October 12, 2021 • 40 mins
After looking into the Venus Flytrap, we quickly moved it to the top of our favorite plant list. Part plant, part monster? What's not to love?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and the three of
us are easy, breezy, beautiful cover girls and this is
stuff you should know. How you doing, I'm great, good
(00:26):
I'm doing. I wanted to be a cover girl. Well
you are now I degree such fantastic. Um. I'm excited
about this one, Chuck. I'm really excited because it's like
a combination of one of our plant episodes with one
of our animal episodes. Yeah it is, isn't it. It's
really hard to not look at a venus fly trap
(00:49):
in action on a video and not think it's an animal. Um. Yeah,
I guess so, I guess sure. It's just so like
all you can think of, or all I can think of,
is that thing is like thinking with the brain. Let
me close my mouth and eat this thing. Yeah, I
(01:12):
know what I mean, That's what it looks like for sure. Yeah.
But the thing is, Chuck, is there's like there's a
whole thread of botany. Now there's like a big dispute
in the botanical world about just yes, about just how
much plants think and thinking, and not necessarily in ways
that we would recognize its is thinking, but still having
(01:33):
intelligence memory um. And one of the things that that
seems to be kind of emerging as far as studying
venus fly traps goes, is that plants, just like us,
use what are called action potentials, which is electrical transmissions
that cause cells to do different things when they're stimulated.
And that is thinking, like, that's how we think, that's
(01:54):
how neurons fire. So the idea that plants use the
same kind of general principle to do things or to
react to things or respond to things, or to change
the behavior. Buddy, that's thinking in a lot of ways.
What's a vegan to do? I know it does, definitely,
that's a that's a can. They're gonna all end up
(02:14):
breathe atterrians, right, oxygen materians. No, that's the thing. Did
you know that breathe at terrians? I feel like I've
heard of that. It's exactly what it sounds. So they
don't need anything. They just breathe in and drink water
or is that awful limit? I don't even know if
they drink water, probably water. Are they all dead eventually?
(02:36):
I'm sure Okay, but yeah, we'll have to do an
episode on that because I don't know enough about it
to speak on of intelligently. But it is pretty interesting
because I know some people at least try it well.
It sounds like a movement that would probably not gain
much steam, you know, right, because they're too tired to
prostalytize about it. It sounds like a short stuff. Okay,
(02:59):
there you go, gotcha. I think that's a great idea.
But we're here to talk about the Venus fly Trap,
not the w KRP in Cincinnati. DJ what a great character.
He had a lot of facets played by what was
named Tim something, right, Tim Reid. Wow. Nice. I saw
(03:19):
a lot of WKRAP when I was I did too, Man,
I love that show. It's funny. I remember, I'm already
going on a tangent before you even get started. But
I remember watching that show when I was little and
seeing Johnny Fever where the Grateful Dead t shirts, which
was my first exposure, and they had like the skeleton
and stuff, and I thought they were some kind of
like a metal thing. I did too. I actually had
(03:40):
a couple of other posters and I was like, this
band must be the coolest fan of all time. And
I finally heard them, I was like, this doesn't match
at all, like the best name ever, the best imagery,
and then I just didn't add up. Music didn't fit.
But we're talking about the venus fly trap, the plant
which if you think sure effort of those things that
(04:02):
that's like the one carnivorous plant. No, no, no, there
are hundreds and hundreds of plants that actually eat other
things by attracting things and capturing and killing them. Uh,
but the venus fly trap gets all the press because
it just it looks like it looks and it's so cool. Yeah.
(04:23):
I mean a lot of the other plants um like
eat and digest insects or even like some rodents. There's
a kind of picture plant that I saw. It's the
size of a toilet and like, if you're a mouse
and you fall in, that's it for you. Mouse. Um.
But they don't do anything. They just kind of sit
there and hope that something falls in. That. The thing
(04:44):
that makes the venus fly traps so fascinating is it's
one of only two plants in the world that actually
like closes that actually traps and and and it traps
its prey and like, that's just you just don't see
that the other ones the European water wheel, and it
looks like a fern with the very tips of each
fern frond um, kind of like venus fly trap, the
(05:08):
very very small version of it. The Venus fly trap
is just big enough to be like, wow, that's really neat, right,
Like they would never write a character named Audrey after
those ferns and put them in Broadway musicals No and
Audrey two. Technically Audrey two. Yeah, Audrey was the guy
was Seymour's love interest, the girl that he liked, so
(05:31):
he named the plant Audrey two. Can I confess something? Yeah,
I know nothing about Little Shop of Horst. I mean,
I haven't seen in a really long time either, but
I um I went and looked up some stuff on it. Okay,
so you're confessing to um. I saw on a YouTube
video this guy from the Carolinas talking about the Venus
(05:52):
fly trap, and he said a more appropriate name for
them would probably be did you see this guy the
Caro the Carolina spider trap. Because of two things, they
are basically only found in about a seven hundred mile
area as far as growing wild along the coast of
North and South Carolina, and then he said they really
(06:12):
only eat about five percent of their diet as spiders
or I'm sorry, as flies. He said, they mostly eat
spiders and ants. Uh. And you can also throw in
crickets and slugs and some other caterpillary things in there. Yeah.
I mean, you know, very frequently whatever just kind of
happens to to wander onto the plant itself. But I
mean it'll take what it can get. But I guess
(06:33):
winged insects and maybe get away faster or more easily. Yeah,
I mean, I get the idea that the flies can
get out of there easier. So it's just I mean,
they're fine to eat flies, and it's harder. Yeah. I
also I saw I saw um. I don't know if
it was in that same video or not. That there's
only an estimated one d and fifty thousand of these
plants in the wild and the entire seven hundred miles
(06:56):
just tiny strip along the coast of North and South Carolina,
and they live in bogs like marshy bogs, sometimes salt
marshes um sometimes pete bogs, but you know, like a
wetland that's like always wet that's that's where they grow. Um,
and they like the sun and they like you humid.
But they can also whether the cold, as we'll see,
(07:17):
because it can get pretty cold in the winter in
North Carolina. So there's really no way around explaining the
origins of the name without it being a little well,
it's just a little dicey because it was named at
a time where, uh, things were different back then, and
(07:38):
they named it because the plant resembled, uh, perhaps a
woman's anatomy. Help me out here. No, I'm really enjoying
watching your tap dance. Well, I mean, and we've talked.
We may have mentioned it in the folklore episode the
idea of the vagina dentata, which in many different cultures
(08:00):
and nations around the world, there are these folkloric legends
of these women who had teeth and there vagina act
as a trap keep going chuck. And that is where
this name comes from. It's named after Venus, that got
pagan goddess of love because of that plant's resemblance and
(08:21):
because of that folklore. Yes, chee, good job man, I
think you really presented that well right, Um, I wouldn't
name it that today, can I say that? No? They
definitely wouldn't have. People are a lot less uptight when
it comes to s e X you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
it be the Carolina spider trap, that's right. I also
saw that when the it was imported to England for
(08:43):
studies around the mid eighteenth century, UM that it was
popularly called tippity witch. It's that's what they called venus
fly traps in England. I thought it was fun too,
And Charles Darwin said that it was one of the
most wonderful plants in the world, which I'm mean, that's
a that's a pretty good endorsement coming from him, you know. Oh,
I bet he loves the venus fly trap. Yes, he
(09:07):
really did. And I don't think because he um had
any kind of sexual proclivities toward it like some of
his other fellow botanists who actually named it that. No.
I think because it's a wonder of natural selection and evolution.
I would say that's why too. One of the other
things he's like, oh natural selection, yes, um. So one
(09:31):
of the other things about the venus fly trap has
another name too. It's um it's a taxonomic name. Is
Diane a Musca pula. I think that's right, and that
actually is named after Diana, a different goddess, the Roman
goddess of the hunt, and muscapula apparently means mouse trap.
(09:52):
So the other name thing you could call it besides
Venus fly trap is Diana mouse trap. It's not bad.
It's got a lot of really great names. I mean, tippity,
which it alone is worth, you know, celebrating. I think
Diana mousetrap might be my new hotel check in name.
