I'd like to say a special thank you to Joel and Ruth for this week's questions about carnivorous plants.

I would also like to thank James, Jay, Stephen, Elsie, Drouva, Ivy, and Jonah for sending in questions for our next episodes of Sleep Tight Science.

You're listening to Sleep Tight Science. Did you know the provincial flower of the province of Newfoundland here in Canada is a carnivorous purple pitcher plant?

What?

How cool is that?

What are the different types of carnivorous plants?

There are actually about 630 different kinds of carnivorous plants that can be found all over the world, except in Antarctica.

Carnivorous plants are classified or divided up into three basic groups.

These groups are active traps, semi-active traps, and passive traps.

Active trap carnivorous plants are like the Venus fly trap, which is probably the most well-known of these carnivorous plants.

Its traps look kind of like clam shells and are held open at an

angle of about 45 degrees. The shells have lots of hairs and small nectar glands, something that

lets out the liquid on them.

When the prey is inside the trap, it will slam shut and lock the prey inside.

Then there is a second step that actually seals the trap closed as it pushes itself closer together.

It might take three to five days to digest

or eat the insect it's caught, depending on the size.

The semi-active trap carnivorous plants are those such as sundews or butter warts.

The sundews are very beautiful plants with nice red and green colors that glisten or sparkle in the sun.

Their leaves are flat with lots of tentacles or glands on their top surface.

The butterworts form a rosette-shaped plant with thin, long leaves that are often curled at the edges.

The butterworts look a lot like all of the other plants growing around them, except during the flowering season.

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