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Rat-eating Plant Discovered in Australia
Megaport writes "Finally, the news that every slashdot-meme poster have been waiting for. A rat-eating vine called "Tenax" has been discovered in the rainforests of the Cape York region in Queensland, Australia"
Australian Geographic magazine has an article on these plants. Apparently they are in an area which also has lots of saltwater crocodiles, so not even humans can claim to be at the top of the food chain there! http://editorial.australiangeographic.com.au/ is the front page but the article does not appear to be on-line.
Suddely those old Tarzan movies don't seem so far-fetched anymore.
In Soviet Russia moderators question YOU!
I for one welcome our new rat-eating-vine-overlords and would like to offer little Sam who snitched on me in the third grade as the first rat/human sacrifice.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Who cares about a wee little rodent eating plant when they have trees attacking cows in India!
The locations of rare plants are often not disclosed here - I believe the location of the Wollemi Pine was also ( maybe still ) kept secret to stop people showing up and looting them.
Large Nepenthes have been known for many, many years. Do a search on Google images for "Nepenthes mouse" and you'll find examples of where people have had rats and mice fall victim to nepenthes in people's greenhouses so there's little reason it wont happen in the wild, although I suppose you could argue animals should be more wise to it in their natural environments.
;)
There was a story going around various carnivorous plant communities and quite honestly I can't verify it's truth but needless to say it seems plausible. There was apparently a zoo that had some large nepenthes in the monkey enclosure (They're often just called monkey cups because monkeys have been known to drink from them in the wild) and they had to be removed because baby monkeys kept falling into the pitchers and required rescuing before they began to get digested which in turn apparently made many of the children at the zoo observing the monkeys cry.
You can keep nepenthes at home, some species are easy to keep as they don't need a massive amount of humidity and don't need especially warm temperatures but others can be kept in a greenhouse. Personally I keep one in the bathroom as use of the shower provides all the humidity it needs in that room and it does a decent job of dealing with spiders and mossies that make their way in there although be warned, the digestive process isn't particularly fast or terribly exciting, we're talking weeks or months. They do look impressive though, particularly the species with red pitchers or the combined reddish/yellow/green pitchers.
It's interesting keeping carnivorous plants and I started it because I got fed up of insects in my computer room in the summer. I didn't want an insecticutor as the room gets too hot as is and I don't want to use even more electricity so I figured the natural route may be an interesting option, it certainly is. Sundew (drosera), Venus flytraps (dionaea muscipula), Pitcher plants (nepenthes and saracennia) and butterworts (pinguicula) are the best bet.
If you are interested in getting started with carnivorous plants, I don't recommend trying from seed at first and you really need rainwater or distilled water (tap water doesn't cut it) but there are decent suppliers everywhere (www.littleshopofhorrors.co.uk if you're in the UK is decent). The one thing I will say though is please, if you are going to maintain your own creature killing plants use peat from sustainable sources or alternatives! There's no reason you can't keep this type of plant at home though if you can get hold of one from a legitimate source (i.e. not looted from the wild) which isn't too hard.
What I really want is a rat catching venus flytrap or sundew, now THAT would be something