Venus flytraps count electrical impulses to induce the digestive process (2016)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Makes me wonder what was being selected for, and what is currently being selected for
Aka: how did these evolve and what other things did they evolve from or where are the sister species, and what directions are they currently evolving to?
Where are the other fast moving plants? Why aren’t there similar things that are even more able - or mobile
(you see I’m trying to satisfy pedantic delineation from specialists in this field, but I lack the words)
Some Drosera (sundew) species actively curl their leaves around prey, but rely on the prey being stuck to their leaves already, so different to the mechanism of a VFT. Drosera and VFT are in the same family, so are pretty closely related.
There's Utricularia (bladderworts) which are capable of catching prey rapidly, but the plant itself doesn't really move I guess.
Seems there is a bunch of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_plant_movement
Dawkins made an attempt at it in The Blind Watchmaker. See also https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-carnivorou... and https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21425
Venus flytraps 'able to count' in order to avoid false alarms, study finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10950449 - Jan 2016 (8 comments)