this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Where are my plants that impregnate human females through their vines used as tentacles, as promised by hentai?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago

Flowers already attracted insects. The evolution of flower into carnivorous flower is a smaller leap than a tuba or leaf into carnivory as they would also have to evolve to attract the prey.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Is it vegan if you eat carnivorous plants?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Vegan enough for package labelling, not vegan enough for the psychic powers

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

You get three strikes though, I think that's pretty lenient

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Ultimately it's more about trapping and consuming live animals, I don't really care if they actually chew.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

We just haven't found the carnivorous trees yet. Those poor, poor squirrels...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

there are trees armed to the teeth or extremely poisonous, many in euphorbiacae family. dynamite tree, machineel

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Well there's a fundamental difference between a carnivorous plant and a murderous plant who just kills.

There are many plants who kill large number of animals all the time, as defense measures for example. But a carnivorous plant specifically kills the prey in order extract nutrients from it and use it to benefit itself, and it does so using specialized adaptations specific for that purpose and not just accidentally (like a broken tree branch falling down killing somebody down below doesn't make the tree carnivorous)

So a carnivorous plant needs to have ALL of these traits:

  1. capturing or trapping prey in specialized, usually attractive, traps;
  2. killing the captured prey;
  3. digesting the prey;
  4. absorption of metabolites (nutrients) from the killed and digested prey;
  5. use of these metabolites for plant growth and development.

...in order to be considered a carnivorous plant.

Source: Carnivorous Plants: Physiology, Ecology, and Evolution from Oxford University Press

(HIGHLY recommend if you're interested in this topic, it's an extremely good book and the best comprehensive overview on carnivorous plants at the moment, with fairly up to date information from this rapidly developing field of study!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Armed to the teeth or armed with teeth...that they chew live animals with? Because I'm only interested in the latter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Feeed mee Seymour

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

if you considered spines all along the trunk as teeth, and exploding fruit.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm sorry but who says that all of the good botany questions have been answered??

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

He's a disgrace. Still classifying Rhinantus minor in the Scrophulariaceae instead of Orobanchaceae after APGIII. Smh.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

funfact, orobacnacaeae is a parasitic group of plants also are called BROOMRAPES.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I remember watching this farmer make a case otherwise, that ordinary bramble (?) is specialized to ensnare and trap fluffy sheep, providing chemical nutrients to the bush.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

There's tonnes of blackthorn and a lot of sheep in the UK and I've never heard it to be problematic. Sheep ate pretty dim, but bramble is definitely not thorny/spiney enough to get caught bar the odd occasion. I'm sure I heard about a shrub (African maybe) that sheep can get completely ensnared in and die, but can't find it!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

An interesting theory, but there are good reasons to doubt the claim, including the fact that woolly sheep are a recent product of human breeding, and that wild sheep are not even native to the same areas blackberries grow.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Since when has carnivory been a word, what the hell

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Since as long as carnivore has been a word, probably. Carnivory is the noun for the act of eating meat, carnivore is the noun for a creature that eats meat and carnivorous is the adjective to describe a creature that eats meat.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

probably used casually in a kink. would you like a map of the internet? (earnest)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

i would like a map of the Internet

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Yeah, deploy the map!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Audrey II was a literal alien. It might not even technically be a plant, it just resembles one. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

A human has 46 chromosomes, a potato 48, this also explains some things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

People with Downs Syndrome are the missing link between humans and potatoes?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Ok, so prove all the other plants aren't aliens?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you go out in a bog and look around, most of the plants there are angiosperms. The non-angiosperms are mainly mosses (capable of surviving on atmospheric deposition, not really producing the sorts of complex structures that can be adapted for carnivory like leaves and roots), ferns, and horsetails. "Why no carnivorous ferns?" seems like an interesting question but it's also kinda like "Why no flowering ferns?" Because you need structures (leaves, glandular trichomes, or roots) that can be exapted for a new purpose and flowering plants seem to have the most plasticity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

you forgot gymnosperms, aka conifers, gingkos, cycads.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Not really seeing the niche overlap there, as most carnivores are small, shallow rooted, and herbaceous. Gingkos are relicts, conifers tend to be woody, deep-rooted, and can't grow in pure peat, so there's probably less pressure to solve nitrogen deficiency. That leaves cycads, which do grow in swampy soils, but they haven't changed a whole lot in tens of millions of years.

[–] [email protected] 82 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Genetic evidence suggests that carnivory developed by co-opting and repurposing existing genes which had established functions in flowering plants

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivorous_plant

[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 days ago (1 children)

All the interesting botany questions have been answered

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

While all of these answers are mostly true, you have to go back in time. Darwin called it the abomniable mystery. Flowering plants and insects co-evolved rapidly roughly 150 MYA. So prior to flowering plants, there were few plants and insects and they were mostly generalists. The rapid expansion and explosion of insect diversity is deeply entangled with the explosion of diversity in angiosperms.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

the oldest pollinators, prior to bees,butterflies and other insects. were beetles, as evidence of magnolias one of the oldest lineage of flowers, use only beetles.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This seems obvious: Non flowering plants haven't evolved ways to attract ~~pollinators~~ prey. What non-flowering plants deliberately attract animals?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

i think because non-flowering plants, like ferns, gymnosperms, bryophytes dont need to attract animals. thier sperm, eggs are usually close by to each other so no need animals. and gymnosperm uses wind pollination. carnivory is probably repurposed flower-attracted pollination.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago

Carnivory in plants is ALWAYS the secondary option, usually as a result of poor soil quality. Typical pollination via flowering bodies is the go to.

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