Question: How do Venus fly traps eat flys

Alex Batchelor answered on 18 Nov 2019:

Yay! I’m glad someone asked me about these plants because they’re awesome!
So the trap part of the plant is usually brightly coloured inside and it smells nice so flies think they have found a flower. When the fly lands on the trap and starts walking around the plants can feel it because the inside of the trap has little hairs that the insect brushes against. When the plant knows it has an insect there it closes in a tenth of a second (which is pretty fast when you think most plants move incredibly slowly!) and it traps the fly. Once it’s shut the plant closes it up really really tightly so no air can escape and starts to fill it with chemicals to digest the insect, like your stomach digests food. It can take a few days for the plant to digest the insect depending on how big the fly is, then it opens back up and anything that it couldn’t eat gets blown away by the wind.

There’s another plant that eats bugs (and some are even big enough they can even eat mice and rats!) These are called pitcher plants. They have a big jug shaped part of the plant that’s filled with liquid. Around the edge of the opening smells really good to bugs so they go to have a look, but it’s really slippery so they fall into the liquid and drown (not a nice way to go) then the liquid digests them.