Oh that's a good one. I like that. But at
(10:13):
any rate, they eat insects and not because they um
just love the taste of spiders or flies. Uh, they're
they're regular plants to They love photosynthesis and they do
their thing during photosynthesis like all plants do, and take
the energy of the sun and and then convert it
to sugar and oxygen and use that stuff as energy.
(10:33):
But they also need other stuff, just like all plants need,
but they can't get it because of where they live
and that p D. Marshy bog. They need all these
amino acids and vitamins that their land doesn't provide, and
they get that from these insects. Yeah, because most other
plants are able to get things like nitrogen from the
soil and phosphorus and magnesium soul for cassi calcium potassium. Like, yes,
(10:57):
they need a TP energy and they a word in
the form of carbohydrates like all plants to um, but
there's other nutrients that they need to build sell walls
to produce dna um, to transport water throughout that kind
of stuff. Like you definitely need a lot more than
a TP. And since they can't get it from the soil,
they have evolved to get it by eating other bugs
(11:21):
or eating bugs or you know, even in some cases
like like those giant pitcher plants like mice, because animals
are really great mobile stores of stuff like calcium in
sulfur and phosphorus and magnesium. That's right, And then that
wet pd acidic soil they must seek purchase elsewhere. And
(11:43):
luckily those little spiders are happy to just crawl in there.
And maybe we should take a little break and we'll
tell you all about how this trap happens right after this, Okay, chuck,
(12:14):
Before we go any further, I just want to restate
one of the coolest things I've ever heard, that the
venus fly trap and other carnivorous plants couldn't get nutrients
from the soil they grew in, so they learned to
eat bugs to get those nutrients. It's astounding, and it
also makes them so similar to the to the animal world,
(12:36):
because that's why animals eat other stuff, like other animals
or even plants, because we need to get our energy elsewhere.
We don't get it from the soil. So it makes them,
in some weird way akin to us as well. Do
you feel a kinship a little bit? And you know,
I'm a little attracted to it too, like some of
those early botanists, not in a Darwinian way or both
(13:00):
you swing both ways. Okay, I don't, I don't, I don't,
I don't judge. Who knew this podcast would go in
this direction? Right when I saw that first thing about
it being dicey, yes, about the name being I knew
exactly where it's gonna go. Uh. So they are not
the only plant also that attracts things via their smells
(13:20):
or these delicious syrupy SAPs. I mean, if you go
out in your garden on any day and see butterflies
and bees and other insects flying around, they're all going
to these plants and these plants are using these insects
in one way or the other. They're just not quite
using them up like venus fly trap does. Yeah, they're
using them to help pollinate. That's why they do that. Yeah,
because they want the bee to fly away. They the
(13:43):
venus fly trap does not want anything to fly away. No,
it says, come here, let me eat you. So here's
what happens. If you look at a venus fly trap,
when it's unfolded and beautiful and has all these little
beads of sweet nectar on it, an insect will land
on that, and on each side of uh what are
(14:04):
they called petals? I saw, lobes, and then like that,
the thing that connects them in the middle is called
the mid rib. The mid rib, not the mid rib.
It's good, you only get it at certain times. The heather.
Right on each lobe, you've got three little trigger hairs
(14:25):
arranged in a little triangular pattern. And these are part
motion detectors and part sort of timers almost, because when
a little fly or a spider or any kind of
insect that's small enough lands in there, and we should
say by small enough we mean ideally about a third
of the size of those two lobes. Can't go much
(14:46):
bigger than that. No, and they're not big there, it's
not a big plan. I saw that they grow to
be about five inches tall. Yeah they're small. Yeah, they're
fairly small. And then each plant will have, you know,
between five and ten I think um fly traps on it. Yeah,
like if you get your information from Little Shop of Horrors,
you're being the slag um. So you've got these little
(15:06):
trigger hairs and once one of those is is flicked
by a fly leg or an ant leg or a spider,
it's sort of a timer kind of starts, and they've
got about twenty or thirty seconds to dance around that
thing without hitting either that one again or one of
those other trigger hairs. And once it hits the second one,
or hits that first one the second time within that
(15:27):
little timer, that is when the trap closes in a
fraction of a second, the blink of an eye. Oh yeah,
it's super quick. Um. And you know, I think one
of the things that makes it seem animal like is
it's it's really hard to find a nature documentary about
the venus fly trap without some sort of foreboding orchestral
music playing that ground so it really kind of juices
(15:51):
it up a little bit. Uh. But here's the deal is,
they don't they don't know exactly why or exactly how
the mechanism works, since it doesn't have a brain, you know,
they know they trigger that trigger hair and then it
claps shut. But all they've got is a pretty good hypothesis. Yeah,
So what they think happens is that the the um
(16:12):
the lobes stay open um like that you just um
liken it to a mouth, So the mouth is wide
open on the venus fly trap. By the cells around
that the lobe I guess around the midrib and the
lobe where they connect are basically being crumpled. And then
something about the trigger hairs being stepped on starts to
(16:38):
um d crumple that still like it starts to release
a little bit of the pressure, and then when that
second hair is triggered, the pressure is fully released. And
they think what happens is through the use of um
of burning a TP for energy, that the the the
water pressure changes in those cells so that they go
from being crumpled to being plump, and so they're no
(16:59):
longer holding the flower open and the mouth open. So
it just shuts, and all of that is again carried
out by those action potentials, which starts with the trigger
hair being stimulated, which somehow creates an electro chemical um
transmission that goes through the plant cells to tell it
get ready, get ready because it might happen again. And
(17:20):
when it happens again, it says, okay, release the water,
and then the thing snapshot, which is pretty neat. But
even after that, even after that second stimulation and the
mouth um the mouth closes, that's not the end of
the whole process, Like, that's there's still another third one,
and it has to do with those amazing trigger hairs
(17:40):
as well. Yeah, like this, to me, it's already pretty
remarkable that this plant can do this, and and I
knew I kind of knew all that stuff, But this
is when it really floors me, because even before I
got to this part, I started thinking like, yeah, but
how long does this take into like reset the trap?
Like what if a what if something kind of floats
(18:02):
through there that's not an insect and it just happens
to trigger two of those hairs, you know, does it
just open right back up? Does it spit it out?
Like oh, I don't want this thing in there. What
if some dumb little kid sticks his finger in there,
it's gonna close of course, because it's triggering the trigger hairs. Yeah,
and you should not do that, by the way. No,
you should totally not do that. But you know that's
(18:23):
why I said, dumb little kid. So what it counts
on is a living thing squirming around in there. Once
it's sort of you know, it's not sealed tight exactly
at the very very beginning. It's it's like shut. Ideally,
they're not getting out, but maybe a fly can slip
out if it's quick enough, or maybe it can work
its way out. But all that's doing is triggering those
little trigger hairs again. And that's the signal basically that like, no, no, no,
(18:48):
you've got a living thing in here. It's not a
something that fell off a tree or whatever that you
don't want. So now is the time where you really
really close down and locked down tight. Yeah, it's the
thing's been inside scirming because like you're saying, it's it's
like it's got alive one here. One of the other
things that just I found absolutely astounding, Chuck, is when
(19:10):
the when the venus fly trap seals shut, when it's like, Okay,
I've got a bug in here, and I want to
go ahead and start eating it. The little things that
look like teeth, the cilia, they lace together and form
an air tight seal. And there's a couple of reasons
for this. One. It keeps the bug from escaping, which
it couldn't really get out after the second the second
(19:32):
hair was tripped, like, it forms a cage. But then
after it squirms around inside that cage, then it seals tight,
air tight, and that's it for the bug, by the way,
um and it keeps the bug inside. It also keeps
um uh bacteria from entering because this is not a
fast process what's about to happen. It takes the course
(19:53):
of days before it's completed, and in that time bacteria
can enter through any like hole in that seal. And
so the seal prevents bacteria from getting in and rotting
the bug and in turn rotting them the venus fly trap,
causing the poor little fly trap to turn black and
fall off. So I saw it takes about an hour
or two to fully seal. Uh. It takes about Remember
(20:17):
I said earlier, like what if something just happens to
go how long does it take to reset the trap.
That takes about twelve hours if there's a uh twig
or something. But I was looking for a kind of
a fun word for a that's not sexual. How about
a a twitter like a false alarm? But my mind
(20:38):
just keeps going to dirty places. Well, like, why I
have no idea false alarm? Let's just call it? No?
