  One of the amazing things about Life is its ability to showcase organisms or behaviors never seen before in a nature documentary. But producers faced a different challenge when they decided to capture a Venus flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, showing off its carnivorous ways. This alien-looking plant from the southeastern United States may be one of the most familiar organisms in all of biology. It's been photographed, studied, grown in classrooms around the world and even parodied in classic horror flicks. Bringing it to life — and to Life — in a way that would seem fresh and compelling required a little innovation, a lot of flytrap plants and countless hours of meticulous filmmaking.
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Watch a "Venus Flytrap Catch Flies"
JAWS OF DEATH
In the wild, a healthy
Venus flytrap typically reaches a maximum size of about 5 inches (13 centimeters) in diameter. Each individual leaf trap is smaller still, with a length that tops out at about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters). For humans, this doesn't seem very impressive. But for a fly, which may grow no larger than half an inch (1.2 centimeters) itself, the traps are significant structures. This is the perspective
Life producers wanted to capture on film, although they couldn't use traditional filming techniques.
Like many of the scenes involving plants, those of the
Venus flytrap were shot almost entirely in the studio of time-lapse expert Tim Shepherd. Because flytraps are one of the easiest carnivorous plants to grow in laboratory environments, Shepherd didn't need to travel to America to get the shot. In fact, a nursery just down the road from Shepherd's studio supplied all of the plants that appear in the final cut.
Once he brought the plants inside, Shepherd could control the shots with much more precision. "We wanted to get an incredibly close feel," he said, "to help people appreciate the three-dimensional structure of the plant. We also wanted to really clarify how the mechanism of the trap works."
Shot at such high magnification, the functional components of the leaf traps become readily apparent. The first things you notice are the cilia — the long eyelashlike projections that grow along the edge of each leaf lobe, also known as guard hairs. The cilia are strong enough to act like prison bars, preventing trapped insects from escaping. But they only get to do their job if other structures — the trigger hairs — do theirs first.
Trigger hairs grow near the crease where the two jaws of the leaf trap join. If an insect bumps into these tiny hairs twice within 30 seconds or so, the leaves snap shut more rapidly than the blink of an eye. Bugs trapped behind the cilia are doomed to be digested by enzymes secreted by glands on the leaf surface.
What you don't see as clearly in the
Life footage is the part of the leaf structure that exists beneath the traps. The traps are actually attached to a heart-shaped stalk capable of carrying out photosynthesis. That means
Venus flytraps can make their own food from sunlight just like every other plant, which also means they can survive and grow without feasting on bugs. But because they live in boggy areas with poor soil, they grow faster and reproduce more successfully by supplementing their diet with nutrients, especially phosphorous and nitrogen, obtained from digested animals. It's the flytrap's way of taking a vitamin tablet, except of course its tablet often has wings and red eyes.
Continue: The Diner Becomes Dinner
