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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My

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

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Speaker 1: is Saturday. The vault hangs open, and it is a

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Speaker 1: October vault. Isn't that right, Robert? That's right. That is

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Speaker 1: why the vault is full of monstrous, curling, twisting vines.

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Speaker 1: This week. Vines. They just want to grab hold of

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Speaker 1: you and just drag you down into the carnivorous undergrowth.

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Speaker 1: This was an episode published originally on October eighteen about

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Speaker 1: carnivorous plants and uh, and so we hope you will

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Speaker 1: stay around for the Tree of Terror. Yeah, imagine there's

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Speaker 1: gonna be a little bit of a little shop of

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Speaker 1: horrors in this one. Maybe I think we remember everything

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Speaker 1: we referenced. We talked about that what's that um William

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Speaker 1: Friedkin movie with like the killer Enchanted Tree, Killer Enchanted Tree.

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Speaker 1: Oh well, we talked about in the spoil it for you.

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Speaker 1: I've already forgotten what it is and now I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: have to look it back up because that's sounds amazing. Okay,

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Speaker 1: without any further ado, let's just jump right into it,

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Speaker 1: back into the vault, back into the embrace of the Vines.

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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 a seasonal Halloween scenario. Do you do

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Speaker 1: you want to go with me on a hike high? Alright,

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Speaker 1: it's late October and you are on a solitary fall

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

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Speaker 1: turn orange and red. The air is dry, and you

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

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

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Speaker 1: If this is how all terrible stories start, how all

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

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

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Speaker 1: brook 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: at 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,

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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, they're wooden, they're they're lumbering. I think there

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Speaker 1: are a few a few different varieties. There's they're basically,

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Speaker 1: you know, they're animate trees, and then they're sort of

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Speaker 1: wooden people, and they're good and good ones and they're

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Speaker 1: bad ones. Of course, the ants that we encounter and

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Speaker 1: the Lord of the Rings are are are good. So

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Speaker 1: when you're battling a tree person do you like, do

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Speaker 1: you have to have a paladin with a blessed wood

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Speaker 1: chipper or something. I don't recall there being a requirement

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Speaker 1: for magical weapons. Of course, you know, some creatures can

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Speaker 1: only be fought with natural weapons, but with the with

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Speaker 1: magical weapons. But I believe that the tree creatures in

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Speaker 1: this case are just big, tough trees, because that's the

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Speaker 1: thing they're they're they're they're large, They're flesh is different

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Speaker 1: than us. So the idea of them becoming animate, the

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Speaker 1: idea of them turning against us is terrifying. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: they do turn against us. I mean, we live in

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Speaker 1: a very um uh tree friendly city. So anytime the

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

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Speaker 1: rattle and threaten us. When they fall, they can cause

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Speaker 1: significant damage and even loss of life. There is a

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

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Speaker 1: I are working on getting something done about that. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's this old dead pecan tree. It just looks like

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Speaker 1: it is aching to plunge its killer branches through somebody's roof.

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Speaker 1: And so yeah, there, of course killer trees in reality,

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Speaker 1: but the kind we're thinking of are the ones that

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Speaker 1: are a little more conscious with some directed actions the agency,

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Speaker 1: maybe some arms, some tentacles, some some gaping maws with

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Speaker 1: thorn teeth. Of course one of the big ones, and

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Speaker 1: this one entered my mind when you were taking me

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Speaker 1: through descriptions. Of course, in poulter Geist, there's that just

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Speaker 1: horrifying scene that scarred me from an early age, where

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Speaker 1: you have you have multiple things going on it once,

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Speaker 1: like there's the creepy clown um doll on the bed,

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Speaker 1: but then there's the tree outside the window. It's like

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Speaker 1: trying to eat the child man. So I haven't seen

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Speaker 1: Poulder guys in years. I honestly don't remember this scene.

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Speaker 1: I guess I gotta go back to one of many.

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Speaker 1: They throw a lot of nightmare imagree up against the

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: is like a creepy babysitter, creepy nanny, but I never

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Speaker 1: saw it, so I don't know what the what the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: orbs 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 ploitation,

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Speaker 1: uh movement of the nineties. 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 that makes any sense. He there's a

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

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Speaker 1: That always worth checking out if you're a fan of his.

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Speaker 1: But you know, maybe not Tough Shell. I guess I'd

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Speaker 1: say it's not good, but it's worth seeing, especially since

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Speaker 1: the spoiler alert the client max of the film involves

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Speaker 1: a chainsaw. Oh well, of course it would. Um, of course,

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Speaker 1: there are plenty of other cinematic examples of animate trees,

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: of our two heroes, the male hero s Medric I believe,

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Speaker 1: and uh this sounds troubling. Yeah, she has like huge

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Speaker 1: 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: Lots of strange elements. Uh. Scott Smith's novel The Ruins

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Speaker 1: and the two movie adaptation of it, the concerns man

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

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Speaker 1: it's not just that the vines reach out and grab you,

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

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Speaker 1: with some kind of plant germ cell. I think so, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is interesting when you start getting into some of

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Speaker 1: the the technical possibilities of man eating plants. Um, let's

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Speaker 1: say already mentioned Poulter guys. There, of course the vines

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Speaker 1: and evil dead that are rather notorious. There are 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 mine must watch list. You 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. They 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 suchet has a like a humanoid

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Speaker 1: 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 is that is this example of something

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Speaker 1: called a jidra uh and this is from the traditions

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: The idea is this thing emerges from the ground like

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Speaker 1: a plant, and and it's rooted in place, and it

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

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

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Speaker 1: is 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

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Speaker 1: bones and it's a like a rooted mammal 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 Jidra 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 stock 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 tail 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,

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

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Speaker 1: and if you can imagine it, plenty road 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 it had nowls in them.

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Speaker 1: I mean all sorts of strange humanoid 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 shamelans the happening. I

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Speaker 1: did not. I saw the trader. It happened. There was

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Speaker 1: some happening, and it happened, and it was about trees

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Speaker 1: that were trying to kill Mark Wahlberg. I have no

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Speaker 1: idea why they want to do that. But it wasn't

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Speaker 1: really predatory behavior. It was more like vindictive jerk behavior.

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Speaker 1: So the trees didn't want to eat us. They were

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Speaker 1: like tired of us being abusive to them. So it's

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Speaker 1: even less uh in less biologically sound, yes, than than

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Speaker 1: any of the examples we've looked at this far. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: obviously this idea of the killer tree, the man eating

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Speaker 1: plant is one that captures our imagination very easily. And

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Speaker 1: I think I've got a theory as to while, and

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Speaker 1: let me know what you think of this. I think

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Speaker 1: the reason we like the image of the killer tree

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Speaker 1: and it shows up in all these stories reas, is

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Speaker 1: because the idea of a man eating plant has a

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Speaker 1: certain level of why not to it? Right? So, there

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Speaker 1: are creatures in nature that kill large animals with claws

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Speaker 1: and teeth and tentacles and venom and such, and plants

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Speaker 1: have things that are equivalent to this. They've got thorns, vine, tendrils, poisons.

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Speaker 1: Trees are much larger than us, and in one sense

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Speaker 1: they are apt to be much quote stronger than any

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Speaker 1: animal prey that would try to resist them. So why not,

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Speaker 1: you know, if the continent of Australia can produce an

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Speaker 1: animal that has the fur of a mammal in the

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

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Speaker 1: harbor a tree that can reach out with a vine

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Speaker 1: covered in venomous thorns and snatch a hiker, wrap him up,

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

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Speaker 1: down into a crevice in the root structure and treat

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

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

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Speaker 1: all the variety of nature, we see what's possible within nature,

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Speaker 1: and you ask yourself, we'll wind a in this exists.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it does exist. Maybe some you know, a third

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: appealing is because it's abhorrent, the idea it's crossing category

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Speaker 1: exactly inherent taboo. Yeah, because I find myself kind of

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Speaker 1: like if I see an example of an insect preying

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Speaker 1: on a on a vertebrate, like invertebrates eating vertebrates, something

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Speaker 1: that kind of like it's wrong, has got a frog

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Speaker 1: in its web. Yeah, it's like that. You're not supposed

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Speaker 1: to move in that direction because stick to your your

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Speaker 1: own invertebrate kind. But of course it happens. Now, of

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Speaker 1: course I wouldn't actually blame the spider for that. I

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Speaker 1: think that's perfectly fine. But no, no, no, no, no

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Speaker 1: judgments spiders. But but from our human standpoints, even more important,

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Speaker 1: because we've largely removed ourselves from the risk of fredation

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Speaker 1: like which is a pretty remarkable thing in the grand

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Speaker 1: scheme of things, right, and so we don't have to

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Speaker 1: worry about other animals eating us. And the idea of

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Speaker 1: another animal eating us is strange and awful and terrifying.

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Speaker 1: Even more so the idea that a tree could do it. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I totally see. It goes backwards on the chain, the

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Speaker 1: food chain, right, it's reversing the food chain. That's it's

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Speaker 1: not supposed to be this way. So, except for the

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Speaker 1: fact that we've never seen things like this happened, at

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Speaker 1: an intuitive level, it's like, what's so implausible about it? Uh?

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Speaker 1: Then at the same time, I think we may be

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Speaker 1: able to come up with some good biological reasons we

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Speaker 1: don't actually see organisms like this. But according to some

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Speaker 1: we must say, not very credible accounts, there is nothing

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Speaker 1: all that implausible about the man eating tree, the killer tree,

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Speaker 1: because people have written about these things as if they

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Speaker 1: actually exist within the past few hundred years, and that

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Speaker 1: hearsay was more more powerful previous times exactly. So I

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Speaker 1: want to talk about one source, a very weird biology

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Speaker 1: book from the eighteen eighties called Sea and Land, written

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Speaker 1: by a guy named James William Buell. Now, just glancing

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Speaker 1: through this thing and looking at the author's introduction, it

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Speaker 1: is obvious that this is not a source of credible

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Speaker 1: scientific information. It's more one of those nineteenth century natural

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Speaker 1: Wonders books. You've ever seen these kind of things, where

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Speaker 1: there you know, like, wow, look at all these illustrations

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Speaker 1: of animals in their natural habitats. But they're all grossly inaccurate,

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Speaker 1: and it's really not all that different from various versions

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Speaker 1: of Plenty's work from previous times, exactly, except it's you know,

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Speaker 1: eighteen hundred years later, however, whenever Plenty was living, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: exactly so, but it's got all these allegations of weird

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Speaker 1: sensational creatures mingled in with reports about real animals, and

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Speaker 1: I have to also say, like a very Eurocentric sense

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Speaker 1: of exoticism about the planet. So there's that kind of

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Speaker 1: unsavory element to it. But it's also full of gruesome

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Speaker 1: and probably highly inaccurate illustrations about various animals and attack modes.