Know what? What were you going to think? That was dirty?
What were you thinking that was dirty? I can't I'll
tell you later. I guess I can't say it out loud.
I kind of figure this out. Oh, oh, I know.
To me, let's just say it's a false alarm about
twelve hours, and then the entire digestive process can take
(20:58):
a week or more. Yeah, Like, if there is an
actual bug in there, it takes about a week to
digest it. It doesn't sound like a pleasant way to
go for a bug to be trapped in a venus
fly trap, because after that seal is completely sealed, w'd
you say, it takes about a couple of hours an
hour or two for that seal to be airtight. Yes,
the whole time that bug is still alive, chuck, and
(21:19):
it's still just sitting there flipping and flopping against those
trigger hairs. And this is the other service that the
trigger hairs provide that I referred to earlier, that when
they're stimulated again after this thing is sealed, what they're
doing is telling the venus fly trap, Okay, this thing's
about this size. Um, it's not a big thing. It's
about medium size. So I only need to release, you know,
(21:42):
a little bit of digestive enzymes. And this is a
really great adaptation because it's really energy um intense to
produce digestive enzymes. UM. So the fact that it just
kind of dolls out just as enough to dissolve whatever
is in there, whatever size insect is in there, is
(22:03):
pretty astounding. And it judges this somehow, some way, in
a mindless sort of way, by how much those trigger
hairs are tripped while the thing is is squirming around
in the ceiling um fly trap. It's just awesome that
it can do that. Yeah, I mean, and this this
jumps to the end a little bit. But the reason
(22:24):
it does that is because it can only do that
so much. Um. They do. They do recycle what they
can from those juices at the end of the process.
But I get the feeling like each With each opening
and digestion and manufacturing of those enzymes and recycling of
of what they can of those enzymes, it just gets
a little bit less and a little bit less, until
(22:46):
eventually the lobes uh can't do their job anymore. And
then they just stay open and say, all right, I'll
just be a regular plant and soak up the sun.
I'm just gonna photosynthesize. Brother. I showed my daughter this
morning when before she left for school, I was watching
these videos. It's like, oh man, she's gonna love this.
And she watched it and got really sad about the fly.
(23:09):
That's sweet, and it's because of the way they shoot these.
They do that dramatic music, and she's conditioned, you know,
she's been disnified. So it's like it's Bambi's mom in there,
you know, Yeah, it's Bambies fly mother, or it's uh,
it's Dory sure, Dory the fly version. Just show her
a fly close up or have her listened to our
(23:31):
Flies episode and she'll be like, I don't care. I know. Um.
The other thing they do that really kind of um
is really easy to overlook, but definitely perhaps overly dramatizes
a venus fly trap. Shutting on a fly is they
they will very often dub in like a panther's roar
right when it um right when it shuts, and it's
(23:53):
you can't pick it out unless you're looking for but
when you are, it just sticks out like a sore thumb. Uh.
I think they get about ten to twelve either partial
or complete closures per lobe set. So that's how long
they can hang in there before they coast into retirement.
(24:14):
Not a bad run. And when you consider that, uh,
they're only eating an insects every like week or two
maybe in the wild, how about three times a month. Yeah,
so multiply that times tend it twelve and that's that's
your lifespan basically. Although I did see that they can
live twenty years in the wild well because they'll regenerate
(24:37):
new lobes and yes, so yeah, they grow from a
rhizome and those things pop up. But the plan itself,
that's a fairly long lived plant. Yeah. So okay, so inside,
so one thing I feel it is worth like explicitly
mentioning here with the venus fly trip, You've got this
open mouth and then when it closes, it converts into
(24:57):
a stomach. It's kind of like one of those washer
it's also a dryer once the wash cycles over. Right,
I've always wanted one of those. Yeah, I think it'd
be pretty cool. I've never heard if they actually like
work or not. But maybe we'll just we'll we'll go
in Dutch on one together, Okay, and see we'll just
straight it off month to month. Well, we'll rent a
(25:19):
I don't have room for it, neither do you. We'll
rent a storage space, yes, and we'll just buy a
little single unit. We'll hire an electrician and a plumber
to come out and outfit it for a washer, dryer combo,
and our our bunk beds from the old days will
be moved in there, just for nostalgia. Yeah, but this
time we'll be able to wash our sheets. So so
(25:43):
in this, in this, what's went from the mouth now
the stomach those digestive juices just enough to to melt
basically the bug that's in there, based on its size
and it's scormy nous. Um. They flood this thing and
again over the course of like five to twelve days. Um,
it's going to basically break down all the soft tissue
(26:03):
inside that bug inside it's exoskeleton and basically liquefieding to
goo until it just kind of mixes in with the
digestive juices. Right. And then in this mouth that's now
become a stomach, the nutrients that that fly or that
spider that ant carried around with it, that became liquefied,
(26:24):
are broken down into like really tiny basic particles like
amino acids and stuff, not even like proteins, like even
more basic than that. And then the plant absorbs it
just like you do in your gut, right, and it
uses those nutrients to do things like build cell walls
or repair it's DNA, or to transport water throughout its body.
(26:45):
Just not so stuff, right. And then there's one other trigger.
There's one other signal that happens where when the digestive
enzyme is basically all that's in there, all the nutrients
have been sucked out. Somehow, it is able to UM
to analyze the ratio of digestive juice to nutrients, and
(27:05):
when there's basically nothing but digestive juice is left, it
reabsorbs the digestive juice and that acts as a trigger
for those cells to compress again and the mouth to
come back open and then ideally a gentle breeze will
blow away what's left. There's a little exoskeleton in there,
(27:26):
and then Audrey's ready again. Uh, and you know again
about a week to twelve days. It depends on how big.
You know, it's a little ant, it's gonna be quicker.
We mentioned that the juices get weaker, so if it's
an older trap or set of lobes, it's gonna take
a little longer. And then the temperature can actually speed
it up a little bit. If it's itit's warmer and
there's more heat, then there's gonna be a faster breakdown,
(27:49):
so that will also speed it along. Just as amazing, man,
I mean, I knew it was going to be an
amazing like topic, but I was even astounded by how
it using these things are. But we're not done. We're
gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and
tell you all about if you want to grow one
of these monsters in your house, what you can do
right after this. All right, if you're a fan of
(28:30):
Broadway or Evolution or Charles Darwin or ancient folklore, or
just freaking out your neighbor's kids or your own kids
or grandkids and you want to venus fly trap in
your house, you can do that. You don't have to
live in the Carolinas. You just have to set up
an environment that is like you're in the Carolinas in
your home somewhere. Yes, you have to become a tar
(28:52):
heels fan or outside your home. Yeah, because you know,
I mean, I'm sure in the Atlanta Piedmont, in probably
parts of Alabama, in North Florida, you could probably grow
these things in a pot outside probably so um. But
if you live in um, say a much colder area, um,
(29:14):
you know, above the Mason Dixon line probably, or in
a much drier area like the Southwest, you're gonna have
to You're gonna have to unnaturalize it a little bit.
For example, if you live in a low humidity area,
you would want to probably put this thing in a
terra arium. Yeah, and that's I've always wanted a terra aium.
I think they're fun. Sure, So uh get a ru aium,
(29:37):
make it wet in there. Uh, you're gonna have a
you know, I think I think about a four inch
pot is a decent starter pot and you may not
need anything else actually, because they're really not that big,
like you said, and you gotta keep checking that soil.
You don't want it, um you don't want it swimming
in water, but you definitely don't want it to dry
out at any point. Yeah, and you also don't want
(29:58):
to um water it from above. I didn't see why,
but I suspect that it might, like a rain drop,
could conceivably cause it to um to close accidentally if
you've got enough water splattering on it and triggering those
those trigger hairs. Oh. I wonder if they grow in
the wild under more densely covered areas to prevent that.
That's possible. But um, so what you do is you
(30:22):
you water them from the bottom up. You place them
in a pan of or a little tray of standing
water about a third of an inch or a centimeter deep.
What watering tips with jobs? Well, listen, there's one of
there's something else that you want to keep in mind.
I think most people wouldn't realize. It's like you can't
you can't water these guys with tap water. Um Oh,
(30:43):
I just got what reference you are making? You cutter?
Do we need like a million feet worth those of water?
