carnivorous plants don't just catch bugs. Today's video shows them "eating" vertebrates: two young spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) are trapped in the digestive juice of Sarracenia purpurea.

(video source: Algonquin Wildlife Research Station)

this video is from a study published in Ecology, where researchers observed bottle grass preying on these salamanders in the lake and swamp area of Canada's Algonquin Provincial Park (Algonquin Provincial Park).

in the summer of 2017, a student named Teskey Baldwin first discovered the spotted blunt salamander trapped in bottle grass. The research team then conducted another survey in 2018. It turns out that this phenomenon is not uncommon, and a total of 43 trapped individuals were found in the two surveys.

these immature salamanders may be attracted by insects into the bottle grass, or they may be avoiding other dangers. Some of the trapped salamanders died in less than three days, while others survived for at least 19 days. It takes less than 10 days for dead spotted salamanders to be degraded by enzymes produced by plants and other microbes that live in liquids.

these events suggest that young salamanders should be a way to get nutrition for bottle grass. On the other hand, carnivorous plants are also a hurdle in life for young salamanders.

in addition, there has been an example of carnivorous plants getting nutrients from bats before, but it is not that bats directly fall in and are digested, but that some bats use pitcher plants as natural toilets, and then bat feces provide plants with the nutrients they need. That is also very interesting, I put the relevant article to read the original text, you can have a look.

Source: Patrick D. Moldowan

Source:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190607193657.htm

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ecy.2770

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