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Plant Actually Toilet
"Apparently scientists now think that a pitcher plant they had assumed was so large that it ate shrews is actually a shrew toilet. And just to illustrate that point further, here is a shrew taking a dump in one. UGH! Look at his little guilty, smiling face. Have some decency, you shrew!"
"The band has had a few different names over the years. When we started, we were Teddy Bear Suicide, but then we changed it to Mouse Rat. Then we were God Hates Figs, Department of Homeland Obscurity, Flames for Flames, Muscle Confusion, Nothing Rhymes With Orange, then Everything Rhymes With Orange, Punch Face Champions, Rad Wagon, Puppy Pendulum, Possum Pendulum, Penis Pendulum, Handrail Suicide, Angel Snack, Just the Tip, Threeskin… Oh, Jet Black Pope. We went back to Mouse Rat, and now we are Shrew Toilet."
Dr Clarke says it is the "neatest" discovery he has made in more than 20 years of studying Nepenthes meat-eating plants.
Only because every other discovery about meat-eating plants is, by definition, TOTALLY AWESOME.
Wait, so the plant attracts them with nectar, and then they eat the plant's nectar and poop in the plant at the same time? That is neat!!
I'm assuming it fertilizes it somehow?
If that plant could figure out a way to show NFL football in HD, it could destroy humanity in less than a generation.
@hg: Carnivorous plants grow in places where the soil is very low in one or another nutrient, usually nitrogen (nitrogen is very common in air, but for plants it needs to be "fixed," and fixed nitrogen is often a limiting factor in plant growth, until you add fertilizer). Eating meat (usually bugs) provides them with this nutrient/these nutrients and allows them to outcompete other plants attempting to grow in the same place. If you want more information, I can get you a copy of my 8-year-old daughter's science report.
@kneetoe: (NBC star) TMYK
That is so German!
This is evolution in process. Give it a few dozen more generations and, mark my words, it'll be eating tree shrews. It just needs to get a leetle bit bigger.
This also explains the plant's teeny sanitary strip that has confounded botanists for generations.
SHREW POO!
(I totally jacked that from the BBC's headline, and I don't care. I'm going to be giggling all day.)
What, you've never heard of a wastewater treatment plant?
Aw, seems like somebody tamed it.
This is good post. I thanks you.
See? "Going to the bathroom" outdoors is totally natural. Those plants are just asking for it.
So, maybe they should stop calling it a "Pitcher Plant"….
(Can I pour you a glass of shrew-poo?)
Talk about a SHREWED MOVEment Do you get it!!