Like you, you basically want to make sure that your
house is completely flooded with water to make these things live. Uh. No,
you bring a good point, though it needs you can't.
Like tap water is no good and probably most of
(31:04):
the filter water using is probably no good either. No,
because the salts and nutrients will build up in the
soil and these things have evolved not to use that
stuff and like it will actually harm them for the
same reason you don't want to use fertilizer either. They
don't need fertilize or they any bugs. Basically, yeah, they said,
and I thought this is really cool. Just collect some rainwater,
and that's that's your best bet. If you can't collect enough.
(31:27):
If you, you know, live in Phoenix and you want
to grow a venus fly trap, you're already kind of
growing upstream. But um, you may not be able to
collect that rainwater either. So at least get some deionized water,
maybe some distilled water, or if you've got a reverse
osmosis system, which you might in Phoenix, then you can
(31:49):
use that stuff too. You can use that stuff, and
if you don't have a reverse ostomosis system, you can
buy it. Usually at any aquarium store they sell that. Okay. Um,
so the water is the important what kind of water
you use again, don't use fertilizer um and apparently uh,
because they grow in areas that get cold in the winter.
If you are growing when in a tra areum from
(32:12):
November to February, you want to take it out of
a tra areum and like put it in a window
in your garage or something like that, Like let it
actually get cold, and you're gonna get freaked out because
the plant will actually die back to the rhizome and
it'll look like you lost it or something like that.
But then come March, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised when
it comes bouncing right back. Yeah, and you can treat
(32:34):
it like any plant that you overwinter that kind of
goes dormant. You can clip off the dead detritus and
it'll grow back. How many how many of those are
we gonna get per plant? Like four or five? I
think it's a five to tend somewhere, oh, five to
ten even Okay, that's what I saw, but I could
(32:54):
be making that up. There's a lot of numbers flying
around in this one um. But what about the feeding?
You know, it's uh, if you have this thing in
your house or in a tru Areum, you're not just
going to count on a rando fly that got in
or or akucaracha to walk into its midst. So just
(33:15):
like if you have a constrictor and you've gotta you know,
go to the pet store to pick up some mice,
you have to feed this thing. Yeah, apparently, um, you
can feed it live bugs, but you know there's problems
with live bugs. Apparently, live meal worms can actually burrow
their way out of the plant, which is not pleasant
(33:35):
for the plan. I'm sure. Um, crickets can easily get
too big or can stick a leg out which will
keep that seal from getting air tight, so they can
um they can decompose uh from bacteria that gets slipped
in that can actually make the plant decomposed to So
your best bet is to get some freeze dried meal worms,
blood worms or crickets, Uh, put a little water on there,
(33:58):
stir them up, and then put it uh drop it
on the the plant in its mouth basically and so
um you might get a closure response from just dropping
it in there because it might hit a couple of sillia.
But don't forget like it's not going to start releasing
those digestive enzymes until it's sillia. The little trigger hairs
(34:20):
are stimulated once it's closed, So you actually have to
have like a little toothpick or something like that and
just very lightly, very gently kind of rub those sillia
so that it'll close fully and release those digestive enzymes. Right,
And like you said earlier, don't uh invite your neighbors
kids over to trigger this thing for fun because it
(34:42):
only gets tinner twelve with those closures, and you're you're
you know, you're literally shortening the lifespan of that lobe
if you're doing so for fun. Uh, So you gotta
drop an insect. You probably won't be able to catch
any flies. Even if you're good with those chopsticks. Man,
very few can accomplish that feed. You have to be
(35:02):
friends with Pat Morita. And they got to be small,
remember about a third the size. I told you I
worked with Pat Marida once, right. Uh. No music video, No,
I don't think you have to want to say it was.
It was one Emily producer and I worked for it
was I think it was alien Ant Farm and they
did a Karate kids send up and Pat Morita starred
(35:26):
and um I was Pat Marita's guy that day to
to get him what he needed in his trailer, and
he was as nice as he could be. R I
p God rest his soul. And I don't think it's
a big deal to say that Pat Marita loved sipping
on Chardonnay during the day on a shoot. Oh he
didn't get plaster or anything, but he he wanted a
(35:46):
bottle of wine, a nice bottle of white chardonnay. And
he was just a lovely guy, how positively cultured. You know.
I heard Mr T likes to drink huge cups of um.
I don't know what it was he was drinking, but
he would he'd like to drink on set as well
during the day. Oh. Really interesting. I did a Wye
(36:07):
Cliff video one time, and uh, he and his his
crew they really drank. Oh yeah. But I mean sometimes
those music videos that was just sort of the um
it was just sort of a party atmosphere, like they
would use as an excuse to be like, all right,
all my friends are coming here for twenty four hours
and we're just gonna get down. And um. I also
(36:28):
had one of the coolest experiences of the music video
life on that whye cliff job, and that I was
standing kind of right next to a and I'm just
so square. I don't know what it's called. When they're
improv rapping and like dissing each other like the competition style.
I don't know what that's called. It's called a mile Yeah,
it's called an eight mile face off. Okay, that's what
(36:51):
I said. I went, Hey, guys, nice eight mile face on. Um.
But I got to kind of witness one of those
in person, and I was like, oh my god, it's
like the ellen is just off the chart. So it
was good because sometimes those things are really not good. No,
I mean these were these were pros. Oh good man,
I'll bet that was cool to see. It was fun,
but they were they were fun too. Wow. Uh did
(37:12):
we say everything there is to say about Venus fly traps.
I also had to put a joint in Buster Rhymes lips.
I think I've told that story. He smokes marijuana, believe
it or not, because he was in a in a
video for Gimme Some O. He was fake tied to
the train tracks in one scene, so he was he
(37:33):
was couldn't move and he was on the ground and
he would always ask me. I would stand by and
hold the burning blunt and I would put it in
his lips every you know, probably eight seconds. Good lord,
it was great. Like, those are the fun things you
can do as a p A. Sometimes I recommend it.
Those are some cool stories, Chuck, you can really get
(37:53):
in the mix. There's nothing to do with penus fly traps,
so but it does. Now well, if you want him
about venus fly traps, go buy one. You can buy
one online, although supposedly you should probably go to a
nursery that specializes in carnivorous plants because they actually know
what they're talking about. So let's start there. Okay, can
you grow them from seed? You can? You can go
from seed. You can also divide them, like as they
(38:16):
get to be adult size, right before they come out
of their winter dormancy is a good time to divide them.
So they make great gifts. I love it. Uh And
since Chuck said he loves it, of course, everybody, it's
time for a listener Mayo, I'm gonna call this Clark
me a listener mail. Okay, did you see this one?
(38:38):
It sounds familiar. It's from a few weeks ago. Hey, guys,
I just want to tell you that I've been subtly
leaving Clark as a verb in the conversations with my
family for the last three weeks. Uh, this is Leslie,
this is mom that's doing this. At first, I did
it just to be funny and see what they would say.
None of them had heard that particular episode and don't
even know about clarking, but no one questioned it. I
(39:01):
asked my husband to clark me a ten dollar bill,
and I told my son I would clark him a
notebook for school, and it's told. I told one of
my daughters that someone could clark her a phone charger.
Everyone just proceeded as if I'd said nothing out of
the ordinary, and it was totally surreal. Anyway, I just
had to share that with you guys, because I feel
(39:22):
like I have a hilarious inside joke but no one
to laugh about it with. If you do read this
on the air, and how could we not? Uh, will
you please shout out my husband, Clint and my kids Jackson. Uh,
it looks like Emma and Grace it maybe m E,
M m E. Thanks for what you do. I'm a
longtime listener to love your show so much It's perfect
(39:43):
for those like me who have a love of learning
and laughing. And that is from Leslie and her family
just sound wonderful and I it says something about how
much they're listening to you, Leslie. I hate to break
into you. That's pretty great. Or they're just like moms
on off a rocker. I guess we'll just go with it.
What a great email. I'm going to guess the middle
(40:07):
kid's name is Emmy. Okay, so we've got m Emmy
and Emma. I don't think we can miss Chuck unless
it's just the artist formerly known as Well. Thanks again, Leslie,
that was a great email, one of the all time greats.
