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How the Venus flytrap snaps up its prey!


jamotto
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PARIS (AFP) - American and French scientists believed they have explained how one of nature's marvels, the Venus flytrap, snaps shut to snare its victims.

The plant -- described by Charles Darwin as "one of the most wonderful in the world" -- is able to enclose a fly within its clamshell-shaped leaves in just 100 milliseconds, faster than the eye can blink.

Scientists have long wondered how the flytrap (Latin name Dionaea muscipula) is able to do this spectacular feat, given that it does not have the nerves and muscles of fast-moving animals.

The answer, according to a study published on Thursday, is tensile strength.

The plant first bends back its rubbery leaves so that they are convex-shaped, rather like half a tennis ball that has been flipped inside-out.

To close the trap, the plant releases the tensed-up energy.

The leaves instantly flip from convex to concave -- as if the half tennis ball has suddenly popped back to its normal shape. Their edges snap together and the insect is trapped within.

"Closure is characterized by the slow storage of elastic energy followed by its release," say the authors, led by Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, an Indian-born professor of applied mathematics and evolutionary biology at Harvard University.

The researchers were able to model the change in geometry by putting microscopic dots of ultraviolet fluorescent paint on the external surface of the leaves.

They then filmed the closure under ultraviolet light, using a high-speed video at 400 frames per second, which showed the leaves' sudden shift from convex to concave when the trap closed.

Previous work has already established that the flytrap lures the insect with a smell exuded from the inner surface of the leaf. When the fly walks on the surface, this activates a hair trigger and causes closure.

Still to be explained is the phase in between -- exactly how the signal is transmitted from the hair trigger to the closure mechanism in such an astonishingly fast time.

The study appears in Nature, the weekly British science journal.

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Guest DocHoliday

heh, cool

Did you know certain species of spiders with particularly long legs use a form of pneumatics to control the legs. Add some air, the leg extends, pump it out, it drops..

That's why the long-legged spiders move so clumsily

And don't get my started on ants and termites.. whew

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Originally posted by DocHoliday:

heh, cool

Did you know certain species of spiders with particularly long legs use a form of pneumatics to control the legs. Add some air, the leg extends, pump it out, it drops..

That's why the long-legged spiders move so clumsily

And don't get my started on ants and termites.. whew

No, that's a new one on me.

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Guest DocHoliday

Well ants and termites appear to able to control the gender (worker, soldier, queen, "king") or the new ant by what kind of food they supply the larvae with

Nature's version of genetic engineering.

Or did you know certain species of ants have.. well "farms" in which they "herd" a species of lice (I think - anyway, the same family of insects that humans get in their hair, don't remember the right word).

The lice eat off of plants in their designated area and produce some kind of nutritional secretion.. well dense but liquid white poo, which the ants then "milk" off of them and take home as food In return, the ants actively defent the lice from predators and such.

Or, this one you probably know. Pidgeons (right spelling?), are good at what they do (getting home), because they are able to detect magnetic fields in their head and orient themselves by them. I think they actually can see them in their own way... A lot of other birds as well can do that, especially the seasonal birds. I think whales also have something like that "built-in". Dolphins of course have a form of sonar in their domed heads

The cheetah is such an incredibly specialized, optimized and fine-tuned predator machine it can actually run after its prey only for 2-3 minutes at a time and then it has to stop. In reaching speeds of up to 120km/h (hm.. 75mph?) which I believe is top speed for any land animal, their bodies generate so much heat, their body temperature rises to 41C and if they kept on it would become lethal as their cells would start to decompose... Peak efficiency, but at a cost. if they don't catch their pray in like 5 or 6 attempts, they are history. Too little energy to chase again, no other way to catch prey

Nature is more advanced than meets the eye

Cheers,

Doc

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Originally posted by DocHoliday:

Or, this one you probably know. Pidgeons (right spelling?), are good at what they do (getting home), because they are able to detect magnetic fields in their head and orient themselves by them. I think they actually can see them in their own way... A lot of other birds as well can do that, especially the seasonal birds. *snip*


There is a thread that covers this I think, can't seem to find it at the moment.

quote:

The cheetah is such an incredibly specialized, optimized and fine-tuned predator machine it can actually run after its prey only for 2-3 minutes at a time and then it has to stop. In reaching speeds of up to 120km/h (hm.. 75mph?) which I believe is top speed for any land animal,

It seems scientist's can't agree on the top speed of the Cheetah it ranges from as "slow" as 65mph (about 104.6km/h) to 84mph (about 135.2km/h).

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Nature is more advanced than meets the eye

indeed

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Doc,

Those little milk cows for ants are called Aphids, aka Plant Lice. The ants don't really herd them like cattle but they do carry the little fellows to fresher pastures when needed.

it is very interesting to stop and take a closer look at what goes on under our feet and it has always forced me to ponder Darwin's Theory.

Which even today, with our technological wonders and scientific gains, is still an unproven theory.

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actually all whales and dolphins use sonar. They have highly conductive gel in their foreheads and behind it is a 'speaker' that is tied to the creature's lungs and airflow 'tubes' , allowing them to pump air from their lungs to the 'speaker' in their foreheads to emit the sounds to echo-locate and the air is then recycled back into the lungs.

Dolphins have been seen using their sonar as a means of stunning the fish they hunt..they chase the fish till they close in and blast it with a sonar shockwave that stuns the fish for a few seconds, enough for the dolphin to eat it.

sperm whales have special cells ligned up all around their muscles that 'trap' oxygen from the blood... when the whale breathes in these cells swell up with oxygen..when the whale is diving, when the oxygen in the blood runs low, those cells begin releasing oxygen into the bloodstream.. thus a whale's entire body acts as a sort of lung when in the deep.

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When I first started reading this thread, I thought, "Oh I should tell a cute little story about the venus fly trap I had when I was younger."

Then I read more and I was totally impressed by the Ants hearding lice.

It makes me feeding hamburger to a plant seem a bit boring

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Originally posted by echo:

When I first started reading this thread, I thought, "Oh I should tell a cute little story about the venus fly trap I had when I was younger."

Then I read more and I was totally impressed by the Ants hearding lice.

It makes me feeding hamburger to a plant seem a bit boring

Hamburger to a Venus Fly Trap

That would have been a interesting!!!

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Originally posted by jamotto:

I don't think they do, heh. Not to mention there is other planets like the Venus Fly Trap out there.

Planets!? wow!!!

Anyway, ugh I want to correct that vegetarian statement a bit. I just couldn't pry loose from my brain the way I wanted to phrase my statement for the life of me then it hit me.

I wonder how vegetarians come to terms with the fact that some plants eat meat.

Ahhh, that's better. Dang poster's block....

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Originally posted by DocHoliday:

The cheetah is such an incredibly specialized, optimized and fine-tuned predator machine it can actually run after its prey only for 2-3 minutes at a time and then it has to stop. In reaching speeds of up to 120km/h (hm.. 75mph?) which I believe is top speed for any land animal

If you count insects then I think the Mother-of-Pearl Caterpillar is the fastest animal. It has been clocked at 38.1 cm/s or about 15 in/s which would be 241 km/h or 150 mph respectively.

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Guest DocHoliday

hehhee interesting Although I guess then by far THE fastest animal would be Laika.. What was it? Around 7.6 km/s in orbit? hehe

"I wonder how vegetarians come to terms with the fact that some plants eat meat. "

Simple, out of protest, they don't eat them

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