How the Venus Flytrap Became Predator Instead of Prey

call up when we tell you that theVenus flytrap can actually count ? That ’s how this carnivorous plant life knows the difference between the presence of prey in its trap and a false dismay . Now the same squad of German scientists is back with perceptiveness into how the Venus flytrap turned the evolutionary tables to become marauder alternatively of prey . Theydescribe this workin a raw paper in Genome Research .

As previously report , theVenus flytraphas a pleasing fruity scent , the proficient to draw in unsuspecting worm to its misleadingly welcoming leaves . Those leave are lined with ultra - sensitive trigger hairs that sense when something touches them . When the pressure is sufficient to bend those hair , the leaves snap shut , immobilize the fair game inside with the help of long cilia that play like fingers , take hold of and holding the worm in place . And then the digestive cognitive process get .

Earlier this year , researchers at University of Wurzburg in Germany concluded that the Venus flytrap manages this exploit bycounting the numberof times something impact its hair - trace leaves . Only after the fifth triggering stimulus would the flytrap begin excreting digestive enzyme .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

They next planned to sequence the plant ’s genome in hopes of uncovering further clew about trait specific to the flytrap ’s penchant for meaty insects .

That ’s where the unexampled newspaper comes in . During their genetic analysis , the German squad discovered that the same unwashed plant defense system that typically protect plants from being eaten by insects , are used by Venus flytraps for insect feeding . Somewhere along its evolutionary timeline , the Venus flytrap accommodate that justificatory cistron activation design into an offense , efficaciously switching from prey to predatory animal .

For instance , when the researchers equate the Venus flytrap with the non - carnivorous thane cress , they rule that both plants produce a justificative hormone squall jasmonate . But the thane cress does so in reply to accidental injury — say , from the sharpness of a hungry worm — while the Venus flytrap does so when its sensory hair find potential prey . And the hormone service dissimilar aim for each : for the thale cress , it produces poisonous substances or make its leave harder to support , while for the flytrap , it kick off the digestive process .

William Duplessie

And counting is n’t the only means by which the Venus flytrap differentiate the dispute between an inedible object and literal prey . Most insects have a chitin exoskeleton ; the flytrap has a chitin receptor enabling it to “ taste ” an insect . The plant will produce even more digestive enzymes in reception to the front of chitin .

“ link with chitin normally means danger for a plant — insects that will eat it , ” Centennial State - author Rainer Hedrichsaid in a command . This in turn triggers key defense mechanisms . “ In the Venus flytrap , these defensive processes have been reprogrammed during development . The plant now use them to eat insects . ”

[ Genome Research ]

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