If you ask me, and if you want to throw
in your two cents and see if you can compete
(40:28):
with Leslie's email, we would love to hear it. You
can send it to us at stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and the three of
us are easy, breezy, beautiful cover girls and this is
stuff you should know. How you doing, I'm great, good
(00:26):
I'm doing. I wanted to be a cover girl. Well
you are now I degree such fantastic. Um. I'm excited
about this one, Chuck. I'm really excited because it's like
a combination of one of our plant episodes with one
of our animal episodes. Yeah it is, isn't it. It's
really hard to not look at a venus fly trap
(00:49):
in action on a video and not think it's an animal. Um. Yeah,
I guess so, I guess sure. It's just so like
all you can think of, or all I can think of,
is that thing is like thinking with the brain. Let
me close my mouth and eat this thing. Yeah, I
(01:12):
know what I mean, That's what it looks like for sure. Yeah.
But the thing is, Chuck, is there's like there's a
whole thread of botany. Now there's like a big dispute
in the botanical world about just yes, about just how
much plants think and thinking, and not necessarily in ways
that we would recognize its is thinking, but still having
(01:33):
intelligence memory um. And one of the things that that
seems to be kind of emerging as far as studying
venus fly traps goes, is that plants, just like us,
use what are called action potentials, which is electrical transmissions
that cause cells to do different things when they're stimulated.
And that is thinking, like, that's how we think, that's
(01:54):
how neurons fire. So the idea that plants use the
same kind of general principle to do things or to
react to things or respond to things, or to change
the behavior. Buddy, that's thinking in a lot of ways.
What's a vegan to do? I know it does, definitely,
that's a that's a can. They're gonna all end up
(02:14):
breathe atterrians, right, oxygen materians. No, that's the thing. Did
you know that breathe at terrians? I feel like I've
heard of that. It's exactly what it sounds. So they
don't need anything. They just breathe in and drink water
or is that awful limit? I don't even know if
they drink water, probably water. Are they all dead eventually?
(02:36):
I'm sure Okay, but yeah, we'll have to do an
episode on that because I don't know enough about it
to speak on of intelligently. But it is pretty interesting
because I know some people at least try it well.
It sounds like a movement that would probably not gain
much steam, you know, right, because they're too tired to
prostalytize about it. It sounds like a short stuff. Okay,
(02:59):
there you go, gotcha. I think that's a great idea.
But we're here to talk about the Venus fly Trap,
not the w KRP in Cincinnati. DJ what a great character.
He had a lot of facets played by what was
named Tim something, right, Tim Reid. Wow. Nice. I saw
(03:19):
a lot of WKRAP when I was I did too, Man,
I love that show. It's funny. I remember, I'm already
going on a tangent before you even get started. But
I remember watching that show when I was little and
seeing Johnny Fever where the Grateful Dead t shirts, which
was my first exposure, and they had like the skeleton
and stuff, and I thought they were some kind of
like a metal thing. I did too. I actually had
(03:40):
a couple of other posters and I was like, this
band must be the coolest fan of all time. And
I finally heard them, I was like, this doesn't match
at all, like the best name ever, the best imagery,
and then I just didn't add up. Music didn't fit.
But we're talking about the venus fly trap, the plant
which if you think sure effort of those things that
(04:02):
that's like the one carnivorous plant. No, no, no, there
are hundreds and hundreds of plants that actually eat other
things by attracting things and capturing and killing them. Uh,
but the venus fly trap gets all the press because
it just it looks like it looks and it's so cool. Yeah.
(04:23):
I mean a lot of the other plants um like
eat and digest insects or even like some rodents. There's
a kind of picture plant that I saw. It's the
size of a toilet and like, if you're a mouse
and you fall in, that's it for you. Mouse. Um.
But they don't do anything. They just kind of sit
there and hope that something falls in. That. The thing
(04:44):
that makes the venus fly traps so fascinating is it's
one of only two plants in the world that actually
like closes that actually traps and and and it traps
its prey and like, that's just you just don't see
that the other ones the European water wheel, and it
looks like a fern with the very tips of each
fern frond um, kind of like venus fly trap, the
(05:08):
very very small version of it. The Venus fly trap
is just big enough to be like, wow, that's really neat, right,
Like they would never write a character named Audrey after
those ferns and put them in Broadway musicals No and
Audrey two. Technically Audrey two. Yeah, Audrey was the guy
was Seymour's love interest, the girl that he liked, so
(05:31):
he named the plant Audrey two. Can I confess something? Yeah,
I know nothing about Little Shop of Horst. I mean,
I haven't seen in a really long time either, but
I um I went and looked up some stuff on it. Okay,
so you're confessing to um. I saw on a YouTube
video this guy from the Carolinas talking about the Venus
(05:52):
fly trap, and he said a more appropriate name for
them would probably be did you see this guy the
Caro the Carolina spider trap. Because of two things, they
are basically only found in about a seven hundred mile
area as far as growing wild along the coast of
North and South Carolina, and then he said they really
(06:12):
only eat about five percent of their diet as spiders
or I'm sorry, as flies. He said, they mostly eat
spiders and ants. Uh. And you can also throw in
crickets and slugs and some other caterpillary things in there. Yeah.
I mean, you know, very frequently whatever just kind of
happens to to wander onto the plant itself. But I
mean it'll take what it can get. But I guess
(06:33):
winged insects and maybe get away faster or more easily. Yeah,
I mean, I get the idea that the flies can
get out of there easier. So it's just I mean,
they're fine to eat flies, and it's harder. Yeah. I
also I saw I saw um. I don't know if
it was in that same video or not. That there's
only an estimated one d and fifty thousand of these
plants in the wild and the entire seven hundred miles
(06:56):
just tiny strip along the coast of North and South Carolina,
and they live in bogs like marshy bogs, sometimes salt
marshes um sometimes pete bogs, but you know, like a
wetland that's like always wet that's that's where they grow. Um,
and they like the sun and they like you humid.
But they can also whether the cold, as we'll see,
(07:17):
because it can get pretty cold in the winter in
North Carolina. So there's really no way around explaining the
origins of the name without it being a little well,
it's just a little dicey because it was named at
a time where, uh, things were different back then, and
(07:38):
they named it because the plant resembled, uh, perhaps a
woman's anatomy. Help me out here. No, I'm really enjoying
watching your tap dance. Well, I mean, and we've talked.
We may have mentioned it in the folklore episode the
idea of the vagina dentata, which in many different cultures
(08:00):
and nations around the world, there are these folkloric legends
of these women who had teeth and there vagina act
as a trap keep going chuck. And that is where
this name comes from. It's named after Venus, that got
pagan goddess of love because of that plant's resemblance and
(08:21):
because of that folklore. Yes, chee, good job man, I
think you really presented that well right, Um, I wouldn't
name it that today, can I say that? No? They
definitely wouldn't have. People are a lot less uptight when
it comes to s e X you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
it be the Carolina spider trap, that's right. I also
saw that when the it was imported to England for
(08:43):
studies around the mid eighteenth century, UM that it was
popularly called tippity witch. It's that's what they called venus
fly traps in England. I thought it was fun too,
And Charles Darwin said that it was one of the
most wonderful plants in the world, which I'm mean, that's
a that's a pretty good endorsement coming from him, you know. Oh,
I bet he loves the venus fly trap. Yes, he
(09:07):
really did. And I don't think because he um had
any kind of sexual proclivities toward it like some of
his other fellow botanists who actually named it that. No.
I think because it's a wonder of natural selection and evolution.
I would say that's why too. One of the other
things he's like, oh natural selection, yes, um. So one
(09:31):
of the other things about the venus fly trap has
another name too. It's um it's a taxonomic name. Is
Diane a Musca pula. I think that's right, and that
actually is named after Diana, a different goddess, the Roman
goddess of the hunt, and muscapula apparently means mouse trap.
(09:52):
So the other name thing you could call it besides
Venus fly trap is Diana mouse trap. It's not bad.
It's got a lot of really great names. I mean, tippity,
which it alone is worth, you know, celebrating. I think
Diana mousetrap might be my new hotel check in name.
Oh that's a good one. I like that. But at
(10:13):
any rate, they eat insects and not because they um
just love the taste of spiders or flies. Uh, they're
they're regular plants to They love photosynthesis and they do
their thing during photosynthesis like all plants do, and take
the energy of the sun and and then convert it
to sugar and oxygen and use that stuff as energy.
