Venus fly traps are one of nature’s most interesting plants as they’re one of the few that’s carnivorous, meaning they actually eat living creatures. However, despite being plants, the mechanisms or their electrically activated jaws were never quite understood. That is until now.
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00:00Venus flytraps are one of nature's most interesting plants, as they're one of the
00:07few that's carnivorous, meaning they actually eat living creatures.
00:11However, despite being, well, plants, the mechanisms of their electrically activated
00:15jaws were never quite understood.
00:17That is, until now.
00:19Researchers from Linköping University in Sweden say that it was only a few years ago
00:23that botanists were able to figure out what instigated the closing of a Venus flytrap's
00:26jaws.
00:27A Venus flytrap has two sequential strokes of highly sensitive hairs within its mouth,
00:31which causes an influx of charged calcium ions to close the fanged plant's jaws.
00:35However, this was only the first step, with this new study mapping the precise propagation
00:39of those signals.
00:40The charged calcium ions create what's called an action potential, and even though plants
00:44don't have a nervous system like us, this action potential causes similar reactions
00:48in the plant nonetheless.
00:50So researchers used electrodes that could cover much of the plant's lobes, or what make
00:53up its carnivorous head.
00:55Meaning that if the sensory hairs were touched twice within 30 seconds, they would snap shut
00:59on the second encounter, and those signals would radiate at a constant speed.
01:02However, if they were touched with more than a minute in between, the electrical signal
01:06would move faster on the second encounter.
01:08Meaning, it appears that the plant was more aware, almost as if the Venus flytrap was
01:12on guard.