11 Carnivorous Plants (PHOTOS)

These plants may look like sweet, innocent flowers, but don't be fooled -- they are meat-eating killers! Carnivorous plants are those that don't just rely on sun power for energy -- they get nutrients from "eating" animals or insects.

These amazing plants have evolved to employ many different techniques to satiate their hunger: from snapping a trap closed to sucking their prey into their bladder to trapping critters through its sticky mucus-like glands.

Check out these incredible plants and tell us which is the most impressive.

Cape Sundew Plant

By employing a "flypaper trap" through the sticky glands found on its leaves, this cape sundew plant is able to capture two dragonflies. After prey land on the plant, the other tentacles move to further trap the prey. The plant is then able to digest its prey through enzymes also found on the glands.

Photo credit: Flickr/josef.stuefer

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Comments

[Martin Scooter Thompson]

I hate to be the bearer of the bad news, but the term "carnivorous plant" has fallen out of favor with most biologists and botanists as the name is misleading. These plants DO NOT technically eat meat. What the do is trap insects (etc.) and then douse them in protein digesting enzymes that digest protein into amino acids they need as a building block for their catabolic activity. Most plants get nitrogen compounds from the soil. The so-called "carnivorous" plants tend to have evolved in regions of the planet where the soil is nitrogen depleted. All I am asking, as a retired biology teacher, is for scientific accuracy from the writer.

[TinfoilLatte]

Surely evolution will make it that one day, even the plants will rise up and try to eat us.

[sculptor]

These are just more examples of the Great Cycle of Life...

[deepintheheartoftejas]

It's a free country. As long as they abstain from meat on monday, I have no problem with their lifestyle choice, even though they'd be healthier plants if they munched on lettuce and tofu.

[robbyJ]

Lets GMO these bad boys and drop the seeds over Afghanistan. Done and done

[tinrobot]

So, would eating one of these plants make you a carnivore by association?

[robbyJ]

good attempt

[BeFairNow]

Shhh! Don't tell Kathy Freston! Her head might explode and we wouldn't want that now, would we? Meat is eeeevil! Eeeevil I tell you! ;-)

[Mondayboy]

Proof that human beings evolved from plants

[eternalkerri]

Someone needs to explain to these plants that eating animals is cruel, bad for the environment, and bad for their health.

Someone needs to get a celebrity to talk to them about it.

[bonofide]

'The Fly' on the wall says: "I think I`ll just stay here on the wall for this one."

[Bogey907]

Do they get heart disease too?

[Muzikal203]

Can people use these in their homes? Seems like a nice way to get rid of flying bugs (and I guess anything else that would crawl up there)

[Politiqo]

I've seen the Venus Flytraps for sale at Lowe's so I guess you can.

[PocketWatch]

Actually, I grow quite a few of these plants (or some version of them) at home, and they are quite effective. They are typically swampy plants, so you need to keep them humid and warm, and their "feet" like to be wet usually, but other than that, one thing you DON'T have to do is feed them. They take care of that themselves (I call them my bachelor plants... low maintenance!).

Besides, these plants are the only creatures on the planet that feeds UP the food chain, not down. Very ambitious!

[PocketWatch]

Oh, and there are quite a few web sites that you can order plants and get advice.

[TFlint]

Tomorrow, 11 Boring Carnivorous Plants!

[helonias]

Its too bad the one that grow in the NJ Pine Barrens aren't big enough to eat our corrupt politicians

[lastpost]

They have yet read the book, about giving up meat.