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Speaker 1: Some of these illustrations are great. There's a good one

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Speaker 1: of an orangutang apparently kicking a man to death, one

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Speaker 1: of a swordfish stabbing at a sailor through the hull

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Speaker 1: of a boat. Not impossible, extremely rare. But as we've

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Speaker 1: discussed in our Jumping Fish episode, it it has happened, okay,

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Speaker 1: or well, individuals have been stabbed, boats have been stabbed.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone, I don't I don't remember,

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Speaker 1: of both happen, it 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: there 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 you Will says that travelers have told him stories

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Speaker 1: of a carnivorous plant that grows in Central Africa and

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Speaker 1: South America. And he says it's so voracious it even

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

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Speaker 1: quote from the book. He says, quote. This marvelous vegetable

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Speaker 1: minotaur is represented as having a short, thick trunk, from

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: or at an inclined angle from the trunk, these spines

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Speaker 1: lay their outer ends upon the ground, and so gracefully

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Speaker 1: are they distributed that the trunk resembles an easy couch

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Speaker 1: with green drapery around it. Uh. Then he goes on

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Speaker 1: to say that the unfortunate traveler will come along and

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Speaker 1: quote the moment his feet are set within the circle

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Speaker 1: of horrid spines, they rise up like gigantic serpents and

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Speaker 1: entwine themselves about him until he is drawn upon the stump,

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Speaker 1: when they speedily dry of their daggers into his body

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Speaker 1: and thus complete the massacre. The body is crushed until

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Speaker 1: every drop of blood is squeezed out of it, and

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Speaker 1: becomes absorbed again by the gore loving plant when the

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00:20:12,040 --> 00:20:15,359
Speaker 1: dry carcass is thrown out and the horrid trap is

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Speaker 1: set again. I'm some elements of that sound reasonable, especially

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Speaker 1: later when we get into real world carnivorous plants and

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Speaker 1: the idea that plants are living things that that live

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Speaker 1: and move at an entirely different speed. And therefore when

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Speaker 1: you see like fast moving actions such as from a

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Speaker 1: venus fly trap, it is very much like a like

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Speaker 1: a crossbow, a heavy crossbow that has been painstakingly loaded

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Speaker 1: over time and then sprung. So I could I could

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Speaker 1: see this idea of like a sprung trap working within

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00:20:47,560 --> 00:20:53,720
Speaker 1: the conceivably working within the confines of of of actual botany. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: with a certain type of movement, you can imagine it.

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Speaker 1: Less so when especially with something we're going to hear

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Speaker 1: about in the second though. I also want to add

387
00:21:00,480 --> 00:21:03,439
Speaker 1: a funny note that, in contrast to the passage I

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Speaker 1: just read that in the introduction, Bull says his purpose

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Speaker 1: in writing the book is to quote bring us into

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Speaker 1: a closer relation with and a better understanding and appreciation

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Speaker 1: of the mysterious and infinite wisdom of Nature's God. I

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Speaker 1: mean that certainly sounds like a devil created tree. There

393
00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:25,399
Speaker 1: ever is such a thing. But anyway, um so Bull

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Speaker 1: says that a gentleman of his acquaintance who lived sometime

395
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Speaker 1: in Central America affirms the existence of a plant like

396
00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:35,119
Speaker 1: this there, except was with a few variations. So he

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00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:38,760
Speaker 1: says that instead of lying on the ground, the filaments

398
00:21:38,800 --> 00:21:41,760
Speaker 1: of the plant quote moved themselves constantly in the air,

399
00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:45,920
Speaker 1: like so many huge serpents in an angry discussion, occasionally

400
00:21:46,040 --> 00:21:48,720
Speaker 1: darting from side to side as if striking at an

401
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:52,400
Speaker 1: imaginary foe. Now that sounds completely That sounds like not

402
00:21:52,520 --> 00:21:54,479
Speaker 1: a plant. Yeah, I mean the closest thing I can

403
00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:56,760
Speaker 1: think of that is, say, like a pussy willow with

404
00:21:56,920 --> 00:22:00,000
Speaker 1: with the wind blowing through it, you know, right. But anyway,

405
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:02,000
Speaker 1: He goes on to describe how this tree would crush

406
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Speaker 1: its prey and an embrace of spines, and he compares

407
00:22:04,600 --> 00:22:08,399
Speaker 1: it to the method of execution from alleged medieval torture

408
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:11,720
Speaker 1: dungeons known as the iron Maiden. He also claims that

409
00:22:11,760 --> 00:22:14,800
Speaker 1: in some regions, the locals are said to punish criminals

410
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:17,600
Speaker 1: by casting them into the tree, which is, to anybody

411
00:22:17,680 --> 00:22:20,679
Speaker 1: practicing witchcraft, you go straight into the tree, and that

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Speaker 1: the plant is known as yatte vo Spanish for I

413
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Speaker 1: see you. Though I double checked the translation, Apparently it

414
00:22:27,359 --> 00:22:30,800
Speaker 1: has a tensed inflection really meaning I already see you,

415
00:22:31,359 --> 00:22:33,879
Speaker 1: which is even a little creepier. I do like that

416
00:22:34,040 --> 00:22:37,760
Speaker 1: a and almost certainly non existent man eating plant. The

417
00:22:37,840 --> 00:22:42,119
Speaker 1: comparison is made to the almost certainly non existent, at

418
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:46,240
Speaker 1: least functional and functional terms iron maiden. Yeah, yeah, that

419
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:48,320
Speaker 1: that is the case, right. Like I've heard, there's no

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Speaker 1: good evidence that iron maidens were actually used. That is

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Speaker 1: my understanding. That they became kind of you know, they

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Speaker 1: became it. They were an invention and then took on

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Speaker 1: a new life. Is kind of a fetish, I him

424
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:05,360
Speaker 1: for those that wish to possess tortuous objects. Weird anyway.

425
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:06,800
Speaker 1: I hate to be a downer, but I think we

426
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:09,320
Speaker 1: can be pretty certain that this is all a bunch

427
00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:13,520
Speaker 1: of nonsense. Like this, this just sounds like complete fabrication.

428
00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:18,280
Speaker 1: There may be maybe or maybe massive, massive exaggerations of

429
00:23:18,359 --> 00:23:21,480
Speaker 1: something people actually saw that was in reality nothing like

430
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:25,199
Speaker 1: what's being described. There are no trees with killer squid

431
00:23:25,200 --> 00:23:28,280
Speaker 1: tentacles that we know of, and I don't even I

432
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:30,480
Speaker 1: think we can just say there are no such trees,

433
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:33,560
Speaker 1: because it doesn't make any biological sense to have trees

434
00:23:33,560 --> 00:23:37,119
Speaker 1: with writhing tentacles that move around constantly. Yeah. The closest

435
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 1: thing I can think after this would it would be

436
00:23:38,560 --> 00:23:40,359
Speaker 1: the fact that, yes, vines grow on the ground, and

437
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:43,199
Speaker 1: you could trip over a vine, you're like becoming tangled,

438
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:45,160
Speaker 1: and you could hit your head on a rock or yeah,

439
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:48,399
Speaker 1: sort of passive entrapment. That makes more sense, but hardly

440
00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:53,560
Speaker 1: a scenario that that I could see plants evolving to

441
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:57,040
Speaker 1: utilize as part of their you know, their primary survival

442
00:23:57,560 --> 00:24:02,159
Speaker 1: um tactic. Right. But we will talk about the biological

443
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,919
Speaker 1: possibilities of such a you know, mega fauna eating plant

444
00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 1: later on in this episode. But we should say that

445
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:11,879
Speaker 1: the yata Vo and and Bules accounts here are not

446
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:15,440
Speaker 1: the only supposedly true accounts, or at least presented as

447
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:19,440
Speaker 1: true by the by the recounters of of these man

448
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:22,200
Speaker 1: eating plants or these giant killer trees. Yeah, and these

449
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:26,640
Speaker 1: next two examples, like our previous two examples, are exotic

450
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:30,720
Speaker 1: trees and a foreign land as experienced or at least

451
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:35,000
Speaker 1: related by Westerners. So there's the Madagascar tree. And this

452
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:37,480
Speaker 1: was something of a sensation at the time appearing in

453
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:41,439
Speaker 1: publications of the seventies. The idea here was that you

454
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 1: had Western missionaries led by a German explorer called Carl Leachy,

455
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: and they accounted a tribe of cave dwelling tribespeople in

456
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 1: Madagascar who made sacrifices to a man eating plant um.

457
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:58,199
Speaker 1: There's a fun quote from this so where they talk

458
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:01,919
Speaker 1: about the atrocious cannibal that had been so inert and

459
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 1: dead came to sudden savage life. The slender, delicate palpy

460
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:10,119
Speaker 1: with the fury of starved serpents, quivered at the moment

461
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:14,280
Speaker 1: over her head. Then, as if instinct with demonic intelligence,

462
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:17,959
Speaker 1: fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her

463
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:20,680
Speaker 1: neck and arms. Then, while her awful screams and yet

464
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 1: more awful laughter, rose wildly to be instantly strangled down

465
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:29,880
Speaker 1: again into a gurgling moon, the tendrils, one after another,

466
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:34,400
Speaker 1: like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity,

467
00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: rose retracted themselves and wrapped her about in fold after fold,

468
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:42,520
Speaker 1: ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anaconda's

469
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: fastening upon their prey were well and whoever wrote it,

470
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: because that's one tremendous run on sentence. I love it.

471
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:54,919
Speaker 1: It's true you can't stop for a breath. That that

472
00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: is obviously some sensational detail. That does not sound like

473
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: like an account intending on clinical accuracy. Yeah, I I

474
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:05,320
Speaker 1: do not buy it for second. So though some people

475
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 1: have the plant has achieved something of cryptid status. Even

476
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:12,719
Speaker 1: the governor of Michigan, Chase Osborne, claimed that it was legit,

477
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 1: but no evidence has ever been presented, and it seems

478
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 1: to have been a little more than a literary fabrication. Yeah.

