Have you ever thought about plants being able to hunt? We all know there are a lot of carnivorous animals that hunt for food, and they hunt every day in order to feed themselves and their cubs. As for plants, it’s hard for us to imagine what method they use to hunt. In fact, there’s a plant called pitcher plant, which is a smart hunter that uses an interesting way with three steps to hunt their prey. 
 
  In the first step of a pitcher plant’s hunting process, it produces a kind of special fluid, which is watery or sticky. This fluid it secretes is often stored in the pitcher cup of a pitcher plant, and it is made with a good smell in order to allure the preys’ approach. A pitcher plant itself isn’t poisonous; however, the fluid inside it is especially fatal to insects. It is because the fluid consists of viscoelastic biopolymers and digestive enzymes, which can trap the prey and prevent them from escape. There is always half a cup of the digestive fluid inside the pitcher cup, but on rainy days, the rain will dilute the fluid and make it too heavy for a pitcher plant to bear. Thus, the pitcher plant slopes and gets rid of some fluid inside it.

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  The next step of the hunting is to wait for the prey to fall into the pitcher plant’s trap. The peristome of the pitcher plant with various colors attracts insects to come near. While the plant can attract different kinds of insects, it isn’t good at attracting mosquitoes. The reason is that female mosquitoes are not interested in the honeydew. The preies of the pitcher plant mainly are ants or some winged insects like bees and crickets; sometimes small vertebrates are also likely to be caught. When the prey slips into the pitcher cup, the lid does not close immediately. Instead, the waxy coating is so smooth that it makes it almost impossible for the prey to flee away from there. Then, the viscoelastic fluid that previously stored inside the pitcher cup will gradually drown the prey.
     
Eventually, the pitcher plant is able to acquire nutrients by absorbing dead creatures inside the pitcher cup. The digestive juice is acidic, and it has the ability to digest those insects. Pitcher plant has its own multicellular glands on the internal surface, and it mainly depends on these glands to digest the prey. After being digested, the dead bodies of those prey will turn into valuable nutrients to the plant. Since the pitcher plant has no excretory organ, the corpses of insects that left inside are impossible to be removed outside the pitcher cup. They will remain there until the plant withers.

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  Pitcher plants are long-lived plants, they can live for about ten years, or longer. The whole hunting process of the pitcher plant is very exciting, and the plant uses its special methods and structures to capture the prey. From the hunting process of pitcher plants, we understand how the food chain works. What’s more, we can also observe the wisdom of plants from these steps of hunting. It shows not only animals, but plants are using their own ways to survive in nature.