Wolves eat sheep, sheep eat grass, and it is natural.
So, when the plants began to eat meat – the scene of catching bugs came into view, we were amazed. Among them, the representative Nepenthes, was personally named "the most wonderful plant in the world" by Charles Darwin.
But did you know that these plants even prefer to eat the flesh of vertebrates?
The sword goes sideways nepenthes
The concept of the food chain that we humans have set is often broken. The previous article talked about some examples - "Thirty Years of Hedong, Thirty Years of Hexi".
The Abyss of Hell
And this time, as the photo above demonstrates, two juvenile salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) are slowly being digested in a bell cage of Saracenia sp..
In fact, the starting point of all this is not so mysterious. Just as most plants have honey, Nepenthes secretes an irresistible sweetness to attract animals, especially insects and some invertebrates.
Honey production - hooking up with "people" to pollinate, the plants' conventional tricks in the pitcher here sword to the side.
The honey-producing pitcher is actually a special leaf of Nepenthes, and in evolutionary adaptability, Nepenthes uses sweetness to draw unsuspecting prey to the edge of the trap where it became famous, where a guy who wants to eat honey can fall into the abyss with a small mistake.
These "honey-eating but fart" prey are not just bugs, in recent years, researchers have found that in many parts of the world grown in the wild, one-fifth of the "cage" prey has salamanders. The abundance of nitrogen in vertebrates benefits Nepenthes.
There is another way to obtain nitrogen
Interestingly, not all guys who venture near the "cage mouth" will get lost.
A wide variety of small creatures evolved dramatic relationships with predatory plants. For example, some spiders with sharp legs and legs use silk as a safety rope, hiding in the cage mouth, secretly laughing at the insect's thirst for nectar of Nepenthes - before the insects fall into the plant cage, they appear from the cage and raid, stealing the prey that belonged to Nepenthes.
On the other hand, in some cases, the relationship between animals and Nepenthes is even mutually beneficial. In Borneo, for example, there are at least three different species of Nepenthes that attract shrews (qú jīng) with their sticky, honey-rich leaves, whose cages are perfectly toilet-shaped, rocking on the "toilet", eating honey and fertilizing.
In addition to shrews, bats are also convenient for restaurants
And there's no honey
Honey production is very energy-intensive, and some Nepenthes are not willing to bother with this. In the tropical lowlands of Borneo and the nearby Malay Peninsula, small green, red, purple and black cages of Nepenthes emerge from the forest floor, each filled with a deadly liquid resembling "gastric juice".
These Nepenthes do not produce honey. Abandoning the means of hooking up, they use more passive methods to obtain food: a cage without a lid, a large funnel-like mouth, and no refusal to anyone who falls into the debris - leaves, silly bugs. Nepenthes digests them with enzymes.
These nepenthes are connected in pieces, like a huge carpet, so that there will be a lot of edible garbage in the cage, but decomposing the dead animals and plants is a slow work, and if it is too full, it may rot.
At this time, the Malaysian land crab (Geosasarma malayanum) appeared. These agile scavengers are immune to the sap of Nepenthes, and they are able to quickly enter and catch bugs to eat, or to catch some dregs.
Hide-and-seek holy land
In addition to small crabs, there are about 60 species of animals in the environment, from mosquitoes to frogs, that also use Nepenthes to help them catch food, lay eggs, hatch larvae or avoid predators.
In exchange, Nepenthes can receive the feces left behind by the animals as fertilizer, and these additional nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients allow them to thrive.
The most bizarre is always human beings
Due to its otherworldly appearance and unique diet, Nepenthes has always captivated the imagination.
No, Cambodia's little Internet celebrity, three women, grabbed the nepenthes and took a video of it. It triggers a large number of people to pick, and even to form a complement and eat it as an aphrodisiac. Cambodian Ministry of Environment officials recently warned the public not to touch these rare plants.
See beautiful flowers, interesting plants, crouch down and pose, take a selfie, don't pick them blindly. Well? Do you want to know how it tastes when eaten? There was honey, it was sweet, as sweet as candy.
Owls thank you for your attention (¬_¬)