It’s cute that homeboy thinks it’s learning.
Venus Fly Traps
Submitted 11 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/b3001bbe-1dfe-4764-afe5-befc274c13e9.jpeg
Comments
raccoon@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 11 months ago
People tend to have a really hard time understanding evolution, and attribute human characteristics to it.
modifier@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Which I think is really fine for casual internet conversation. It’s not even attributing human characteristics, just mis-characterizing what is happening. But it’s a useful way to short hand it, especially if the discussion is more about the result than the process.
RealFknNito@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Someone should tell them the ones who didn’t do this
fuckingdied.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 11 months ago
Then there’s the pitcher plant that isn’t really carnivorous, but relies on excrement…it’s not so much a pitcher as a toilet: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepenthes_lowii
troybot@midwest.social 11 months ago
Ah so that’s why Victreebel is a poison type
fossilesque@mander.xyz 11 months ago
Damn, I had no idea these flowered. I could never keep them alive either.
sploosh@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Another fun fact is the Yellow Trumpet pitcher plant’s (sarracenia flava) flowers smell like cat pee.
ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Also, the energy to make that flower is an enormous strain on the plant. Usually, growing that flower causes most or all of the carnivorous leaves to die, and therefore often growing that flower spells the death of the plant.
maeries@feddit.de 11 months ago
Interesting. I would imagine that the plant has a lot of energy since insects are way more rich in nutrients than light and water, no?
ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
The specific nutrients it gets from the bugs are nitrogen and phosphorus, which plants normally absorb through their roots. It evolved carnivory to compensate for the poor soil in its native habitat instead of developing its roots like other plants in the area, so it can’t pick up the nutritional slack with its atrophied roots.
In addition, every time a leaf closes and tries to digest what it caught, it uses a lot of energy. Flowering always is a big strain on a small plant, no matter what species, so when this strain is introduced the number of carnivorous leaves becomes a difficult risk/reward calculation, and plants are not known for cleverness.
batmaniam@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We’re used to getting our energy and building blocks from our food. Plants get their energy from the sun, and their building blocks from the air (CO2). They get water and some minerals, but a plant is made up off solidified air. It’s like if you could be solar powered living off just air, water, and an occasional multi-vitamin.
Anyway, carnivores don’t really get energy from their prey, just the nutrients. It’s like self fertilizing.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 11 months ago
That’s not really how it works. Going from one food chain level to another you lose about 90% of the energy like:
Plants - photosynthesize 100% of solar energy available
Herbivores - eat the plants, losing about 90% of the total energy in the process of breaking it down and making it usable.
Carnivores - eat another animal, losing another 90% aka (1% of total energy)
Plus, consider that photosynthesis is capable of creating all the sugars and that we can convert sugars into fats and proteins and stuff using biological processes (this is essentially why plants need nitrogen and phosphorous to grow, but the generally get that from the soil and really don’t need a lot.
danhab99@programming.dev 11 months ago
I know carnivores plants are plants, but I never really thought of a venus flytrap’s flower.
OpenStars@discuss.online 11 months ago
fossilesque@mander.xyz 11 months ago
😘
Ballistic_86@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Understanding it needed to do that is a bit of personification. The Venus fly trap that grew a slightly taller flower stem got pollinated more. That genetic mutation overtook the species as competition for pollination grew more difficult for the shorter flower stemmed. Evolution is cool an all, but let’s not confuse it for plants knowing or deciding to do anything.
Chef_Boyardee@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I had an idea once to make a travel pack sized blanket for air travel.
Venus Flight Wraps
TheDoctor@hexbear.net 11 months ago
the_post_of_tom_joad@hexbear.net 11 months ago
Does this provide a special sound? Have to do with their style? Just fun? I dunno most about drums
TheDoctor@hexbear.net 11 months ago
Just a random guess, but I could see the argument that it would reduce crash bleed into the rest of the kit. It might make it easier to mix the main kit more tightly. But if that’s the case, then why leave the hihat low? It might just be a stylistic thing or it might be for the drummer to remember to not ride the crash. I dunno. It’s certainly not standard. They’re the only ones I’ve seen so it on such a small kit.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
That’s a “crash cymbal”, by the way. Pronunciation is very similar, but it’s a different word.
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It didn’t “grow to know” shit. The ones with short flowers didn’t breed as frequently. The end. Mystery solved.
subtext@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Always absolutely wild to me that these things are native to the Carolinas
batmaniam@lemmy.world 11 months ago
not only native, but the ONLY place. I’ve got carnivores from every continent (accept Antarctica, obviously), and thats STILL my favorite fact.
It does make sense they’re so rare though. Most carnivory you can picture the evolutionary path: Something had a mutation that kind of made a cup, something had a mutation that kind of made the leaves sticky… etc. You can see it happening one step at a time with minor advantages (and therefore survival) at each step, until they kept compounding into more and more complex and specialized structures.
For a VFT… multiple things had to happen at once. There’s no advantage to the motion until you can also digest and adsorb the material. There’s also no advantage to a partial motion that can’t trap an organism. It’s really wild they exist!
RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It started as a flowering plant. As it got some early carnivorous genes, if it killed the pollinators it would not reproduce.
It slowly turned into the terrifying plant we know and love.
sploosh@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Before it got jaws it was a glue trap. Venus flytraps are an evolutionary offshoot of Drosera, the sundews.
belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 11 months ago
Cute story fren, but natural selection isnt a willful choice by the organism 💕
Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 11 months ago
flora_explora@beehaw.org 11 months ago
Obligatory crime pays but botany doesn’t mention. There is this really cool episode of a huge carnivorous plant collection:
Xantar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
I mean if you kill your pollinators you’re not going to reproduce, so that makes sense.
Carrolade@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Get that randomized “trial and error” crap out of here. Everyone knows nobody and nothing ever uses trial and error, because it can’t deliver results.
workerONE@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Genetic mutation is always occurring
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Evolution works like a tree’s structure branches over time. That’d why it’s always animated like that. It is NOT that everything gets expressed and then gets tested. It is that the current thing “alive” is changing. It seems crazy now only because you’re seeing the veeeeerry complicated leaves at the ends of very complicated branches. Branches that have mostly ended by now.
You know what happens to animals with unsurvivable mutations? They die. All the time. Even humans with unsurvivable mutations happen ALL THE TIME.
The same thing happens on a species level over many survivable generations.
It IS basically “trial and error”, but trial and error in a VERY complicated and dynamic system after a very, very long time, currently stemming from the complicated results of that system.
You cannot dismiss the system just because one aspect confuses you when removed from context…
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Image
Seleni@lemmy.world 11 months ago
By any chance did you drop an /s?