(10:33):
But they also need other stuff, just like all plants need,
but they can't get it because of where they live
and that p D. Marshy bog. They need all these
amino acids and vitamins that their land doesn't provide, and
they get that from these insects. Yeah, because most other
plants are able to get things like nitrogen from the
soil and phosphorus and magnesium soul for cassi calcium potassium. Like, yes,
(10:57):
they need a TP energy and they a word in
the form of carbohydrates like all plants to um, but
there's other nutrients that they need to build sell walls
to produce dna um, to transport water throughout that kind
of stuff. Like you definitely need a lot more than
a TP. And since they can't get it from the soil,
they have evolved to get it by eating other bugs
(11:21):
or eating bugs or you know, even in some cases
like like those giant pitcher plants like mice, because animals
are really great mobile stores of stuff like calcium in
sulfur and phosphorus and magnesium. That's right, And then that
wet pd acidic soil they must seek purchase elsewhere. And
(11:43):
luckily those little spiders are happy to just crawl in there.
And maybe we should take a little break and we'll
tell you all about how this trap happens right after this, Okay, chuck,
(12:14):
Before we go any further, I just want to restate
one of the coolest things I've ever heard, that the
venus fly trap and other carnivorous plants couldn't get nutrients
from the soil they grew in, so they learned to
eat bugs to get those nutrients. It's astounding, and it
also makes them so similar to the to the animal world,
(12:36):
because that's why animals eat other stuff, like other animals
or even plants, because we need to get our energy elsewhere.
We don't get it from the soil. So it makes them,
in some weird way akin to us as well. Do
you feel a kinship a little bit? And you know,
I'm a little attracted to it too, like some of
those early botanists, not in a Darwinian way or both
(13:00):
you swing both ways. Okay, I don't, I don't, I don't,
I don't judge. Who knew this podcast would go in
this direction? Right when I saw that first thing about
it being dicey, yes, about the name being I knew
exactly where it's gonna go. Uh. So they are not
the only plant also that attracts things via their smells
(13:20):
or these delicious syrupy SAPs. I mean, if you go
out in your garden on any day and see butterflies
and bees and other insects flying around, they're all going
to these plants and these plants are using these insects
in one way or the other. They're just not quite
using them up like venus fly trap does. Yeah, they're
using them to help pollinate. That's why they do that. Yeah,
because they want the bee to fly away. They the
(13:43):
venus fly trap does not want anything to fly away. No,
it says, come here, let me eat you. So here's
what happens. If you look at a venus fly trap,
when it's unfolded and beautiful and has all these little
beads of sweet nectar on it, an insect will land
on that, and on each side of uh what are
(14:04):
they called petals? I saw, lobes, and then like that,
the thing that connects them in the middle is called
the mid rib. The mid rib, not the mid rib.
It's good, you only get it at certain times. The heather.
Right on each lobe, you've got three little trigger hairs
(14:25):
arranged in a little triangular pattern. And these are part
motion detectors and part sort of timers almost, because when
a little fly or a spider or any kind of
insect that's small enough lands in there, and we should
say by small enough we mean ideally about a third
of the size of those two lobes. Can't go much
(14:46):
bigger than that. No, and they're not big there, it's
not a big plan. I saw that they grow to
be about five inches tall. Yeah they're small. Yeah, they're
fairly small. And then each plant will have, you know,
between five and ten I think um fly traps on it. Yeah,
like if you get your information from Little Shop of Horrors,
you're being the slag um. So you've got these little
(15:06):
trigger hairs and once one of those is is flicked
by a fly leg or an ant leg or a spider,
it's sort of a timer kind of starts, and they've
got about twenty or thirty seconds to dance around that
thing without hitting either that one again or one of
those other trigger hairs. And once it hits the second one,
or hits that first one the second time within that
(15:27):
little timer, that is when the trap closes in a
fraction of a second, the blink of an eye. Oh yeah,
it's super quick. Um. And you know, I think one
of the things that makes it seem animal like is
it's it's really hard to find a nature documentary about
the venus fly trap without some sort of foreboding orchestral
music playing that ground so it really kind of juices
(15:51):
it up a little bit. Uh. But here's the deal is,
they don't they don't know exactly why or exactly how
the mechanism works, since it doesn't have a brain, you know,
they know they trigger that trigger hair and then it
claps shut. But all they've got is a pretty good hypothesis. Yeah,
So what they think happens is that the the um
(16:12):
the lobes stay open um like that you just um
liken it to a mouth, So the mouth is wide
open on the venus fly trap. By the cells around
that the lobe I guess around the midrib and the
lobe where they connect are basically being crumpled. And then
something about the trigger hairs being stepped on starts to
(16:38):
um d crumple that still like it starts to release
a little bit of the pressure, and then when that
second hair is triggered, the pressure is fully released. And
they think what happens is through the use of um
of burning a TP for energy, that the the the
water pressure changes in those cells so that they go
from being crumpled to being plump, and so they're no
(16:59):
longer holding the flower open and the mouth open. So
it just shuts, and all of that is again carried
out by those action potentials, which starts with the trigger
hair being stimulated, which somehow creates an electro chemical um
transmission that goes through the plant cells to tell it
get ready, get ready because it might happen again. And
(17:20):
when it happens again, it says, okay, release the water,
and then the thing snapshot, which is pretty neat. But
even after that, even after that second stimulation and the
mouth um the mouth closes, that's not the end of
the whole process, Like, that's there's still another third one,
and it has to do with those amazing trigger hairs
(17:40):
as well. Yeah, like this, to me, it's already pretty
remarkable that this plant can do this, and and I
knew I kind of knew all that stuff, But this
is when it really floors me, because even before I
got to this part, I started thinking like, yeah, but
how long does this take into like reset the trap?
Like what if a what if something kind of floats
(18:02):
through there that's not an insect and it just happens
to trigger two of those hairs, you know, does it
just open right back up? Does it spit it out?
Like oh, I don't want this thing in there. What
if some dumb little kid sticks his finger in there,
it's gonna close of course, because it's triggering the trigger hairs. Yeah,
and you should not do that, by the way. No,
you should totally not do that. But you know that's
(18:23):
why I said, dumb little kid. So what it counts
on is a living thing squirming around in there. Once
it's sort of you know, it's not sealed tight exactly
at the very very beginning. It's it's like shut. Ideally,
they're not getting out, but maybe a fly can slip
out if it's quick enough, or maybe it can work
its way out. But all that's doing is triggering those
little trigger hairs again. And that's the signal basically that like, no, no, no,
(18:48):
you've got a living thing in here. It's not a
something that fell off a tree or whatever that you
don't want. So now is the time where you really
really close down and locked down tight. Yeah, it's the
thing's been inside scirming because like you're saying, it's it's
like it's got alive one here. One of the other
things that just I found absolutely astounding, Chuck, is when
(19:10):
the when the venus fly trap seals shut, when it's like, Okay,
I've got a bug in here, and I want to
go ahead and start eating it. The little things that
look like teeth, the cilia, they lace together and form
an air tight seal. And there's a couple of reasons
for this. One. It keeps the bug from escaping, which
it couldn't really get out after the second the second
(19:32):
hair was tripped, like, it forms a cage. But then
after it squirms around inside that cage, then it seals tight,
air tight, and that's it for the bug, by the way,
um and it keeps the bug inside. It also keeps
um uh bacteria from entering because this is not a
fast process what's about to happen. It takes the course
(19:53):
of days before it's completed, and in that time bacteria
can enter through any like hole in that seal. And
so the seal prevents bacteria from getting in and rotting
the bug and in turn rotting them the venus fly trap,
causing the poor little fly trap to turn black and
fall off. So I saw it takes about an hour
or two to fully seal. Uh. It takes about Remember
(20:17):
I said earlier, like what if something just happens to
go how long does it take to reset the trap.
That takes about twelve hours if there's a uh twig
or something. But I was looking for a kind of
a fun word for a that's not sexual. How about
a a twitter like a false alarm? But my mind
(20:38):
just keeps going to dirty places. Well, like, why I
have no idea false alarm? Let's just call it? No?
Know what? What were you going to think? That was dirty?