479
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 1: That just seems like another one of those kind of

480
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:25,160
Speaker 1: like Eurocentric stories of the exotic weirdness of other lands. Yeah,

481
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:27,000
Speaker 1: I mean another example, and I'm not going to go

482
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:29,639
Speaker 1: into the jail on this one. But Phil Robinson, in

483
00:26:30,359 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: one writing in Under the Punka described tales of man

484
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:37,400
Speaker 1: eating trees in southern Egypt, and this one is called

485
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:41,959
Speaker 1: the Nubian tree. Um. Yeah, I all these accounts, they

486
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:45,360
Speaker 1: really they have this sort of ickiness to it of, oh, well,

487
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:48,920
Speaker 1: a Westerner being. Westerners live in a special land where

488
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:52,040
Speaker 1: trees know their place, and we're we're above even predation

489
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:55,840
Speaker 1: by by other vertebrates. But but it's like everybody wants

490
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: these things to exist, Like you can't stand the idea

491
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: that they're not real. You just don't want them to

492
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:03,680
Speaker 1: be near you. They're they're hidden in some other place

493
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:07,080
Speaker 1: where you don't live, a savage land full of savage people,

494
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:10,440
Speaker 1: according to these recounters. Yeah, yeah, And I'm not trying

495
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,040
Speaker 1: to say that that's like the the only element at

496
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:15,280
Speaker 1: play here. I mean also, just like the idea of

497
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:17,720
Speaker 1: man eating plants is really cool. I don't want to

498
00:27:17,760 --> 00:27:20,680
Speaker 1: suggest that the desire to encounter a man eating tree

499
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:24,200
Speaker 1: is necessarily linked to some kind of colonial xenophobia, right,

500
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:27,640
Speaker 1: but but I feel like there are some elements there

501
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:30,880
Speaker 1: that are that are little key to to modern readers.

502
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 1: All Right, well, you know, on that note, let's take

503
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:36,560
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back, we will

504
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 1: we will ask the question, indeed, a question that the

505
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:42,640
Speaker 1: Glenn Danzig may have asked, Uh, why do plants kill?

506
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:52,200
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Tell me, Joe, why do why

507
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: do the plants kill? Well, that is a good question

508
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:56,440
Speaker 1: because in the realm of the well known, of course,

509
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 1: there are plants that kill. Right, So we've been talking

510
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:03,640
Speaker 1: about trees that prey on humans in in these legendary accounts,

511
00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:07,240
Speaker 1: that are pretty obviously false. But there are plants that

512
00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 1: kill not just with defensive toxins and thorns, but with

513
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:17,879
Speaker 1: predatory tactics. They've got specially designed morphological features to trap, poison, paralyzed, dissolve,

514
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:22,919
Speaker 1: and digest prey animals, generally insects. These are the predatory flora,

515
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:28,160
Speaker 1: if you will, the eaters. So let's discuss a few

516
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 1: scientific facts about the eaters. First, I think we should

517
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: ask the question why would a plant kill to eat?

518
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it for a second. A defining

519
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 1: feature of what makes a plant the plant kingdom is

520
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 1: the fact that plants, unlike us, are autotrophs. They make

521
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 1: their own food, so the energy that they need to

522
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: survive they get from photosynthesis. There's energy and the sunlight

523
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:54,240
Speaker 1: coming down from the sky, and they use that energy

524
00:28:54,320 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 1: from pure sunlight to create a chemical reaction where they

525
00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:00,760
Speaker 1: react carbon dioxide from the air and water in the

526
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:04,120
Speaker 1: end producing chemical energy in the form of glucose sugars.

527
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: I mean, when you look at the the energy economy

528
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: of life on Earth, generally speaking, plants are the only

529
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: ones with a with an ethical get out of jail

530
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,480
Speaker 1: free card, right like well, I mean, I guess you

531
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: also microorganisms that ar tropes. But yeah, but but everything

532
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 1: else is having to consume something else for its energy,

533
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: has to steal its energy. But here we have all

534
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:25,560
Speaker 1: these plants getting the energy from the sun. Well, it

535
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 1: seems cut and dry. I wouldn't let him off the

536
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 1: hook too much for the for the ethical quandaries, because

537
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: plants and will not necessarily plants, but auto trophes did

538
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: some atmospheric engineering that led to great extinction events and

539
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 1: killed probably more organisms than any mediator ever has. Yes,

540
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: but anyway, so plants get most of their energy from

541
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:48,040
Speaker 1: this harmless process, why would they ever need to trap

542
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: and insect and digest it. That just seems like it's

543
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 1: it's redundant. It doesn't make any sense. And to find

544
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:57,800
Speaker 1: the answer, we can look at where these carnivorous plants

545
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 1: usually live. So most often you're going to find them

546
00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 1: in inhospitable growing conditions, the nutrient poor soil of bogs,

547
00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: fins and swamps, places where there might be plenty of

548
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: access to sunlight, hopefully water too. But in the words

549
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 1: of the old man from pet cemetery, the ground is sour.

550
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 1: There is not enough nutrition in the ground, And so

551
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 1: what does nutrition mean for a plant? This is the

552
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:27,480
Speaker 1: first fact. By the way, carnivorous plants eat for nutrients,

553
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 1: not for energy. They don't need the chemical energy within you.

554
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:34,959
Speaker 1: They need your compounds or your molecules. So, just like

555
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:38,920
Speaker 1: human beings, plants rely on the environment for essential nutrients. Right. So,

556
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:41,440
Speaker 1: if if you're stuck in an environment where you get

557
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 1: plenty of food energy through sugar, but you have no

558
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 1: dietary access to some essential nutrient like vitamin C, your

559
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:52,640
Speaker 1: health will deteriorate. You've probably read about this on on

560
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: old like ships, you know, the sailors out on the

561
00:30:56,200 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 1: war or whatever. Exactly. So, without vitamin C, you're gonna

562
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:03,240
Speaker 1: start to experience some not so great symptoms. You're gonna

563
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 1: have dry splitting hair, rough scaly skin, inflamed gums and

564
00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:12,600
Speaker 1: gum bleeding, nose bleeds, wounds, and bruises that won't heal.

565
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:15,880
Speaker 1: This is all because your body can't synthesize vitamin C

566
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,400
Speaker 1: on its own. You have to get it from your diet,

567
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: and eventually, if your diet is really deficient in vitamin C,

568
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 1: you're gonna develop scurvy, in which you experience extreme fatigue,

569
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 1: loss of strength in the connective tissues all over your body,

570
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 1: Like your body needs vitamin C in order to make

571
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: collagen these for these connecting tissues and uh, and you're

572
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: also gonna have fragility in the walls of your blood vessels,

573
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 1: which is as not good as it sounds. Likewise, plants

574
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: need essential nutrients to write that. They can't make everything

575
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:49,200
Speaker 1: they need to survive within their bodies. They have to

576
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 1: get it from their environment. And one example of this

577
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:56,320
Speaker 1: is nitrogen. So most plants get nitrogen through their roots

578
00:31:56,360 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: from the soil around them. They reach out into the

579
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: ground with all of their root and they pull up

580
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 1: these molecules. They pull up these nitrogen atoms from the ground.

581
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: And if the soil is nitrogen poor or gets robbed

582
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:11,840
Speaker 1: of nitrogen somehow, like apparently this can happen if there's

583
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: over introduction of carbon into the soil, plants in the

584
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 1: area can suffer nitrogen deficiency, which is kind of a

585
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: scurvy for plants. You see with the stunted growth, leaves

586
00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: turning yellow and pale, and body structures that look kind

587
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 1: of wilted or sick. So, if you are the plant

588
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 1: equivalent of a vitamin C starved sailor with bleeding gums

589
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 1: and fragile joints living in this nutrient poor soil. Where

590
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 1: do you get your essential nutrients? Well, you could snatch

591
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 1: up and digest something that has plenty of nutritious molecules

592
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 1: in it, like an insect, you know. And and we

593
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:49,200
Speaker 1: discussed in a previous episode, the Weird Mushroom episode that

594
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:51,959
Speaker 1: you see this exact scenario play out with with oyster

595
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 1: mushrooms in which there's a nitrogen deficiency and therefore they

596
00:32:56,920 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 1: have adapted to prey on nematodes and in some cases spiders. Wow,

597
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And then

598
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 1: of course we turn around and eat the oyster mushrimps. Well,

599
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: they are delicious tasting. You never eat a spider on purpose,

600
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: but who knows how many times you you get one

601
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: down the chain. That's the old myth, right, the average

602
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 1: person eats sixty spiders a night. I think it's crawled

603
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 1: right in there. That's a myth, right, that's not true,

604
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 1: that's an Yeah, that's an exaggeration of the myth on

605
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 1: my part. Alright, so we have okay, so here's another

606
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 1: fact about carnivorous plants. Uh So the this trick, this

607
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 1: insect eating trick in order to get nitrogen and other

608
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 1: nutrients that the plant needs. It's a good trick. And

609
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 1: for that reason, the carnivorous phenotype evolved multiple times independently,

610
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: So there was no one carnivorous ancestor plant that all

611
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 1: carnivorous plants today can be traced back to. This is

612
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 1: an example, or scientists think this is an example of

613
00:33:56,840 --> 00:34:00,200
Speaker 1: what's known as convergent evolution. So it would be kind

614
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 1: of like flight. There's no one flying animal that all

615
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:08,319
Speaker 1: flying animals today evolved from. Flight is a solution that

616
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: was reached by evolution in different branches of the tree

617
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:15,920
Speaker 1: of life, independently and at different times. Uh coast three

618
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,520
Speaker 1: different times. Yeah, Carnivory in in plants is the same way.

619
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: It's a survival strategy that's so good. Different branches on

620
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: the tree of life adopted separately in separate evolutionary contexts. Uh.

621
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: Let's let's go to a third fact related to the

622
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 1: previous one. Carnivorous plants come in a lot of different varieties.

623
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:37,799
Speaker 1: You're probably familiar with venus fly traps, but the superstars, Yeah,

624
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 1: but they're not the only ones. There are multiple different

625
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:44,319
Speaker 1: types of carnivorous plants. It actually occurs in According to

626
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: one source, I found at least nine families, nineteen genera,

627
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,799
Speaker 1: and six hundred species of plant, and so it could

628
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: be more by now. Yeah, I think just a few

629
00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 1: years ago it was that I saw a source saying

630
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 1: five hundreds. So apparently just continually or discovering new examples. Yeah,

631
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:02,960
Speaker 1: So what are the different types of carnivorous plants. Well,

632
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:05,800
Speaker 1: you have a few different models, a few different methods

633
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:10,240
Speaker 1: out there. First of all, snap trap plants, venus fly traps,

634
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:14,320
Speaker 1: water wheel plants. This is the the iconic example of

635
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 1: the little trap that slowly opens and then a fly

636
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,799
Speaker 1: lights in the middle and the gates close over it.

