker 1: accidental snagging of sheep and other unfortunate creatures that are
Speaker 1: covered in suicide vel crow. You know, this reminds me
Speaker 1: of of a specimen the ninencountered in Arizona last week,
Speaker 1: and that's the Death's claw or harvardgap item, also known
Speaker 1: as a grapple plant or a wood spider wood spider.
Speaker 1: They're pretty gnarly looking. Um. They they're from the sesame family,
Speaker 1: but they're a hooked fruit. So it starts when it's growing.
Speaker 1: Initially it kind of looks like a weird green banana,
Speaker 1: and apparently it can be consumed. Uh we did. I
Speaker 1: did not eat one, but I was told that, yes,
Speaker 1: some people have things they can do with these. Um.
Speaker 1: But it starts off like a banana and then it
Speaker 1: kind of splits in the middle, and so it ends
Speaker 1: up like you imagine you're like your hand making the
Speaker 1: devil horns and then imagine if you had super long,
Speaker 1: curvy fingernails on both of the protruding fingers. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so what it does is when a a mule deer
Speaker 1: or a prong horn a horse or even a human
Speaker 1: comes along, Uh, it latches onto the ankle. These these
Speaker 1: these the devil horns here latch around and it becomes
Speaker 1: and it carries the the fruit across you know, long distances, um,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't does not hurt the animal in question.
Speaker 1: And actually they seem to have anti inflammatory properties that
Speaker 1: are utilized in some folk medicines. But if this is possible, yeah,
Speaker 1: why not a grappling mammal killing root as well? Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: I guess we'd have to come back to the question
Speaker 1: of is the incentive there is the evolutionary incentive big
Speaker 1: enough to work on these powerful structures. Another way to
Speaker 1: ask this question, another scenario for this. How about a
Speaker 1: human sized snap trap, sort of like what I pictured
Speaker 1: in the grove of the killer tree at the beginning.
Speaker 1: So imagine this. It's a venus fly trap, large enough
Speaker 1: to capture and digest a deer or a bear or
Speaker 1: a human like, not not so much necessarily like a
Speaker 1: little shop Ahara's Audrey too, but just a giant venus
Speaker 1: fly trap. Just a trap doesn't mean a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sing or a leap out, but just large
Speaker 1: enough to lay a trap that could snag a larger creature. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are obviously plants that move quickly. The venus
Speaker 1: fly trap is one example of them. There's you know,
Speaker 1: plants usually exhibit very slow motion motion that's expressed through
Speaker 1: growth patterns rather than through uh fast moving of plant tissues.
Speaker 1: But there are plants that have fast moving tissues. You
Speaker 1: touch a fern and sometimes the leaves can close. The
Speaker 1: venus flytrap can snap closed. I'm not sure how big
Speaker 1: and how sturdy you can scale up those fast movements
Speaker 1: and plants like I've never seen a plant with huge,
Speaker 1: strong structures that exhibit fast movement. All the all the
Speaker 1: ones I know of with fast moving body parts tend
Speaker 1: to be pretty small. Yeah. Yeah, anytime you you see
Speaker 1: the same thing when you're talking about johnet Gerrillas right,
Speaker 1: anytime you scale up morphology, you're gonna run into various
Speaker 1: engineering limits and you end up having to change the
Speaker 1: design in order to make it conceivably work. And then
Speaker 1: in some cases, is it even possible to upscale that design? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but let's just imagine. Let's say, okay, imagine you can
Speaker 1: scale up fast moving plant body parts. Uh, still a
Speaker 1: couple of problems here. It doesn't take a lot of
Speaker 1: compression strength to hold in a fly or a spider,
Speaker 1: but imagine how many pounds of compression force it would
Speaker 1: take to hold in a human or a bear that's
Speaker 1: fighting to get out of a trap. This would have
Speaker 1: to be a really strong, big, powerful plant. And I
Speaker 1: guess my question is why would a plant evolves such
Speaker 1: an extravagant morphological contrivance and does it even make sense
Speaker 1: to imagine how it gets to there? Because remember, carnivorous
Speaker 1: plants tend to practice animal predation in order to offset
Speaker 1: nutrient deficiencies in the soil. Right, That's the whole reason.
