The carnivorous pitcher plant is nature's own honey trap, luring
insects to their doom with drops of nectar and other
enticements. But once an insect comes to call, pitcher plants
have a problem: how to make sure their prey doesn't escape. Now,
researchers have discovered an ingenious insect-trapping
mechanism, or rather two, in a South American pitcher species.
The throat of the little-known Heliamphora nutans, new research
shows, is covered with a pelt of tiny, precisely oriented hairs
that prey can't easily ascend. The hairs also help to create a
slippery, wet film on the pitcher's inner walls, making it
nearly impossible for the plant's victims to get a grip.
Instead, they plunge into the bottom of the pitcher, where they
drown in a pool of water. Other carnivorous plants also resort
to strange techniques for seizing prey, says Jonathan Moran of
Royal Roads University in Victoria, Canada, but the features
described in the new study are "very, very sophisticated. … It's
not perhaps the most outrageous meth