--- title: Plants deeper: carnivorous plants that count, slip and suck — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Plants deeper: carnivorous plants that count, slip and suck», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Most plants get what they need from sunlight, air, water and soil, but some live in wet bogs where the soil ha --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Plants deeper: carnivorous plants that… # Plants deeper: carnivorous plants that count, slip and suck Lesson 254 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/0/) — Most plants get what they need from sunlight, air, water and soil, but some live in wet bogs where the soil has almost no nitrogen, the stuff plants need to build themselves. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/1/) — These plants found a trick: they catch insects and digest them, the way you might take vitamins, while still making their main food from sunlight like any other green plant. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/2/) — The Venus flytrap is a plant that counts. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/4/) — Other hunters have other tricks: pitcher plants are slippery water slides into a pool of juice, sundews are covered in sticky drops, and underwater bladderworts suck in water fleas like tiny vacuum cleaners. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/5/) — The giant man-eating plant of cartoons and games does not exist; the biggest real pitchers sometimes catch a frog, a lizard or, very rarely, a rat. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/6/) — A Venus flytrap shuts in a fraction of a second when two trigger hairs inside the trap are touched within about 20 seconds. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/7/) — After it shuts, the trap needs about five more touches from the struggling insect before it starts to digest, so it really counts. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/8/) — Each snap costs a lot of energy, a trap takes many hours to reopen, and a trap can only close a few times before it dies, so poking flytraps with a pencil harms them. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/9/) — Venus flytraps grow wild only in one small area of North and South Carolina in the USA. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/10/) — Insects slip on the wet, super slippery rim of a pitcher plant, fall in and drown in digestive juice; a lid over many pitchers keeps rain from watering the juice down. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/11/) — Some giant pitcher plants in Borneo are used as toilets by tree shrews, and the plant feeds on their droppings. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/12/) — The sparkling drops on a sundew are sticky glue that look like nectar or dew; a stuck insect is slowly wrapped by the curling tentacles. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/13/) — Charles Darwin wrote a whole book on insect-eating plants and tested sundews with tiny bits of meat and hair. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/14/) — Bladderworts have tiny underwater bladders that pump water out, so the pressure inside is low; when a water flea touches the trigger hairs, the trapdoor opens and sucks it in within about a thousandth of a second. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/15/) — Butterworts have flat, greasy-looking sticky leaves that catch tiny flies, and in Scandinavia their leaves were once used to thicken milk. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/16/) — There are more than 600 kinds of carnivorous plants, and all of them still make their food from sunlight. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/18/) — A pet flytrap needs bright sun, wet soil, rainwater instead of tap water, whose minerals slowly harm it, a cold rest in winter, and never pieces of burger, whose fat it cannot digest, so the trap may rot. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/254-plants-deeper-carnivorous-plants-that-count-slip-and-suck/19/) — The titan arum, or corpse flower, can be over 3 metres tall and smells of rotting meat to bring in flies that pollinate it, but it eats nothing. - ← previous: [Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and strangest trees](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/) - next →: [Plants deeper: poisonous and stinging plants and staying safe](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/255-plants-deeper-poisonous-and-stinging-plants-and-staying-safe/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)