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Poop Eating Plant

6.10.15


Yes you read it right plant have developed a taste for poop!

If you thought Coprophagia (eating feces) was only restricted to house flies and insects, you're in for a surprise.
Carnivorous plants, are not what comes to mind when someone says- poop and plant in the same sentence, but the Nepenthes rajah, a pitcher plant found on the foot hills of Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia, has developed a taste for poop.

Apart from being one of the bigger pitcher plant varieties, it is one of the few carnivorous plants that is truly carnivorous, which means it is not just an insectivore, it also consumes small vertebrates and has on occasions, trapped and consumed small mammals. Known to drown and consume small rats that unfortunately fall into their trap, it is believed that carniorous plants have developed a taste for 'meat' to compensate for the lack of nutrients in the soil.

So where does the poop come on the dinner platter you ask?
The animal in focus here is the treeshrew, an extremely cute looking rodent that is attracted to the nectar produced by the N. rajah's reflex lid. So the shrew visits the pitcher for a quick sugar break, while marking its territory by leaving its dropping behind. Now the dropping is a good source of nitrogen, which is exactly what the pitcher needs in a tough environment. While this liaison continues in the day, at night the N. rajah has another visitor, the summit rat, which does the exact same thing in the dark.



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