By Cheyenne Macdonald For Dailymail.com
Published: 21:19 BST, 10 June 2019 | Updated: 21:39 BST, 10 June 2019
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Scientists have discovered what’s thought to be the first example of a North American pitcher plant consuming salamanders.
While these meat-eating plants are well-known to have a diet rich in insects and spiders, vertebrate prey aren’t nearly as common.
At Ontario’s Algonquin Park, however, where pitcher plants can be found throughout the wetlands, a team has now documented numerous instances in which the plants captured and consumed young salamanders.
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Scientists have discovered what’s thought to be the first example of a North American pitcher plant consuming salamanders. Two salamanders can be seen caught in the cup-shaped leaves of one such plant, above
According to integrative biologist Alex Smith, from the University of Guelph, the discovery marks an ‘unexpected and fascinating case of plants eating vertebrates in our backyard.’
Pitcher plants have been observed in Algonquin Park for hundreds of years, yet until now, there’s been no documentation of the carnivorous plant consuming salamanders.
But, in 2017 after then-undergraduate student found a salamander trapped inside a pitcher plant in the park, further observations around a single pond during the fall of 2018 revealed juvenile salamanders caught inside roughly one in five plants.
The captured amphibians were each roughly the size of a human finger, and some plants even contained multiple victims at the same time.
According to the researchers, the salamanders may have wandered into the plant’s mouth while chasing insect prey.
Or, they may have been attempting to escape predators themselves.
In any case, those that got caught in the pitcher plant were met with a gruesome fate.
These plants use digestive enzymes to break down anything that gets caught within their leaves, which form a cup-like shape and fill up with water.
And, death doesn’t come quickly.
In 2017 after then-undergraduate student found a salamander trapped inside a pitcher plant in the park,