What were you thinking that was dirty? I can't I'll
tell you later. I guess I can't say it out loud.
I kind of figure this out. Oh, oh, I know.
To me, let's just say it's a false alarm about
twelve hours, and then the entire digestive process can take
(20:58):
a week or more. Yeah, Like, if there is an
actual bug in there, it takes about a week to
digest it. It doesn't sound like a pleasant way to
go for a bug to be trapped in a venus
fly trap, because after that seal is completely sealed, w'd
you say, it takes about a couple of hours an
hour or two for that seal to be airtight. Yes,
the whole time that bug is still alive, chuck, and
(21:19):
it's still just sitting there flipping and flopping against those
trigger hairs. And this is the other service that the
trigger hairs provide that I referred to earlier, that when
they're stimulated again after this thing is sealed, what they're
doing is telling the venus fly trap, Okay, this thing's
about this size. Um, it's not a big thing. It's
about medium size. So I only need to release, you know,
(21:42):
a little bit of digestive enzymes. And this is a
really great adaptation because it's really energy um intense to
produce digestive enzymes. UM. So the fact that it just
kind of dolls out just as enough to dissolve whatever
is in there, whatever size insect is in there, is
(22:03):
pretty astounding. And it judges this somehow, some way, in
a mindless sort of way, by how much those trigger
hairs are tripped while the thing is is squirming around
in the ceiling um fly trap. It's just awesome that
it can do that. Yeah, I mean, and this this
jumps to the end a little bit. But the reason
(22:24):
it does that is because it can only do that
so much. Um. They do. They do recycle what they
can from those juices at the end of the process.
But I get the feeling like each With each opening
and digestion and manufacturing of those enzymes and recycling of
of what they can of those enzymes, it just gets
a little bit less and a little bit less, until
(22:46):
eventually the lobes uh can't do their job anymore. And
then they just stay open and say, all right, I'll
just be a regular plant and soak up the sun.
I'm just gonna photosynthesize. Brother. I showed my daughter this
morning when before she left for school, I was watching
these videos. It's like, oh man, she's gonna love this.
And she watched it and got really sad about the fly.
(23:09):
That's sweet, and it's because of the way they shoot these.
They do that dramatic music, and she's conditioned, you know,
she's been disnified. So it's like it's Bambi's mom in there,
you know, Yeah, it's Bambies fly mother, or it's uh,
it's Dory sure, Dory the fly version. Just show her
a fly close up or have her listened to our
(23:31):
Flies episode and she'll be like, I don't care. I know. Um.
The other thing they do that really kind of um
is really easy to overlook, but definitely perhaps overly dramatizes
a venus fly trap. Shutting on a fly is they
they will very often dub in like a panther's roar
right when it um right when it shuts, and it's
(23:53):
you can't pick it out unless you're looking for but
when you are, it just sticks out like a sore thumb. Uh.
I think they get about ten to twelve either partial
or complete closures per lobe set. So that's how long
they can hang in there before they coast into retirement.
(24:14):
Not a bad run. And when you consider that, uh,
they're only eating an insects every like week or two
maybe in the wild, how about three times a month. Yeah,
so multiply that times tend it twelve and that's that's
your lifespan basically. Although I did see that they can
live twenty years in the wild well because they'll regenerate
(24:37):
new lobes and yes, so yeah, they grow from a
rhizome and those things pop up. But the plan itself,
that's a fairly long lived plant. Yeah. So okay, so inside,
so one thing I feel it is worth like explicitly
mentioning here with the venus fly trip, You've got this
open mouth and then when it closes, it converts into
(24:57):
a stomach. It's kind of like one of those washer
it's also a dryer once the wash cycles over. Right,
I've always wanted one of those. Yeah, I think it'd
be pretty cool. I've never heard if they actually like
work or not. But maybe we'll just we'll we'll go
in Dutch on one together, Okay, and see we'll just
straight it off month to month. Well, we'll rent a
(25:19):
I don't have room for it, neither do you. We'll
rent a storage space, yes, and we'll just buy a
little single unit. We'll hire an electrician and a plumber
to come out and outfit it for a washer, dryer combo,
and our our bunk beds from the old days will
be moved in there, just for nostalgia. Yeah, but this
time we'll be able to wash our sheets. So so
(25:43):
in this, in this, what's went from the mouth now
the stomach those digestive juices just enough to to melt
basically the bug that's in there, based on its size
and it's scormy nous. Um. They flood this thing and
again over the course of like five to twelve days. Um,
it's going to basically break down all the soft tissue
(26:03):
inside that bug inside it's exoskeleton and basically liquefieding to
goo until it just kind of mixes in with the
digestive juices. Right. And then in this mouth that's now
become a stomach, the nutrients that that fly or that
spider that ant carried around with it, that became liquefied,
(26:24):
are broken down into like really tiny basic particles like
amino acids and stuff, not even like proteins, like even
more basic than that. And then the plant absorbs it
just like you do in your gut, right, and it
uses those nutrients to do things like build cell walls
or repair it's DNA, or to transport water throughout its body.
(26:45):
Just not so stuff, right. And then there's one other trigger.
There's one other signal that happens where when the digestive
enzyme is basically all that's in there, all the nutrients
have been sucked out. Somehow, it is able to UM
to analyze the ratio of digestive juice to nutrients, and
(27:05):
when there's basically nothing but digestive juice is left, it
reabsorbs the digestive juice and that acts as a trigger
for those cells to compress again and the mouth to
come back open and then ideally a gentle breeze will
blow away what's left. There's a little exoskeleton in there,
(27:26):
and then Audrey's ready again. Uh, and you know again
about a week to twelve days. It depends on how big.
You know, it's a little ant, it's gonna be quicker.
We mentioned that the juices get weaker, so if it's
an older trap or set of lobes, it's gonna take
a little longer. And then the temperature can actually speed
it up a little bit. If it's itit's warmer and
there's more heat, then there's gonna be a faster breakdown,
(27:49):
so that will also speed it along. Just as amazing, man,
I mean, I knew it was going to be an
amazing like topic, but I was even astounded by how
it using these things are. But we're not done. We're
gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and
tell you all about if you want to grow one
of these monsters in your house, what you can do
right after this. All right, if you're a fan of
(28:30):
Broadway or Evolution or Charles Darwin or ancient folklore, or
just freaking out your neighbor's kids or your own kids
or grandkids and you want to venus fly trap in
your house, you can do that. You don't have to
live in the Carolinas. You just have to set up
an environment that is like you're in the Carolinas in
your home somewhere. Yes, you have to become a tar
(28:52):
heels fan or outside your home. Yeah, because you know,
I mean, I'm sure in the Atlanta Piedmont, in probably
parts of Alabama, in North Florida, you could probably grow
these things in a pot outside probably so um. But
if you live in um, say a much colder area, um,
(29:14):
you know, above the Mason Dixon line probably, or in
a much drier area like the Southwest, you're gonna have
to You're gonna have to unnaturalize it a little bit.
For example, if you live in a low humidity area,
you would want to probably put this thing in a
terra arium. Yeah, and that's I've always wanted a terra aium.
I think they're fun. Sure, So uh get a ru aium,
(29:37):
make it wet in there. Uh, you're gonna have a
you know, I think I think about a four inch
pot is a decent starter pot and you may not
need anything else actually, because they're really not that big,
like you said, and you gotta keep checking that soil.
You don't want it, um you don't want it swimming
in water, but you definitely don't want it to dry
out at any point. Yeah, and you also don't want
(29:58):
to um water it from above. I didn't see why,
but I suspect that it might, like a rain drop,
could conceivably cause it to um to close accidentally if
you've got enough water splattering on it and triggering those
those trigger hairs. Oh. I wonder if they grow in
the wild under more densely covered areas to prevent that.
That's possible. But um, so what you do is you
(30:22):
you water them from the bottom up. You place them
in a pan of or a little tray of standing
water about a third of an inch or a centimeter deep.
What watering tips with jobs? Well, listen, there's one of
there's something else that you want to keep in mind.
I think most people wouldn't realize. It's like you can't
you can't water these guys with tap water. Um Oh,
(30:43):
I just got what reference you are making? You cutter?
Do we need like a million feet worth those of water?
Like you, you basically want to make sure that your
house is completely flooded with water to make these things live. Uh. No,
you bring a good point, though it needs you can't.