637
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of a trigger plate kind of. Yeah,

638
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: it's exactly has a trigger plate. It works very much

639
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 1: like a like like I said, like a like a

640
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:29,759
Speaker 1: wolf trap or a fox trap or a bear trap. Right,

641
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:33,280
Speaker 1: and uh, and these are you know, these are famous

642
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 1: because they're beautiful, they're they're relatively easy to cultivate or

643
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 1: at least by the store and keep alive for a

644
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:41,160
Speaker 1: certain period of time in your home. I had one

645
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: when I was a kid one time and I think

646
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:46,360
Speaker 1: consolation for the fact that my mom took me to

647
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:50,359
Speaker 1: a very long, boring time at a plant nursery where

648
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:52,520
Speaker 1: she was buying some flowers or something. I asked and

649
00:35:52,600 --> 00:35:55,160
Speaker 1: returned to get this venus fly trap, and I got

650
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:58,080
Speaker 1: it and it was very cool. But I recall I

651
00:35:58,120 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: got at home and I couldn't get it to close

652
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: on any thing. Oh yeah, I remember being I never

653
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:04,520
Speaker 1: had one as a kid, though certainly it would be

654
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:06,440
Speaker 1: the only plant I would have been interested in as

655
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:09,320
Speaker 1: a child. I had. I had one for a while,

656
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:12,440
Speaker 1: maybe ten years ago. My wife and I had one

657
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:15,640
Speaker 1: called Monster Tom, and we kept hoping it would catch flies.

658
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:16,919
Speaker 1: I would be one of those things where you would

659
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 1: let a fly live in the house because you're like,

660
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 1: all right, let Monster Time take care of it. I

661
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:22,560
Speaker 1: don't think the Monster Time ever ate a single fly,

662
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: but it was still a beautiful little plant app around.

663
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 1: I wonder if the domesticated venus fly traps have gotten soft,

664
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they just don't pray on flies, like

665
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:33,879
Speaker 1: they just know they've got to have like big beautiful eyelashes, right,

666
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 1: I mean, because but of course, these these are known

667
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 1: as the snap trap plants, and they're not the only

668
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: kind of This also includes water wheel plants, right do

669
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 1: we say that? Yes, Okay, I'm sorry, but there are

670
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:50,200
Speaker 1: plenty of other kinds too well, like how about pitfall traps. Oh. Yeah,

671
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:53,839
Speaker 1: the main example of this being picture plants. Yeah, which

672
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:56,720
Speaker 1: is which is one? I believe they have them in Newfoundland, Canada,

673
00:36:56,920 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: and that's where I kind of encountered them early on

674
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:02,360
Speaker 1: one really good yeah, or at least some variety of them,

675
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: because they're pretty widespread and these are lovely specimens. The

676
00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:10,920
Speaker 1: leaves fold into deep, slippery pools field with digestive ensigns,

677
00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:16,359
Speaker 1: So it's essentially a champagne flute that's filled with insect death. Yeah,

678
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 1: but with it's got the slippery slide going down into it. Yeah,

679
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,279
Speaker 1: so the the insect light slides down scot and the

680
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 1: goo and dissolves. So it's it's it's kind of monstrous,

681
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 1: but also be their beautiful plants. So you seem a

682
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:31,880
Speaker 1: lot of botanical gardens. I'm always seeing them, often with

683
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:35,200
Speaker 1: some kind of chemical attractant to to bring the insects in,

684
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:38,839
Speaker 1: to lure them down. Uh. And then there there's something

685
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 1: I've read about the special surfaces, right, like the surfaces

686
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 1: on the lip of the picture plant becomes slippery when wet,

687
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: so it's hard to scramble back up them and just

688
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:51,319
Speaker 1: kind of slide, uh intellectably down into the pit. Yeah,

689
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:54,759
Speaker 1: and of course it's worth worth reminding everyone. Like one

690
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:57,879
Speaker 1: of the key things here is that is that plants

691
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:00,840
Speaker 1: and insects and have a hat if a long history

692
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:04,520
Speaker 1: with insects serving as pollinators for for so for so

693
00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 1: many different plant varieties. Oh yeah, there's actually a study

694
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: about that I want to mention in a few minutes here.

695
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 1: But anyway, the picture plants, Yeah, that's so they're they're

696
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:18,360
Speaker 1: they're numerous varieties of this. And the earliest fossil evidence

697
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:21,879
Speaker 1: of a carnivorous plant might be a picture plant, uh,

698
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: the mid early Cretaceous uh Archaeomorpha long as servia, was

699
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: discovered in what's now northeastern China, and researchers are now

700
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 1: split on the matter, with newer research arguing than it

701
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 1: might not be a picture plan at all, some of

702
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: the others, especially the earlier papers, saying that, oh this,

703
00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: this definitely is a picture plan or at least sort

704
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:45,799
Speaker 1: of a proto picture plant, and so it's it's kind

705
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:49,879
Speaker 1: of a problematic fossil right now. But there's a possibility

706
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:52,320
Speaker 1: other than that that there's not a whole lot of

707
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:54,879
Speaker 1: fossil evidence of carnivorous plants. So any dreams you might

708
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 1: have out there listeners for a for like a prehistoric

709
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:05,920
Speaker 1: giantly like a giant one that's eating dinosaurs or prehistarring mammals, Uh, well,

710
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:08,239
Speaker 1: it's not in the fossil record at any rate. Man,

711
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 1: that's a bummer. Three. History gives us giant toads, giant scorpions,

712
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 1: but no giant carniverous plants. Of course, there are other

713
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 1: varieties of carnivorous plants as well. There are lobster trap plants. Oh,

714
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:24,719
Speaker 1: these are great. There They go by the pickle jar principle, right, Yeah,

715
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:26,799
Speaker 1: you reach in, you grab the pickles, and you can't

716
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:28,840
Speaker 1: get your hand back out right or indeed, as the

717
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 1: name applies, lobster traps various crab traps. Does anyone has

718
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:35,160
Speaker 1: ever used these? Know that the creature crawls in, but

719
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 1: then it can't quit get out again. And that's exactly

720
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:42,600
Speaker 1: how these plants that do that with through special structures

721
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:45,799
Speaker 1: that end up trapping the creature. Yeah, I think there's

722
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:49,080
Speaker 1: a certain element of this and I think it's actually

723
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:51,399
Speaker 1: a type of picture plant, but it had there's an

724
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: element of easier to get in and apparently easy to

725
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 1: get out until you're inside. In uh In the cobra lily,

726
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: this cool example of an American carnivorous plant that I found.

727
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:05,000
Speaker 1: It grows in I think northern California and southern Oregon.

728
00:40:05,520 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: Uh And it's this beautiful looking plant that has a

729
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: has a picture and is in some way carnivorous. But

730
00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:14,800
Speaker 1: it's got an opening on the bottom and then the top.

731
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:17,359
Speaker 1: It's kind of translucent so the light can come through,

732
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: so I assume to an insect, it looks kind of

733
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:22,440
Speaker 1: like you can exit through the top until you get inside,

734
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,880
Speaker 1: all right. Up next, we have sticky traps a k a.

735
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:30,680
Speaker 1: Flied paper traps, and examples here include sun dues and butterwartz.

736
00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 1: So the leaves exude a sticky substance that catches lighting insects.

737
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:40,040
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty basic, but hey, it's a winning design. I mean,

738
00:40:40,080 --> 00:40:42,400
Speaker 1: I've I've got the willies from glue traps because I

739
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 1: know the stories of people who have tried to use

740
00:40:44,600 --> 00:40:46,919
Speaker 1: glue traps to catch rodents in their house. And that's

741
00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: just a sad scene. Yeah. The tragedy of glue traps

742
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: is that they sound humane on the surface of things

743
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: not but they're they're not at all, especially when you

744
00:40:56,440 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: when you realize that reptiles that gets caught in them,

745
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 1: they're going to suffer a long time because they've evolved

746
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:07,359
Speaker 1: to to to go a long time between meals. Uh so, hey,

747
00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 1: if you do. I have had to remove a snake

748
00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:12,320
Speaker 1: from a glue trap before, and if you use oil,

749
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 1: that will really help. I think I think we used

750
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:18,120
Speaker 1: olive oil and we're able to free a specimen. Yeah,

751
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Well, well, I don't know, it's amazing. I

752
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:24,279
Speaker 1: didn't know you were such a hero, Robert. Well, it was.

753
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 1: I feel like, can you come get my cat out

754
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: of the tree? Can you come get my snake out

755
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:31,360
Speaker 1: of a glue trap? Well? I have you. I have

756
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:33,400
Speaker 1: found that if I am if I encounter an animal

757
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:36,520
Speaker 1: with my son, I'm often even more humane, Like not

758
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:38,279
Speaker 1: not so much snakes, because I generally am going to

759
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 1: be cool with snakes. But this most recent trip, we

760
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:44,919
Speaker 1: came across some blackwood of spiders and like, actually three,

761
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:48,399
Speaker 1: you're like really close to um to a house, and uh,

762
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 1: you know, normally once the instinct that I grew up

763
00:41:51,760 --> 00:41:53,959
Speaker 1: with is if you find a blackwoodo of spider, you

764
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: go ahead and kill it because it's you know, it's

765
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 1: a highly it's it's not a good animal have around.

766
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: You don't want that thing by me, right, I feel

767
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:03,960
Speaker 1: like we should learn to resist that impulse. I think

768
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: so too. I like, you know, if it's not hurting us,

769
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:09,879
Speaker 1: then we shouldn't crush it. So we just checked it out.

770
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: We actually caught one and put it in a little

771
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:12,759
Speaker 1: glass and looked at it for a little bit and

772
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 1: then released it further away from the house. But then,

773
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:20,280
Speaker 1: of course there is one other major type of of

774
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: of carniversus plant, right, these suction traps. Yes, these involve

775
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:26,840
Speaker 1: highly modified leaves in the shape of a bladder with

776
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: a hinge door lined with trigger hairs. H So these

777
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:33,759
Speaker 1: are the ones, if I'm picturing them correctly. Um, these

778
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 1: are the ones that kind of remind one of of

779
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: pipe organs with a little bit on the top, like

780
00:42:40,080 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: a little lid on the top of the organ pipe. Yeah, okay,

781
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:46,319
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen that, or maybe it's

782
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 1: more like no, no, it's more like the I'm I'm

783
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:51,480
Speaker 1: comparing it to cartoons. I think in my mind we

784
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:53,920
Speaker 1: have like a steam engine or something, and they have

785
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:56,440
Speaker 1: the little top that flips up on the top of

786
00:42:56,480 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 1: the the sauce pipe. Yeah, kind of similar to that. Okay,

787
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 1: uh so, hey, let's hit the next fact about carnivorous plants.

