π³ Plants π Amazing plants
The Venus flytrap
π In short
The Venus flytrap is an amazing plant that eats insects! Its leaves look like two jaws with teeth that snap shut fast on any insect that touches them. It lives in small bogs in North and South Carolina in America.
π€© Did you know?
- A flytrap's trap closes in less than a second.
- One trap can eat only a few insects before it withers.
- There are other insect-eating plants, like pitcher plants and sundews.
- In the wild the flytrap lives in only a tiny part of the world.
π Find out more
π The clever trap
Inside the leaf are tiny sensitive hairs. If an insect touches just one hair, nothing happens, but if it touches two, or the same one twice quickly, the trap shuts in a fraction of a second!
π Why does it eat insects?
The flytrap lives in very poor soil, so it gets the nutrients it needs from the insects it catches, and it also makes food from sunlight like other plants.
π‘ Slow digestion
Once the trap shuts, the plant oozes juices that slowly digest the insect over several days; then the trap opens again, leaving only the insect's dry outer shell.
π― Don't touch it too much
Closing the trap tires the plant and uses up its energy. If people touch it a lot for fun, the leaf can die. So let's just watch!
πΈ More pictures
𧩠Test yourself
1 What does the Venus flytrap eat?
2 When does the trap close?
3 Which picture shows βThe Venus flytrapβ?
π³ Discover more
π· Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons
- Noah Elhardt Β· CC BY-SA 2.5
- Sanjay Acharya Β· CC BY-SA 4.0
- Victoria Β· CC BY-SA 4.0
