This is an I-Heart podcast.

Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, Brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here.

Plants that eat animals may sound like the premise for a horror story, but there's nothing

supernatural about it.

Carniferous plants have existed on this planet for millions of years. There are more than

500 different kinds, with appetites ranging from single-celled organisms to insects to spiders.

Today, let's talk about one of the most famous, the Venus Flytrap.

The Venus flytrap grows roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and seeds, just like most plants.

But it also grows two specialized lobes on the end of each leaf that form a hinged trap.

Those lobes are distinctively green on the outside and reddish pink on the

inside, with small bristles along the edges. When they're open, they look like toothy little mouths calling for a snack.

And when an insect or arachnid crawls across that pinkish inner surface, the trap slams shut, and the plant

digests its prey. It's a mouth and stomach in one. Although the Venus flytrap has captivated

people across the world, wild populations of these plants actually grow in an incredibly small

geographic area, a region along the coasts of North and South Carolina,

only some 75 square miles an area, that's about 200 square kilometers.

Their native areas are bogs and wetlands that are humid and sunny.

They're so scarce that some early botanists doubted their existence, despite all the stories

spread about

a flesh-eating plant. But okay, if other plants can thrive on nothing but water, air, nutrients in

the soil, and some sunshine, why do Venus flytraps eat insects? Fly traps actually get a good

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