788
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: Among the killer plants, you've got a couple of different

789
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 1: major varieties, right, So you've got carnivores and then you've

790
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 1: got the proto carnivores proto carnivorous plants. So what what

791
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 1: would we mean by that? A proto carnivorous plant is

792
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 1: a plant that has the tendency to catch and kill prey,

793
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:25,759
Speaker 1: but doesn't yet have the capacity to directly digest the meal. So,

794
00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:28,400
Speaker 1: for example, there are some picture plants that do not

795
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: produce their own digestive enzymes, but rely on bacteria to

796
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 1: dissolve organic matter in the traps. And some botanists would

797
00:43:36,120 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 1: class proto carnivorous plants as taxons that are part of

798
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:43,000
Speaker 1: the way. They're right there on the evolutionary path to

799
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:49,040
Speaker 1: becoming carnivores. Yeah, it's interesting when we consider that that

800
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:52,800
Speaker 1: many carnivore lineages, you know, they enter into the carnivore

801
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 1: game via proto carnivore lifestyle. Yeah, so yeah, it's it's

802
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like seeing evolution in action, and

803
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:03,880
Speaker 1: I can't help it. To consider the relationship between figs

804
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: and fig wasps, that's interesting, which I think is a

805
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 1: great example of, you know, a complex relationship, really a

806
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:16,960
Speaker 1: mutualistic relationship between a plant and a particular insects species.

807
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:19,840
Speaker 1: I've never heard this mentioned as an example of of

808
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 1: a carnivorous plant, but Robert tell us how it goes down.

809
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:25,440
Speaker 1: What's the relationship? All right? Well, uh, again, it's a

810
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:29,880
Speaker 1: mutualistic relationship. But there there's some there's some nutrients absorbed

811
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: to at the end of the story. So the basic

812
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:36,840
Speaker 1: scenario here is that fig trees need wasps to transport

813
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:39,320
Speaker 1: pollen from one plant to the other. The plant provides

814
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:41,840
Speaker 1: a fig wasp with their only source of food and

815
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:46,319
Speaker 1: shelter um. What we call a fig is actually a

816
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:49,239
Speaker 1: structure called a seconium, and it's really more of an

817
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 1: inverted flower than a fruit, with all its reproductive parts

818
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: located inside. And after a female fig wasp flies over

819
00:44:57,120 --> 00:44:59,160
Speaker 1: from her home fig plant, she has to travel to

820
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 1: the center of seconium to lay her eggs, and to

821
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 1: get there, she climbs down a narrow passage called the

822
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:08,319
Speaker 1: osteo passage is so cramped that she scrapes off her

823
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 1: wings and her antenna during the descent. It's just a real,

824
00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:14,240
Speaker 1: real nightmare scenario. And then once inside, there's no getting

825
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 1: back out and flying to another plant. Uh, it's like

826
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:19,720
Speaker 1: like finding a narrow hole in a cemetery and climbing

827
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:21,960
Speaker 1: down into a grave, just ripping a bunch of skin

828
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:24,920
Speaker 1: off in the process. And then when she's down there, well,

829
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:27,359
Speaker 1: she better hope she's in the right place because fig

830
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:30,839
Speaker 1: plants boast two kinds of figs, male caprifigs and then

831
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: female edible figs. If she if she winds up an

832
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:37,560
Speaker 1: inedible with fig she eventually dies from exhaustion or starvation.

833
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:40,319
Speaker 1: She can't lay her eggs there, the stylus is in

834
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: the way, but she at least delivers the pollens, which

835
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:45,919
Speaker 1: is kind of a cool, a cruel trick, right. Um,

836
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 1: we see the mutualistic aspect here, but it also kind

837
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:52,239
Speaker 1: of breaking down right Like the right plant, the plant

838
00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:55,319
Speaker 1: gets what it wants, but the wasp doesn't get what

839
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:58,640
Speaker 1: it wants. Now she enters the male caprifig, she'll find

840
00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:01,640
Speaker 1: male flower parts perfectly shaped to hold the eggs. She'll

841
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:04,320
Speaker 1: eventually lay. The eggs grow into larva, which then developed

842
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:10,160
Speaker 1: into male and female wasps, which emerge after hatching. The blind, wingless,

843
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: wingless male wasp will spend the remainder of their lives

844
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:16,720
Speaker 1: digging tunnels through the fig. The female wasps then emerge

845
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: through these tunnels and fly off to find a new fig,

846
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:24,200
Speaker 1: carrying pollen with them. Now, and that is a crazy process, Yeah,

847
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 1: it is. It's it's it's wondrous, wondrous. I had figs

848
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:31,359
Speaker 1: in my backyard this this year, and uh I thought

849
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:33,080
Speaker 1: about it every time I went out there to check

850
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:35,759
Speaker 1: on them. Well, wait, then, is it accurate to say that,

851
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: in some sense the fig tree is consuming the wasp

852
00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:42,360
Speaker 1: that is stuck inside it. Yes, because this is what

853
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 1: happens in the death fig um. When a female wasp

854
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:51,000
Speaker 1: dies inside an edible fig, and enzyme in the fig

855
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 1: called icing breaks down her carcass into protein. So the

856
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:59,160
Speaker 1: fig basically digests the dead insect, making it a part

857
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:02,759
Speaker 1: of the resulting ripened fruit. The crunchy the crunchy bits,

858
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:06,040
Speaker 1: and the figs, though or seeds, not anatomical parts of

859
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,040
Speaker 1: the wasp in case, and he was wondering. Now, One

860
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:11,440
Speaker 1: thing I do think about here is that a fig

861
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,560
Speaker 1: tree doesn't seem to me to be something that is

862
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:18,360
Speaker 1: suffering from a lack of nitrogen or some other nutrient

863
00:47:18,560 --> 00:47:21,960
Speaker 1: or or is it. I mean that that's not my

864
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: understanding that it's necessarily suffering, but it just gets some

865
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:29,200
Speaker 1: kind of maybe even if it could survive without these wasps,

866
00:47:29,239 --> 00:47:31,120
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I know that it could, but even

867
00:47:31,120 --> 00:47:33,600
Speaker 1: if it could, it just gets a little extra boost.

868
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 1: I guess it's like using every part of the buffalo, right,

869
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 1: I mean, the wasp is in there, it's it's not

870
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:43,399
Speaker 1: going anywhere. Why not digested? Why not digested? I mean

871
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: to sort of anthromorp anthropomorphize the evolutionary process here of bit.

872
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:51,200
Speaker 1: But it's it's an interesting example. I think of certainly

873
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:56,360
Speaker 1: a complex relationship, a mutualistic relationship where it's kind of

874
00:47:56,360 --> 00:47:58,799
Speaker 1: like thinking of it as a corporation. Right, So you

875
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: have you have Big Treek Corp. You know, and they

876
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:05,840
Speaker 1: have all these different departments, and most of the departments

877
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 1: are related to fruit production and UH and and wasp

878
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:15,719
Speaker 1: relations but there is definitely a wasp dissolving and digesting department.

879
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:18,919
Speaker 1: It's not the primary department. It's on the basement. Yeah,

880
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:21,439
Speaker 1: it's in the basement, but it's still plays a role

881
00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:24,879
Speaker 1: in the overall company structure. Okay, okay uh. And it's

882
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: you always got to put the payroll in. Yeah. Now,

883
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 1: I wanted to see if there was any interesting new

884
00:48:35,200 --> 00:48:38,319
Speaker 1: research from this year on on carnivorous plants, and I

885
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:40,320
Speaker 1: can't across one paper I thought was kind of interesting.

886
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 1: It's called Pollinator prey conflicts and carnivorous Plants when flower

887
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: and trap properties mean life or death from scientific reports

888
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:52,759
Speaker 1: published this year in and it was studying plants of

889
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 1: the genus Drosera, which are the sun dues. Right, we

890
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:59,240
Speaker 1: talked about those the sticky trap plants, and its studied

891
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:02,239
Speaker 1: how the play an't solve a particular problem if you've

892
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:05,600
Speaker 1: thought about this. If you're a carnivorous plant that wants

893
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:09,320
Speaker 1: to draw insects into a death trap, but you're also

894
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:12,720
Speaker 1: a flowering plant that wants insects to spread your pollen

895
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:15,479
Speaker 1: for reproduction, how do you make sure that you don't

896
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:18,280
Speaker 1: trap and kill the insects that you need to pollinate

897
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:22,920
Speaker 1: your flowers. Um, I'm about to say a metaphor for

898
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: this that might be the worst metaphor I've ever tried

899
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 1: on this show, So so stop me if I'm going

900
00:49:27,600 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: off the rails. It's kind of like if if you

901
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: couldn't have sex without the help of a certain species

902
00:49:36,160 --> 00:49:40,600
Speaker 1: of live wild rat, but you also have rat traps

903
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:44,439
Speaker 1: all over your house, like kill traps. This would seem

904
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:49,120
Speaker 1: to lower your reproductive fitness. So instead, what the drosera

905
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 1: plants do and study is they offer different visual, spatial,

906
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:58,280
Speaker 1: and chemical signals that selectively attract nonpollinators to the traps,

907
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:02,319
Speaker 1: so that they've adapted to have selective appeals in the

908
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:06,799
Speaker 1: traps versus in the pollinating structures. What's kind of like

909
00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:09,840
Speaker 1: imagining these, um, these hotels and horror movies where they

910
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:12,960
Speaker 1: cannibalize the guests, like you gotta keep your YELP rating

911
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 1: up enough you get more guests, Exactly, You've got to

912
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:18,280
Speaker 1: have enough real guests. But then at the same time,

913
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 1: you need guests to eat, so you've got to find

914
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 1: that balance. Yeah, So in in my horrible analogy, it

915
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:26,480
Speaker 1: would be sort of like having traps that are designed

916
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:29,839
Speaker 1: to to kill all the rats, except your sex rat

917
00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:33,680
Speaker 1: that you need for reproduction. So yeah, let's let's discuss

918
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:37,760
Speaker 1: the real carnivorous plants, the plants that really do prey

919
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 1: on vertebrates. Okay, well, we've got to start by discussing

920
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 1: the alleged ones that prey on vertebrates. So the one

921
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:47,799
Speaker 1: I want to start with is the Pulla chill Insis. So,

922
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:50,960
Speaker 1: this is a bromiliad plant that grows in the arid

923
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:53,719
Speaker 1: parts of the Andes in South America. It's known as

924
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 1: Pulla chill insists. And it's sort of because it's a bromiliad,

925
00:50:56,800 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 1: it's going to be a cousin of like the pineapple,

926
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:01,399
Speaker 1: and it kind of looks like a pineapple. It looks

927
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:06,560
Speaker 1: like a giant, woody pineapple with yellow green spikes extending

928
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,520
Speaker 1: out at an inclined angle from the trunk. And it

929
00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:12,799
Speaker 1: has been widely reported on popular websites and a few

930
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 1: news sources that this plant is known as the quote

931
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:20,879
Speaker 1: sheep eating plant because it sometimes feeds on the carcasses

932
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:26,040
Speaker 1: of livestock caught in its spines. For example, there's ABC

933
00:51:26,200 --> 00:51:29,839
Speaker 1: news piece about how the Royal Horticultural Society and Great

934
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:32,200
Speaker 1: Britain managed to grow one of these plants in a

935
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 1: greenhouse in Surrey, and the story was about how the

936
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:37,400
Speaker 1: plant was about to flower. I think it takes a

937
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:40,280
Speaker 1: long time to do that, But the article claims quote

938
00:51:40,640 --> 00:51:43,960
Speaker 1: in the andies it uses its sharp spines to snare

939
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 1: and trap sheep and other animals, which slowly starved to death.

