On a late reportage trip out West , I found myself surrounded by hundreds of poisonous carnivores , all soaking their quarry in a caustic mixing of soma - eat on enzymes . In a California bog , I fend in a field of carnivorous plants . The sticky sundew plant held their effervescent , modified pass on just an inch or so off the ground , digesting insects entrap in their numerous traps .
I was tagging along on a botany rescue commission to amass and keep up as many of the United States Department of State ’s rare and threatened plants as possible . One finish of that military expedition : collecting seeds from the sundew . There are only a few known happening of the plant life across all of California ’s 160,000 + solid miles . And in this casing , the population is condensed to just two patch of floating goop , eking out an detached existence .
Carnivorous plants showcase the splended oddities development is capable of . And although much about them remains mysterious , recent inquiry has increase our understanding of why and how some plant flipped the script and started rust animals . Simultaneously , these meat - munching - marvels are increasingly threatened by habitat destruction , poaching , and climate alteration .
Carnivorous plants like this sundew are found on every continent except Antarctica, but they only grow in very specific habitats.Photo: Lauren Leffer / Gizmodo
“ Carnivorous plants face a treble whammy,”Barry Rice , a phytologist at UC Davis and an astrobiologist at Sierra College , told me in a phone call . “ Not only are they facing all the stresses that all the other plants on the major planet are facing , but they ’re also , by their very nature , extra sensitive to it . ”
So read all about them , before they ’re all gone .
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