Ant-Eating Plant Adjusts to Optimize Its Trapping Ability

A tricky insect-eating plant from Borneo is living proof that one need not have a brain to outsmart the opposition. Scientists say the tropical carnivorous plant regularly exploits natural weather fluctuations to adjust the slipperiness of its pitfall traps in order to capture and dine on batches of ants at one time rather than individual ants. The research involved an Asian species of pitcher plant, so named because its leaves form cup-shaped insect traps that look like a...

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