Speaker 1: We go back to their growing in inhospitable conditions. They
Speaker 1: can't get the nitrogen or some of their nutrients they need,
Speaker 1: so they need to prey on animals to get those little,
Speaker 1: those little molecules. But what would an organism grown in
Speaker 1: such poor soil be able to attain human trapping size
Speaker 1: to begin with? Like, how does it get that big
Speaker 1: and that powerful if it hasn't been trapping humans the
Speaker 1: whole way would have it would have to sort of
Speaker 1: like be scaling up as it goes, catching bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger animals as it gets bigger. Yeah, And why would
Speaker 1: you why would it? Why would it evolve to depend
Speaker 1: on increasingly larger and increasingly um, you know, more rare
Speaker 1: uh specimens? Why why would it would be making it's
Speaker 1: it's there would be there would be a tipping point
Speaker 1: where it would just be making its work harder for itself,
Speaker 1: and and therefore there would be less uh less, it
Speaker 1: would be less advantageous to its evolutionary ascent. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: another thing to remember, as we've said on the show before,
Speaker 1: in evolution, we've always got to keep in mind, bigger
Speaker 1: is not necessarily better. It seems better to us because
Speaker 1: we like bigger trucks, but bigger bodies are not necessarily better.
Speaker 1: Organisms will not tend to grow larger unless there's a
Speaker 1: clear survival advantage or reproduction advantage, Right, it comes down
Speaker 1: to what the environment will bear, what's competitive. I just
Speaker 1: just a few seconds ago, I I said evolutionary ascent,
Speaker 1: which we all and us and talking about humans. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of a misnomer because evolution, but in the
Speaker 1: same way that there's no evolving, evolution is not an
Speaker 1: upward or downward movement. It is just a movement um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, if you start thinking about it in terms
Speaker 1: of there being a goal other than survival, other than propagation,
Speaker 1: than muddy the waters. So yeah, the the human sized
Speaker 1: snap trap, I'm going to say that that's something that
Speaker 1: maybe could be engineered. You know, I could imagine in
Speaker 1: the future if you're you're tinkering with plant genomes trying
Speaker 1: to create something weird. It's possible that that that's sort
Speaker 1: of a a physical uh, something that's physically attainable and
Speaker 1: plant morphology. I don't know, it might not even be that,
Speaker 1: but even assuming it is that, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: something that would arise in nature, right, it would need
Speaker 1: to be a mad scientist who decided, you know, he
Speaker 1: or she wanted a large man eating plant. Maybe you know,
Speaker 1: an evil dictator who wanted it to live it at
Speaker 1: the bottom of a trap door or continue feeding witches too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or or how about this, how about a bio toilet
Speaker 1: for for spaceship gardens. So going back to the picture
Speaker 1: plan idea encouraging animals to poop in it like a
Speaker 1: compos bio biological compost, biologically engineered compost toilet. Or maybe
Speaker 1: it's engineered by a British nanny who is a druid
Speaker 1: who has had her tree killed with the chainsaw that
Speaker 1: she used to worship for years. She needs a new god,
Speaker 1: and so she genetically she studies genetics, she you know,
Speaker 1: masters the art of crisper gene editing, and then she
Speaker 1: makes this thing. Or as she just merely entered into
Speaker 1: contract with the space toilets who overthrew another alien species
Speaker 1: because they were tired of just being pooped into. Okay, Robert,
Speaker 1: I think we're done. Yeah, we've got off the deep
Speaker 1: end here, but I think we've covered some We've covered
Speaker 1: some fictional ground here. We've covered covered some mythological, some
Speaker 1: cryptid ground as well as the the the the, the
Speaker 1: more solid soil of of actual scientific inquiry, and nothing
Speaker 1: aid us in the process. So I guess we're doing okay.
Speaker 1: It would be a good way to go, though, it
Speaker 1: would be a noteworthy way to go, not a pleasant
Speaker 1: way to go. But yeah, it'd be good to be remembered. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because none of these scenarios, I think we can agree,
Speaker 1: none of the scenarios of carnivorous plants actually sounds pleasant.
Speaker 1: All of it takes place, that death ends up occurring
Speaker 1: at the slow rate that is uh, that is typical
Speaker 1: of the of the plant's slower approach to life. You'd
Speaker 1: really be hoping a bear would come along and get
Speaker 1: into you. Yeah, all right, So there you have a
Speaker 1: carnivorous plants um. Hey, if you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about this topic, if you want to discover other topics
Speaker 1: than we've done, heading over to stuff to Blow your
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Speaker 1: another way to interact with and indeed tell us about
Speaker 1: any fictional carnivorous plants that we may have missed or
Speaker 1: we should explore, as well as your thoughts on the
Speaker 1: possibility of a man eating plant. And of course, if
Speaker 1: you would like to continue to get tangled in the
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