Like tap water is no good and probably most of
(31:04):
the filter water using is probably no good either. No,
because the salts and nutrients will build up in the
soil and these things have evolved not to use that
stuff and like it will actually harm them for the
same reason you don't want to use fertilizer either. They
don't need fertilize or they any bugs. Basically, yeah, they said,
and I thought this is really cool. Just collect some rainwater,
and that's that's your best bet. If you can't collect enough.
(31:27):
If you, you know, live in Phoenix and you want
to grow a venus fly trap, you're already kind of
growing upstream. But um, you may not be able to
collect that rainwater either. So at least get some deionized water,
maybe some distilled water, or if you've got a reverse
osmosis system, which you might in Phoenix, then you can
(31:49):
use that stuff too. You can use that stuff, and
if you don't have a reverse ostomosis system, you can
buy it. Usually at any aquarium store they sell that. Okay. Um,
so the water is the important what kind of water
you use again, don't use fertilizer um and apparently uh,
because they grow in areas that get cold in the winter.
If you are growing when in a tra areum from
(32:12):
November to February, you want to take it out of
a tra areum and like put it in a window
in your garage or something like that, Like let it
actually get cold, and you're gonna get freaked out because
the plant will actually die back to the rhizome and
it'll look like you lost it or something like that.
But then come March, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised when
it comes bouncing right back. Yeah, and you can treat
(32:34):
it like any plant that you overwinter that kind of
goes dormant. You can clip off the dead detritus and
it'll grow back. How many how many of those are
we gonna get per plant? Like four or five? I
think it's a five to tend somewhere, oh, five to
ten even Okay, that's what I saw, but I could
(32:54):
be making that up. There's a lot of numbers flying
around in this one um. But what about the feeding?
You know, it's uh, if you have this thing in
your house or in a tru Areum, you're not just
going to count on a rando fly that got in
or or akucaracha to walk into its midst. So just
(33:15):
like if you have a constrictor and you've gotta you know,
go to the pet store to pick up some mice,
you have to feed this thing. Yeah, apparently, um, you
can feed it live bugs, but you know there's problems
with live bugs. Apparently, live meal worms can actually burrow
their way out of the plant, which is not pleasant
(33:35):
for the plan. I'm sure. Um, crickets can easily get
too big or can stick a leg out which will
keep that seal from getting air tight, so they can
um they can decompose uh from bacteria that gets slipped
in that can actually make the plant decomposed to So
your best bet is to get some freeze dried meal worms,
blood worms or crickets, Uh, put a little water on there,
(33:58):
stir them up, and then put it uh drop it
on the the plant in its mouth basically and so
um you might get a closure response from just dropping
it in there because it might hit a couple of sillia.
But don't forget like it's not going to start releasing
those digestive enzymes until it's sillia. The little trigger hairs
(34:20):
are stimulated once it's closed, So you actually have to
have like a little toothpick or something like that and
just very lightly, very gently kind of rub those sillia
so that it'll close fully and release those digestive enzymes. Right,
And like you said earlier, don't uh invite your neighbors
kids over to trigger this thing for fun because it
(34:42):
only gets tinner twelve with those closures, and you're you're
you know, you're literally shortening the lifespan of that lobe
if you're doing so for fun. Uh, So you gotta
drop an insect. You probably won't be able to catch
any flies. Even if you're good with those chopsticks. Man,
very few can accomplish that feed. You have to be
(35:02):
friends with Pat Morita. And they got to be small,
remember about a third the size. I told you I
worked with Pat Marida once, right. Uh. No music video, No,
I don't think you have to want to say it was.
It was one Emily producer and I worked for it
was I think it was alien Ant Farm and they
did a Karate kids send up and Pat Morita starred
(35:26):
and um I was Pat Marita's guy that day to
to get him what he needed in his trailer, and
he was as nice as he could be. R I
p God rest his soul. And I don't think it's
a big deal to say that Pat Marita loved sipping
on Chardonnay during the day on a shoot. Oh he
didn't get plaster or anything, but he he wanted a
(35:46):
bottle of wine, a nice bottle of white chardonnay. And
he was just a lovely guy, how positively cultured. You know.
I heard Mr T likes to drink huge cups of um.
I don't know what it was he was drinking, but
he would he'd like to drink on set as well
during the day. Oh. Really interesting. I did a Wye
(36:07):
Cliff video one time, and uh, he and his his
crew they really drank. Oh yeah. But I mean sometimes
those music videos that was just sort of the um
it was just sort of a party atmosphere, like they
would use as an excuse to be like, all right,
all my friends are coming here for twenty four hours
and we're just gonna get down. And um. I also
(36:28):
had one of the coolest experiences of the music video
life on that whye cliff job, and that I was
standing kind of right next to a and I'm just
so square. I don't know what it's called. When they're
improv rapping and like dissing each other like the competition style.
I don't know what that's called. It's called a mile Yeah,
it's called an eight mile face off. Okay, that's what
(36:51):
I said. I went, Hey, guys, nice eight mile face on. Um.
But I got to kind of witness one of those
in person, and I was like, oh my god, it's
like the ellen is just off the chart. So it
was good because sometimes those things are really not good. No,
I mean these were these were pros. Oh good man,
I'll bet that was cool to see. It was fun,
but they were they were fun too. Wow. Uh did
(37:12):
we say everything there is to say about Venus fly traps.
I also had to put a joint in Buster Rhymes lips.
I think I've told that story. He smokes marijuana, believe
it or not, because he was in a in a
video for Gimme Some O. He was fake tied to
the train tracks in one scene, so he was he
(37:33):
was couldn't move and he was on the ground and
he would always ask me. I would stand by and
hold the burning blunt and I would put it in
his lips every you know, probably eight seconds. Good lord,
it was great. Like, those are the fun things you
can do as a p A. Sometimes I recommend it.
Those are some cool stories, Chuck, you can really get
(37:53):
in the mix. There's nothing to do with penus fly traps,
so but it does. Now well, if you want him
about venus fly traps, go buy one. You can buy
one online, although supposedly you should probably go to a
nursery that specializes in carnivorous plants because they actually know
what they're talking about. So let's start there. Okay, can
you grow them from seed? You can? You can go
from seed. You can also divide them, like as they
(38:16):
get to be adult size, right before they come out
of their winter dormancy is a good time to divide them.
So they make great gifts. I love it. Uh And
since Chuck said he loves it, of course, everybody, it's
time for a listener Mayo, I'm gonna call this Clark
me a listener mail. Okay, did you see this one?
(38:38):
It sounds familiar. It's from a few weeks ago. Hey, guys,
I just want to tell you that I've been subtly
leaving Clark as a verb in the conversations with my
family for the last three weeks. Uh, this is Leslie,
this is mom that's doing this. At first, I did
it just to be funny and see what they would say.
None of them had heard that particular episode and don't
even know about clarking, but no one questioned it. I
(39:01):
asked my husband to clark me a ten dollar bill,
and I told my son I would clark him a
notebook for school, and it's told. I told one of
my daughters that someone could clark her a phone charger.
Everyone just proceeded as if I'd said nothing out of
the ordinary, and it was totally surreal. Anyway, I just
had to share that with you guys, because I feel
(39:22):
like I have a hilarious inside joke but no one
to laugh about it with. If you do read this
on the air, and how could we not? Uh, will
you please shout out my husband, Clint and my kids Jackson. Uh,
it looks like Emma and Grace it maybe m E,
M m E. Thanks for what you do. I'm a
longtime listener to love your show so much It's perfect
(39:43):
for those like me who have a love of learning
and laughing. And that is from Leslie and her family
just sound wonderful and I it says something about how
much they're listening to you, Leslie. I hate to break
into you. That's pretty great. Or they're just like moms
on off a rocker. I guess we'll just go with it.
What a great email. I'm going to guess the middle
(40:07):
kid's name is Emmy. Okay, so we've got m Emmy
and Emma. I don't think we can miss Chuck unless
it's just the artist formerly known as Well. Thanks again, Leslie,
that was a great email, one of the all time greats.
If you ask me, and if you want to throw
in your two cents and see if you can compete
(40:28):
with Leslie's email, we would love to hear it. You
can send it to us at stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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Josh Clark
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