Topic: Venus Fly Trap in action

Just made this short video of one of my little fly traps (Dionaea muscipula) catching a fly. This will be an accompaniment to some macro photos I also took today of my darlin' Venus. It's a bit late now to start processing the photos so I hope to do that to-morrow and post them up later.
Venus in Action

Neat ? now we just need them for politicians.

Cool
I like how at about :18 or :19, you can still the the fly moving around some inside.

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Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

Oh yeah, a row of Triffid sized Venus plants stationed just outside the houses of parliament would do wonders for the general well being of the country.
MP's caught fiddling their expenses, favouring private companies that they "just happen" to be directors of, or sanctioning a war that need not be waged at all, could be made to run the gauntlet. Perhaps televised for the "reality" TV addicted millions of drones the same system has produced...

Erm sorry, got carried away there, and found myself on that ol' soapbox again

Actually if you have the sound on you can hear the poor little blighter buzzing away. After about half an hour when the plant realises it has caught live prey the trap closes firmly shut till it's almost flat.
I've tried putting dead insects in the trap but the plant rejects these and opens up again after a day or so. This is due to the Venus plant developing a mechanism whereby the trigger hairs have to be stimulated a number of times after the trap has closed. This is to prevent it wasting valuable energy trying to digest detritus that may have fallen in.

cool stuff Tao

Thanks Arthurio, I was thinking of you and your impressive efforts with the macro photos of the fly you posted a while back. I'll just have to try to capture another fly and steer clear of the Venus plant while I do so

I'll post this up here as well as the photography section as I think it is appropriate. This shows how the trap compresses when a live prey is caught as mentioned earlier.
The trap with the fly inside is on the right.

hehe ... after having seen your venus plant I started thinking about the same thing ... it's spring ... so it's time to look for a new *fresh* specimen ... mmm ...

I seem to remember reading somewhere a good way to capture a live (insect) subject on camera is to put it in a bag then put the bag in the fridge for a short while to slow down the creatures metabolism.
Then you have about five minutes to take the shot before it warms up again and scarpers.
I don't want any more macro related deaths on my conscience.