940
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:51,240
Speaker 1: The animals then decay at the base of the plant,

941
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 1: acting as a fertilizer. The RHS feeds its specimen on

942
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:58,359
Speaker 1: liquid fertilizer, and then the quote a horticulture is saying

943
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:01,240
Speaker 1: that obviously would be problematic who feed this plant quote

944
00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: its natural diet um. So, despite these reports, most of

945
00:52:06,840 --> 00:52:11,360
Speaker 1: which sort of repeat the same thin summary claims over another,

946
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 1: over and over, I have been unable to find any

947
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: evidence in the scientific literature that these plants are really

948
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:20,840
Speaker 1: known to do this to trap and kill large animals

949
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:23,680
Speaker 1: like sheep, And honestly, looking at a bunch of pictures

950
00:52:23,680 --> 00:52:26,359
Speaker 1: of them, I'm also having a hard time seeing how

951
00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:29,480
Speaker 1: this would happen, like they look like they would be

952
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:33,480
Speaker 1: painful to fall into, but not deadly traps. Also, I've

953
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:35,560
Speaker 1: read a few accounts of people who claim to work

954
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:39,680
Speaker 1: around the puya and don't report anything about this. So

955
00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 1: this makes it seem to me like this phenomenon of

956
00:52:42,200 --> 00:52:46,600
Speaker 1: sheep becoming trapped in puya growth, dying, and then fertilizing

957
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:50,320
Speaker 1: the base of the plant is something that maybe conceivably

958
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:53,840
Speaker 1: could happen by coincidence. Like I guess you could accept

959
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:57,719
Speaker 1: that rotting animal flesh is generally a decent fertilizer, but

960
00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:01,319
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't happen off and enough to qualify as

961
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:04,840
Speaker 1: a real evolutionary adaptation by the plant. Yeah. And plus,

962
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:06,560
Speaker 1: I mean, there are plenty of animals that are already

963
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 1: going to play prey on a sheep, And then if

964
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 1: you're having sheep that are raised and based on an

965
00:53:13,239 --> 00:53:16,520
Speaker 1: artificial population of sheep, they're gonna be there's gonna be

966
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 1: a higher susceptibility to strange it unnatural deaths. Right. Yeah,

967
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: So I'm skeptical of this one. I think unless somebody

968
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:26,080
Speaker 1: can send us some really good evidence that this actually

969
00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:27,959
Speaker 1: takes place, I'm going to say this one actually looks

970
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:30,239
Speaker 1: like a myth to me that has somehow made it

971
00:53:30,280 --> 00:53:33,120
Speaker 1: into news reports. I think that is a safe bet.

972
00:53:33,719 --> 00:53:36,919
Speaker 1: But then there's another one that is definitely not a myth.

973
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 1: Though we have to be a little careful and how

974
00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 1: we characterize it. So I want to talk about nepenthees,

975
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:46,640
Speaker 1: the tropical picture plants. So these are pitfall traps, right,

976
00:53:46,680 --> 00:53:49,319
Speaker 1: Like we've talked about picture plants where they've got a uh,

977
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:52,840
Speaker 1: they've got a deep well that has some killer fluids

978
00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: in it, and they want you to fall in and

979
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 1: get stuck and die and dissolve. Now it's it's definitely

980
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:04,120
Speaker 1: worth saying that the natural prey of these plants are invertebrates.

981
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:07,800
Speaker 1: They're going to be insects. But some of these traps

982
00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 1: can grow like more than forty centimeters deep or hold

983
00:54:11,239 --> 00:54:15,919
Speaker 1: up to two liters of digestive fluid. That's huge. That's

984
00:54:15,920 --> 00:54:18,360
Speaker 1: like a you know, that's like a big soda bottle.

985
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:23,360
Speaker 1: Like with some of its various species having traps this big,

986
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:26,799
Speaker 1: it's sort of natural to wonder if anything bigger than

987
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 1: an insect ever gets digested, And I'd say the answer

988
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 1: appears to be both no and yes. So, like I said,

989
00:54:34,520 --> 00:54:37,759
Speaker 1: first of all, invertebrates are clearly the main prey of

990
00:54:37,880 --> 00:54:43,040
Speaker 1: these plants. Um they they appear insectivorous by evolutionary design,

991
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:46,359
Speaker 1: But animals come into the picture as well. One one

992
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:49,920
Speaker 1: sense is more mutualistic. Like, there are several picture plants

993
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:53,440
Speaker 1: that seem to have this non predatory symbiotic relationship with

994
00:54:53,560 --> 00:54:57,520
Speaker 1: vertebrates like birds, bats, and shrews. And it works like this.

995
00:54:57,840 --> 00:55:00,840
Speaker 1: You've got a picture and it's got sweet eat nectar

996
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: all along the outer surface, and a bird or a

997
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:07,960
Speaker 1: forest rodent comes along besides, I want some of that nectar,

998
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:10,319
Speaker 1: And while it's hanging out of the opening of the

999
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:14,840
Speaker 1: picture plant, it just happens to deposit some feces inside. Now,

1000
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:17,319
Speaker 1: normally you would not expect an organism to have an

1001
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 1: adaptation that incentivizes animals to poop inside it. But guess

1002
00:55:21,920 --> 00:55:26,440
Speaker 1: what those feces are rich in nitrogen? Yeah, exactly the

1003
00:55:26,520 --> 00:55:29,160
Speaker 1: nutrients that the plant would normally need to get by

1004
00:55:29,239 --> 00:55:33,480
Speaker 1: killing insects. So there are types of picture plants that

1005
00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:36,440
Speaker 1: also seem to provide like a roosting shelter for bats

1006
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:38,520
Speaker 1: as well, and the bats to do the same thing.

1007
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:41,200
Speaker 1: They poop into the plant and the plant gets some

1008
00:55:41,239 --> 00:55:45,279
Speaker 1: sweet nitrogen out of it. But with some of the

1009
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:49,480
Speaker 1: larger tropical pictures, what if a small mammal or two

1010
00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:53,319
Speaker 1: fall all the way in, would it be able to

1011
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:56,239
Speaker 1: get out? And if not, would the plant eat it?

1012
00:55:56,920 --> 00:56:00,520
Speaker 1: I think the answer is dinging ding. You bet. This

1013
00:56:00,560 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 1: is this nightmare scenario I encounter anytime I use a

1014
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 1: composting toilet. Oh. No, those things smell bad enough anyway. Yeah,

1015
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:08,759
Speaker 1: even when they do. I was in a really good

1016
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:11,400
Speaker 1: one last week. Oh I shouldn't bad mouth, and I'm sorry.

1017
00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:13,799
Speaker 1: I've been near one that smelled really bad. But it's

1018
00:56:13,800 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: still horrifying because especially like in my case, I'm putting

1019
00:56:17,200 --> 00:56:18,920
Speaker 1: my son on it, and I was like, oh, he

1020
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:20,439
Speaker 1: could just fall right down there, and then I guess

1021
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:24,719
Speaker 1: I'd have to go down there too, like the fluke man. Right, Yeah,

1022
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:28,680
Speaker 1: oh man, this is a horrifying scenario falling into a

1023
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 1: picture trap. God. So here's the evidence. There is a

1024
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:37,960
Speaker 1: photo and video documentation online of a nepenthes research expedition

1025
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:42,520
Speaker 1: that took place first in October, and they were going

1026
00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:45,759
Speaker 1: to Mount Victoria in the Philippines and they were studying

1027
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:49,439
Speaker 1: specimens of nepenthees at in Burrow I wouldn't named after

1028
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:53,440
Speaker 1: our our favorite at in Burgos endemic to the region

1029
00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:57,839
Speaker 1: and with the species not and not Attenburgh. But they

1030
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:02,160
Speaker 1: found one picture of this plant that contained a wild

1031
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 1: caught dead tree shrew, and they showed it in photos

1032
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:08,399
Speaker 1: and on video, and a return expedition two months later

1033
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:12,239
Speaker 1: showed the skeletal remains of the shrew covered in a

1034
00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:14,640
Speaker 1: sort of layer of first So essentially all the soft

1035
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 1: tissues of the tree shrew appeared to have been digested

1036
00:57:18,280 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: by the plant. So does the picture plant naturally target

1037
00:57:23,200 --> 00:57:27,040
Speaker 1: vertebrate mammals as prey. Probably not, but if there's one

1038
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:30,240
Speaker 1: on offer, yeah, I don't mind if I do. That

1039
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:32,960
Speaker 1: seems to be the approach. But now the real question

1040
00:57:33,080 --> 00:57:36,680
Speaker 1: is could it be possible for a real world plant

1041
00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: to be the man eating tree, that the killer tree

1042
00:57:40,120 --> 00:57:43,600
Speaker 1: that would trap and kill large megafauna like a deer

1043
00:57:43,960 --> 00:57:48,680
Speaker 1: or a bear or a human being mm or even

1044
00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:50,880
Speaker 1: something like a raccoon? Right? I mean, oh yeah, it's

1045
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:54,560
Speaker 1: settling for a raccoon medium size because because the even

1046
00:57:54,560 --> 00:57:57,880
Speaker 1: the the bat possibility and the shrew possibility is kind

1047
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: of iffy, right, So anything larger than it becomes increasingly fantastic. Yeah.

1048
00:58:03,880 --> 00:58:05,680
Speaker 1: So I will say, first of all, I found no

1049
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:08,439
Speaker 1: evidence that a plant like this already exists. We'll start

1050
00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:10,640
Speaker 1: with the bad news, but the good news or maybe

1051
00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:12,440
Speaker 1: the bad news, who knows what's good and bad. It

1052
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:15,360
Speaker 1: depends where you stand on plants killing and eating humans.

