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| Venus Fly Trap grown by Humanoido for flesh eating experiments |
Monster Venus Fly Trap
FLESH EATING EXPERIMENTS
What would it take for a small fly and insect eating Venus Fly Trap plant to grow to giant size and suddenly start consuming larger flesh-bearing creatures for supper like dog size animals? How did these plants develop the taste for flesh?
What would it take for a small fly and insect eating Venus Fly Trap plant to grow to giant size and suddenly start consuming larger flesh-bearing creatures for supper like dog size animals? How did these plants develop the taste for flesh?
It takes thousands of years for genetic life to evolve, mutate and change into a form variation. If carnivorous plants lived in an environment that caused a growth spurt, the mouth leaves could grow much larger and theoretically start consuming larger and larger prey. But what other factors could contribute to a plant like the Venus Fly Trap making it grow much larger?
First of all, why bother with carnivory? Most carnivorous plants receive a lot of sunlight but grow in waterlogged soils that are extremely low in nutrients. The ancestors of today’s carnivorous plants needed to get their nutrition (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus) from another source, and the high light levels meant they could afford to be less efficient at photosynthesis by turning their leaves into traps.
Studies show carnivorous plants used dextrous genetic shuffling to evolve the ability to catch and digest protein-rich meals. Many plants have the necessary genes and the path to become meat eating is wide open. The Venus flytrap lived in nitrogen poor environments and therefore adapted to gathering additional nutrients by catching and consuming insects. They use modified leaves, or pads, wide with short stiff trigger hairs, that snap shut when an insect lands—but only after the pads sense multiple touches on their trigger hairs.
We envision genetics and DNA strands taking a hit from a random cosmic ray and turning on the growth trigger. The carnivorous plants grow larger and larger until the hunger requirement for food also increases to a situation where small insects don't provide enough meat for sustenance. It then bends open its strong large leaves to allow small animals to step in to get at the sweet nectar secretions which also serve as a sticky bond to semi capture the animal which causes it to struggle and activate the leaf closing mechanism and digestion begins. Mice, small rodents, cats and dogs beware!
Here at the Lab, we highly encourage cultivating and evolving the Venus Fly Trap plant species. Although widely cultivated for sale, the population of the Venus flytrap has been rapidly declining in its native range. The species is currently under Endangered Species Act review by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.