Carnivorous Plant Goes Vegetarian`

Wow, if they can why not me, was my first thought. My second thought was that my combat vegetarian grandson would really like knowing about this.

So the plant I’m talking about isn't the Venus flytrap but rather a pitcher plant. Pitcher plants usually use the scent of their sweet nectar to lure unsuspecting insects to their drowning (in the bottom of the pitcher) deaths where they are then consumed. Pitcher plants grow predominately in nitrogen poor soils and thus get their nitrogen from the insects they trap and sustain themselves on…unless they are vegetarians and scientists have found that some are. In particular the pitcher plants in southeast Asia that are big enough to trap small mammals have gone vegetarian but those same small mammals contribute to their diet, just not in the way one would think when pondering carnivorous plant appetites. Upon observation (24 hour surveillance cameras) some of the giant pitchers do lure small mammals that in order to get the sweet nectar on the lid of the pitcher perch precariously on the pitcher’s rim. Instead of falling in they poop and their droppings plop in. This is the source of nitrogen the pitcher plants sustain themselves on. Other pitcher plants line the ground below the rainforest canopy catching leaf litter that decomposes in their pitchers providing even more vegetarian style nitrogen (than poop).

So here is my question when all was read and done and I sat down to ponder this…Are carnivorous plants gone vegetarian, cannibals?