1053
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 1: Is that there's some interesting leads. So first of all,

1054
00:58:18,080 --> 00:58:21,200
Speaker 1: I want to consider the possibility of a proto carnivorous

1055
00:58:21,200 --> 00:58:25,120
Speaker 1: bramble trap. So I watched a video blog and this

1056
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:28,080
Speaker 1: is not scientific information. This was a video blog by

1057
00:58:28,120 --> 00:58:32,720
Speaker 1: an Irish sheep farmer, and this guy was personally insisting

1058
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 1: that the BlackBerry brambles on his land are carnivorous, or

1059
00:58:37,880 --> 00:58:40,240
Speaker 1: he called them carnivorous. I think more accurately you would

1060
00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:44,600
Speaker 1: call them proto carnivorous. But if he's correct, But here's

1061
00:58:44,640 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: his argument. He says by demonstrating how his sheep become

1062
00:58:49,320 --> 00:58:52,000
Speaker 1: trapped in these brambles all the time, they get like

1063
00:58:52,040 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 1: they get their wooly coats caught in the hook like thorns,

1064
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:57,640
Speaker 1: and then they struggle and they get more and more

1065
00:58:57,680 --> 00:59:00,400
Speaker 1: tangled in the branches as they struggle to a escape.

1066
00:59:01,560 --> 00:59:04,040
Speaker 1: That's kind of interesting. I guess the idea is that

1067
00:59:04,080 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 1: they get caught, they can't escape, they die. It's kind

1068
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:10,600
Speaker 1: of like what was being alleged with the Puya chilensis,

1069
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:13,520
Speaker 1: that they would fall down near the base of the plant,

1070
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:16,720
Speaker 1: rot and fertilize the soil. Well, even if they in

1071
00:59:16,840 --> 00:59:20,000
Speaker 1: doing this, if they didn't kill the animal outright, if

1072
00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:22,760
Speaker 1: they even if they didn't allow starvation to occur, they

1073
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:26,920
Speaker 1: could conceivably you could conceivably have the plant just holding

1074
00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:29,320
Speaker 1: it long enough for a predator to come take advantage

1075
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:32,240
Speaker 1: of it, eat part of it, and then but still

1076
00:59:32,320 --> 00:59:35,440
Speaker 1: leave portions of the creature to rot. Oh, that's interesting too,

1077
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:38,000
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that now. I do want to

1078
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:41,240
Speaker 1: say I'm not going to endorse the hypothesis of carnivorous

1079
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:44,320
Speaker 1: brambles here because I think we don't have evidence that

1080
00:59:44,080 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 1: that's necessarily what's going on. I think you'd have to

1081
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: demonstrate that this is actually an adaptation towards which bramble

1082
00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:55,640
Speaker 1: evolution was shaped like where they're similar wooly animals native

1083
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:59,320
Speaker 1: to the regions wherever these plants evolved. Would one of

1084
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 1: these animals rotting at the base of the bramble plant

1085
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:06,200
Speaker 1: really provide enough nutrition incentive to make a major difference

1086
01:00:06,240 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: in survival and reproduction like a would the would the

1087
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:13,960
Speaker 1: nutrients it provides matter enough for this to be an

1088
01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 1: evolved trade that is targeted by selection. Yeah, Because to

1089
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:20,000
Speaker 1: come back to the fig tree, scenario. Think of it

1090
01:00:20,040 --> 01:00:24,160
Speaker 1: as a well run corporation. At what point does do

1091
01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:27,160
Speaker 1: the do the masters that do the do the CEOs

1092
01:00:27,200 --> 01:00:29,440
Speaker 1: of the border directors or whatever we're going to invest

1093
01:00:29,560 --> 01:00:31,880
Speaker 1: in the processing division. Yeah, it's like, tell me more

1094
01:00:31,920 --> 01:00:35,600
Speaker 1: about this, uh, this, this, this sheep eating division that

1095
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:37,920
Speaker 1: you're working on this project. All right, let's hire some

1096
01:00:37,960 --> 01:00:40,560
Speaker 1: more people, let's let's invest more in that, and let's

1097
01:00:40,760 --> 01:00:43,360
Speaker 1: bump it up in the overall hierarchy exactly. So. I

1098
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:46,120
Speaker 1: haven't seen evidence that that's what's going on with the brambles. Yeah,

1099
01:00:46,120 --> 01:00:47,959
Speaker 1: but given all these questions, I do want to say

1100
01:00:48,320 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 1: I could believe it's possible that some bramble type plant

1101
01:00:52,400 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 1: could establish an evolutionary pathway toward proto carnivary and eventually

1102
01:00:56,680 --> 01:01:01,200
Speaker 1: full carnivalary, starting with accidental snagging. This accidental snagging of

1103
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:04,920
Speaker 1: sheep and other unfortunate creatures that are covered in suicide

1104
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 1: vel crow. You know, this reminds me of a specimen

1105
01:01:08,560 --> 01:01:10,800
Speaker 1: that I encountered in Arizona last week, and that's the

1106
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 1: death's claw or heartbrogaph item, also known as a grapple

1107
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: plant or a wood spider wood spider that is gold.

1108
01:01:18,920 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 1: They're pretty gnarly looking. Um. They they're from the sesame family.

1109
01:01:23,720 --> 01:01:26,840
Speaker 1: But they're a hooked fruit. So it starts when it's growing.

1110
01:01:27,040 --> 01:01:29,400
Speaker 1: Initially it kind of looks like a weird green banana.

1111
01:01:29,880 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 1: And apparently it can be consumed. Uh we did. I

1112
01:01:33,120 --> 01:01:34,800
Speaker 1: did not eat one, but I was told that, yes,

1113
01:01:34,880 --> 01:01:39,320
Speaker 1: some people have things they can do with these. Um.

1114
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 1: But it starts off like a banana and then it

1115
01:01:41,720 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 1: kind of splits in the middle, and so it ends

1116
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:46,040
Speaker 1: up like you imagine you're like your hand making the

1117
01:01:46,080 --> 01:01:49,360
Speaker 1: devil horns and then imagine if you had super long,

1118
01:01:49,400 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: curvy fingernails on both of the protruding fingers. Yeah. And

1119
01:01:54,960 --> 01:01:58,200
Speaker 1: so what it does is when a a mule deer

1120
01:01:58,280 --> 01:02:00,320
Speaker 1: or a prong horn a horse or even a human

1121
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:05,120
Speaker 1: comes along, Uh, it latches onto the ankle. These these

1122
01:02:05,160 --> 01:02:08,800
Speaker 1: these the devil horns here latch around and it becomes

1123
01:02:08,800 --> 01:02:14,720
Speaker 1: and it carries the the fruit across you know, long distances. Um,

1124
01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:17,240
Speaker 1: and it doesn't does not hurt the animal in question.

1125
01:02:17,280 --> 01:02:20,120
Speaker 1: And actually they seem to have anti inflammatory properties that

1126
01:02:20,200 --> 01:02:24,240
Speaker 1: are utilized in some folk medicines. But if this is possible, yeah,

1127
01:02:24,240 --> 01:02:28,479
Speaker 1: why not a grappling mammal killing root as well, yeah, again,

1128
01:02:28,520 --> 01:02:30,240
Speaker 1: I guess we'd have to come back to the question

1129
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:34,040
Speaker 1: of is the incentive there is the evolutionary incentive big

1130
01:02:34,160 --> 01:02:38,400
Speaker 1: enough to work on these powerful structures. Yes, another way

1131
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:41,479
Speaker 1: to ask this question. Another scenario for this. How about

1132
01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:44,400
Speaker 1: a human sized snap trap, sort of like what I

1133
01:02:44,480 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 1: pictured in the grove of the killer tree at the beginning.

1134
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:50,919
Speaker 1: So imagine this. It's a venus fly trap, large enough

1135
01:02:50,960 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 1: to capture and digest a deer or a bear or

1136
01:02:54,840 --> 01:02:57,600
Speaker 1: a human like, not not so much necessarily like a

1137
01:02:57,640 --> 01:03:01,200
Speaker 1: little shop Ahara's audrey too, but just a giant venus

1138
01:03:01,200 --> 01:03:04,920
Speaker 1: fly trap. Just a trap doesn't mean a thing. Yeah,

1139
01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:07,760
Speaker 1: it doesn't sing or leap out, but just large enough

1140
01:03:07,800 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: to lay a trap that could snag a larger creature. Yeah.

1141
01:03:11,600 --> 01:03:14,640
Speaker 1: So uh. There are obviously plants that move quickly. The

1142
01:03:14,760 --> 01:03:17,640
Speaker 1: venus fly trap is one example of them. There's you know,

1143
01:03:17,680 --> 01:03:21,760
Speaker 1: plants usually exhibit very slow motion motion that's expressed through

1144
01:03:21,800 --> 01:03:26,160
Speaker 1: growth patterns rather than through fast moving of plant tissues.

1145
01:03:26,200 --> 01:03:28,480
Speaker 1: But there are plants that fast moving tissues. You touch

1146
01:03:28,520 --> 01:03:31,320
Speaker 1: a fern and sometimes the leaves can close. The venus

1147
01:03:31,320 --> 01:03:34,920
Speaker 1: fly trap can snap closed. I'm not sure how big

1148
01:03:35,160 --> 01:03:38,440
Speaker 1: and how sturdy, you can scale up those fast movements

1149
01:03:38,440 --> 01:03:42,080
Speaker 1: and plants like I've never seen a plant with huge,

1150
01:03:42,560 --> 01:03:46,280
Speaker 1: strong structures that exhibit fast movement. All the all the

1151
01:03:46,280 --> 01:03:48,840
Speaker 1: ones I know of with fast moving body parts tend

1152
01:03:48,880 --> 01:03:52,960
Speaker 1: to be pretty small. Yeah. Yeah, anytime you you see

1153
01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:54,880
Speaker 1: the same thing when you're talking about giant gorillas. Right,

1154
01:03:55,080 --> 01:03:58,640
Speaker 1: anytime you scale up morphology, you're gonna run into various

1155
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:02,320
Speaker 1: engineering limits and you end up having to change the

1156
01:04:02,360 --> 01:04:05,960
Speaker 1: design in order to make it conceivably work. And then

1157
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:10,320
Speaker 1: in some cases, is it even possible to upscale that design? Yeah,

1158
01:04:10,360 --> 01:04:13,480
Speaker 1: but let's just imagine. Let's say, okay, imagine you can

1159
01:04:13,600 --> 01:04:17,240
Speaker 1: scale up fast moving plant body parts. Uh. Still a

1160
01:04:17,240 --> 01:04:20,120
Speaker 1: couple of problems here. It doesn't take a lot of

1161
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:23,080
Speaker 1: compression strength to hold in a fly or a spider,

1162
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:26,160
Speaker 1: but imagine how many pounds of compression force it would

1163
01:04:26,200 --> 01:04:28,520
Speaker 1: take to hold in a human or a bear that's

1164
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:30,840
Speaker 1: fighting to get out of a trap. This would have

1165
01:04:30,880 --> 01:04:35,880
Speaker 1: to be a really strong, big, powerful plant. And I

1166
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: guess my question is why would a plant evolves such

1167
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:42,439
Speaker 1: an extravagant morphological contrivance And does it even make sense

1168
01:04:42,440 --> 01:04:46,520
Speaker 1: to imagine how it gets to there? Because remember carnivorous

1169
01:04:46,520 --> 01:04:49,880
Speaker 1: plants tend to practice animal predation in order to offset

1170
01:04:50,080 --> 01:04:52,880
Speaker 1: nutrient deficiencies in the soil. Right, that's the whole reason.

