How a Venus Flytrap Snaps

Chris Gondek pastes in a few sentences: "A team of scientists led by a Harvard mathematician say they have solved one of the plant world's most intriguing mysteries: how the Venus flytrap snaps shut. Using a high-speed video camera and computer modelling, the team found that the flytrap employs an ingenious trick to slowly build up elastic pressure in its leaves, like the stretching of a rubber band, and then snap at the slightest provocation."

Comments

Hasn't this been known for decades?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Pressure builds up in the cells, electrical impulses, etc. old stuff...

I learned this stuff in advanced ecology in college. One of the grad students even showed us the impulses on a computer. A Math grad student used this in a paper about the catastrophy point.

What exactly is new with this experiment? The article doesn't go into details.