this is Nepenthes ampullaria, and they actually do this! they sit on the forest floor and eat leaf litter that falls into their pitchers, making them technically detritivores from our petty human meat-eating point of view.
the mechanism- for those new to Shit Eater Mcgee over here- works like this: the pitcher top has a sweet nectar that the tree shrew native to it’s habitat loves. the shrew sits on the top of the pitcher and eats the nectar, which conveniently, though the wonders of evolution, places the shrew’s asshole directly above the neck of the pitcher. under the neck of the pitcher is digestive fluid. the shrew then poops and so is the way of life and the wonders of biology
you have no idea how much this plant is ridiculed by the scientific community. at the carnivorous plant convention i was at a couple weeks ago whenever even an IMAGE of this plant would come up on a slide it would be met with a round of laughter. nobody can take this plant seriously.
i actually got to see it in person at the same convention, which was pretty cool, and they’re actually smaller than u would expect?? they’re notorious for taking a long time to grow their first full-sized pitchers, which makes sense when you hold one in your hands for the first time and realize that these pitchers are woody. like, i was expecting a flexible leaf kind of feel like most of the other species have, but apparently to support the sheer weight of a shitting shrew on u you gotta have like, support and stuff in there. it deadass feels like light, strong, hallow wood, while looking like a flexible leaf.
its a fucking ridiculous plant but at the same time….my bitch made it through millions of years of evolution like that. like do u see that image? that image of a shrew taking a dump into a pitcher plant? that pitcher plant has it made
the toilet plant laughs at your derision, humanity, it has fertilizer on delivery order and it just does not care
Ridiculous growth comparison between the generic Venus flytrap I rescued from Lowe’s (Fido) versus the fancy B-52 flytrap I got from a professional breeder (The Gorn).
Good boy, Fido!
I have so many questions! Mostly about what you feed them? Can you feed them meat? Is it normal for their stalk (head?) to die when they eat?
I’m no expert. I just got them this spring. It’s been warm and sunny enough where I live that I have been able to keep them outside, keeping them hydrated by placing them in a plastic tub and filling it with distilled and/or rainwater. They feed themselves on wild insects. You can’t feed them meat, but if you manage to keep them indoors in bright enough light, you can feed them crickets or something. I’m not sure about the blackening mouths – sometimes they die after digesting an insect, sometimes they eat it and start gobbling again. I trim off the ones that blacken more than a little.
but out of all of them i’ve seen, this post talking about an american pitcher plant with a mutation is probably my fave. i contacted op over dm after seeing it and they say that the plant lives a happy life in the ground in a perfectly reasonable climate, but always sends up 2-3 of these when it comes back up each year (for comparison, here’s another post showing what these pitcher plants usually look like):
common topics in this subreddit include:
-’my carnivorous plant is cute!!!!!!!!!!’
-’my carnivorous plant is flowering!!!!!!!’
-’my carnivorous plant ate something weird!!!!!!!!!’
-’my carnviorous plant has something weird about to fall into it!!!!!!!!!!’
-canriovous plant-mediated bug carnage
-new cultivars and stuff
-a few people selling/trading
-new carnivorous plant news and research
-new discoveries, whenever they happen
-people asking questions about carnivorous plant care and more experienced people answering
-people posting their CRAZY beautiful carnivorous plant setups like HOW:
they also have a dedicated carnivorous plant discord organized by plant family lmao, here’s the invite, im bolding this because i get a lot of questions about where my occasional plant-related discord screenshots come from and i actually don’t have a dedicated server of my own for that (yet) but i am in this one so
2.fun fact this bat isnt being eaten; like, its roosting there for the night. this is Nepenthes hemsleyana, a pitcher plant species in a mutualistic relationship with the local tiny bat friends Kerivoula hardwickii (Hardwicke’s woolly bat)!! it works like this:
– the pitchers are shaped to make a special distinctive reflection of the bat’s echolocation. so like, the bats can hear where the pitchers are and go to them for roosting.
-the bats enter the pitchers and sit on this special rim inside that holds them above the water line so they dont get eaten on accident.
-up to two teeny bat friends can fit in an average pitcher at a time lmao
-the bat friends poop when they sleep and the plant eats the poop when it falls into the digestive fluid
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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