1171
01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:55,920
Speaker 1: We go back to their growing in inhospitable conditions. They

1172
01:04:55,920 --> 01:04:58,360
Speaker 1: can't get the nitrogen or some of their nutrients they need,

1173
01:04:58,760 --> 01:05:01,720
Speaker 1: so they need to pray on animals to get those little,

1174
01:05:01,800 --> 01:05:05,400
Speaker 1: those little molecules. But what would an organism grown in

1175
01:05:05,480 --> 01:05:09,440
Speaker 1: such poor soil be able to attain human trapping size?

1176
01:05:09,520 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 1: To begin with? Like, how does it get that big

1177
01:05:12,200 --> 01:05:14,920
Speaker 1: and that powerful if it hasn't been trapping humans? The

1178
01:05:14,960 --> 01:05:16,880
Speaker 1: whole way would have to It would have to sort

1179
01:05:16,920 --> 01:05:20,120
Speaker 1: of like be scaling up as it goes, catching bigger

1180
01:05:20,160 --> 01:05:22,919
Speaker 1: and bigger animals as it gets bigger. Ye, And why

1181
01:05:22,960 --> 01:05:25,840
Speaker 1: would you why would it? Why would it evolve to

1182
01:05:25,880 --> 01:05:30,400
Speaker 1: depend on increasingly larger and increasingly um, you know, more

1183
01:05:30,520 --> 01:05:34,200
Speaker 1: rare uh specimens? Why why would it would be making

1184
01:05:34,240 --> 01:05:36,440
Speaker 1: it's it's there would be there would be a tipping

1185
01:05:36,440 --> 01:05:38,520
Speaker 1: point where it would just be making its work harder

1186
01:05:38,520 --> 01:05:43,080
Speaker 1: for itself, and and therefore there would be less uh less,

1187
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:46,760
Speaker 1: it would be less advantageous to its evolutionary set. Yeah.

1188
01:05:46,840 --> 01:05:48,920
Speaker 1: And another thing to remember as we've said on the

1189
01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:51,520
Speaker 1: show before. In evolution, we've always got to keep in

1190
01:05:51,560 --> 01:05:54,680
Speaker 1: mind bigger is not necessarily better. It seems better to

1191
01:05:54,880 --> 01:05:58,960
Speaker 1: us because we like bigger trucks, but bigger bodies are

1192
01:05:58,960 --> 01:06:01,200
Speaker 1: not necessarily better. Or as ms will not tend to

1193
01:06:01,240 --> 01:06:05,440
Speaker 1: grow larger unless there's a clear survival advantage or reproduction advantage. Right,

1194
01:06:05,480 --> 01:06:08,520
Speaker 1: it comes down to what the environment will bear, what's competitive.

1195
01:06:09,000 --> 01:06:11,439
Speaker 1: I just just a few seconds ago, I I said

1196
01:06:11,520 --> 01:06:14,800
Speaker 1: evolutionary ascent, which we often use in talking about humans.

1197
01:06:14,800 --> 01:06:17,560
Speaker 1: But that's kind of a misnomer because evolution, in the

1198
01:06:17,600 --> 01:06:22,080
Speaker 1: same way that there's no evolution, is not an upward

1199
01:06:22,160 --> 01:06:25,840
Speaker 1: or downward movement. It is just a movement um. And yeah,

1200
01:06:25,840 --> 01:06:27,760
Speaker 1: if you start thinking about it in terms of there

1201
01:06:27,760 --> 01:06:32,439
Speaker 1: being a goal other than survival, other than propagation, than

1202
01:06:33,160 --> 01:06:35,720
Speaker 1: you muddy the waters. So yeah, the the human size

1203
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:37,960
Speaker 1: snap trap, I'm going to say that that's something that

1204
01:06:38,200 --> 01:06:41,360
Speaker 1: maybe could be engineered. You know, I could imagine in

1205
01:06:41,360 --> 01:06:44,360
Speaker 1: the future, if you're you're tinkering with plant genomes trying

1206
01:06:44,400 --> 01:06:47,360
Speaker 1: to create something weird, it's possible that that that's sort

1207
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:51,440
Speaker 1: of a a physical uh, something that's physically attainable and

1208
01:06:51,480 --> 01:06:53,880
Speaker 1: plant morphology. I don't know, it might not even be that.

1209
01:06:54,000 --> 01:06:56,320
Speaker 1: But even assuming it is that, it doesn't seem like

1210
01:06:56,400 --> 01:06:58,960
Speaker 1: something that would arise in nature, right. It would need

1211
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:01,920
Speaker 1: to be a mad science who decided, you know, he

1212
01:07:02,000 --> 01:07:06,200
Speaker 1: or she wanted a large man eating plant. Maybe you know,

1213
01:07:06,400 --> 01:07:09,040
Speaker 1: an evil dictator who wanted it to live it at

1214
01:07:09,040 --> 01:07:12,760
Speaker 1: the bottom of a trap door or continue feeding witches too. Yeah,

1215
01:07:12,960 --> 01:07:16,320
Speaker 1: or how about this, how about a bio toilet for

1216
01:07:16,320 --> 01:07:20,720
Speaker 1: for spaceship gardens. So going back to the picture plant idea,

1217
01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:24,840
Speaker 1: encouraging animals to poop in it, like a compos bio

1218
01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:30,360
Speaker 1: biological compost, biologically engineered compost toilet. Or maybe it's engineered

1219
01:07:30,360 --> 01:07:33,840
Speaker 1: by a British nanny who is a druid who has

1220
01:07:33,920 --> 01:07:36,520
Speaker 1: had her tree killed with a chainsaw that she used

1221
01:07:36,520 --> 01:07:38,920
Speaker 1: to worship for years. She needs a new god and

1222
01:07:38,960 --> 01:07:42,880
Speaker 1: so she genetically she studies genetics, she you know, masters

1223
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:45,680
Speaker 1: the art of crisper gene editing, and then she makes

1224
01:07:45,720 --> 01:07:49,200
Speaker 1: this thing or has she just merely entered into contract

1225
01:07:49,240 --> 01:07:53,479
Speaker 1: with the space toilets who overthrew another alien species because

1226
01:07:53,480 --> 01:07:56,000
Speaker 1: they were tired of just being pooped into. Okay, Robert,

1227
01:07:56,040 --> 01:07:57,960
Speaker 1: I think we're done. Yeah, we've got off the deep

1228
01:07:58,040 --> 01:08:01,640
Speaker 1: end here, but I think we've covered some We've covered

1229
01:08:01,680 --> 01:08:04,760
Speaker 1: some fictional ground here, We've covered covered some mythological, some

1230
01:08:04,840 --> 01:08:08,760
Speaker 1: cryptid ground, as well as the the the the more

1231
01:08:08,880 --> 01:08:13,760
Speaker 1: solid soil of of actual scientific inquiry, and nothing aid

1232
01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:16,519
Speaker 1: us in the process. So I guess we're doing okay.

1233
01:08:17,680 --> 01:08:20,479
Speaker 1: It would be a good way to go, though. It

1234
01:08:20,479 --> 01:08:22,679
Speaker 1: would be a noteworthy way to go, not a pleasant

1235
01:08:22,680 --> 01:08:25,479
Speaker 1: way to go. But yeah, it'd be good to be remembered. Yeah. Yeah,

1236
01:08:25,479 --> 01:08:27,719
Speaker 1: because none of these scenarios, I think we can agree,

1237
01:08:28,000 --> 01:08:31,439
Speaker 1: none of the scenarios of carnivorous plants actually sounds pleasant.

1238
01:08:31,479 --> 01:08:34,519
Speaker 1: All of it takes place, that death ends up occurring

1239
01:08:34,560 --> 01:08:38,519
Speaker 1: at the slow rate that is, uh, that is typical

1240
01:08:38,720 --> 01:08:42,960
Speaker 1: of of the plant's slower approach to life. You'd really

1241
01:08:43,000 --> 01:08:47,600
Speaker 1: be hoping a bear would come along and get into you. Yeah,

1242
01:08:47,960 --> 01:08:51,360
Speaker 1: all right, So there you have it, carnivorous plants. Um. Hey,

1243
01:08:51,720 --> 01:08:53,360
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about this topic, if

1244
01:08:53,400 --> 01:08:55,639
Speaker 1: you want to discover other topics than we've done, heading

1245
01:08:55,680 --> 01:08:57,280
Speaker 1: over to Stuff to bul your Mind dot com. That's

1246
01:08:57,280 --> 01:08:59,600
Speaker 1: the mothership. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes,

1247
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:02,960
Speaker 1: video goes, blog posts links out to our various social

1248
01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:07,680
Speaker 1: media accounts. Those include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, tumbler, uh and

1249
01:09:07,800 --> 01:09:10,080
Speaker 1: who knows what will evolve in the future, will probably

1250
01:09:10,080 --> 01:09:12,000
Speaker 1: sign up for those as well and give you another

1251
01:09:12,040 --> 01:09:14,880
Speaker 1: way to interact with us and indeed tell us about

1252
01:09:14,920 --> 01:09:18,400
Speaker 1: any fictional carnivorous plants that we may have missed or

1253
01:09:18,439 --> 01:09:21,640
Speaker 1: we should explore, as well as your thoughts on the

1254
01:09:21,680 --> 01:09:25,840
Speaker 1: possibility of a man eating plant. And of course, if

1255
01:09:25,840 --> 01:09:27,760
Speaker 1: you would like to continue to get tangled in the

1256
01:09:27,840 --> 01:09:30,360
Speaker 1: killer vines of the subject, you can email us with

1257
01:09:30,400 --> 01:09:33,320
Speaker 1: your thoughts about it and any feedback on this episode

1258
01:09:33,400 --> 01:09:36,200
Speaker 1: or others that blow the mind at how stuff Works

1259
01:09:36,360 --> 01:09:48,360
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1260
01:09:48,479 --> 01:10:00,600
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com. Bo it is

1261
01:10:01,240 --> 01:10:09,200
Speaker 1: playin the foot part part