I saw an interesting toy at Target the other day, Backyard Safari's Venus Fly Trap. Sadly, the toy wasn't made because Venus Flytraps are cool plants, but is instead an interesting looking insect catcher. Supposedly you place bait in the bottom and insects fly in, and some sort of motion sensor closes the trap.
In actual Venus flytrap plants (Dionaea muscipula), the traps are modified leaves. They know to close and catch their insect prey by trigger hairs (trichomes) on the inside of the traps. Not just one touch will do it, to distinguish living prey the trichomes must be touched in succession before the trap actually closes. Carnivorous plants in general catch insects because they live in nutrient poor locations, like bogs. The insects they catch and digest provided them with much needed nitrogen. The animated gif to the left (that I found on wikipedia) shows a developing trap in time lapse (click to watch).
Oh, and while I'm on the topic, it appears there is also a Pokémon modeled after a Venus Flytrap, Carnivine. According to the Pokémon website, Carnivine "attracts prey with its sweet-smelling saliva, then chomps down".
18 February 2008
Venus Flytrap
11 December 2007
Coelacanths are everywhere
...and that's a good thing.
So, I was going to write a blog entry all about the coelacanth-based Pokémon, Relicanth. But when researching the coelacanth, I realized they show up a lot of places in the media (or at least in cartoon form).
Coelacanths first appear in the fossil record about 410 million years ago, however no fossils of coelacanth species were found after the end of the Cretaceous period (about 65 million years ago). So, scientists thought the coelacanth was extinct. That was until 1938 when the coelacanth was first rediscovered in a fishing haul off the coast of Africa (and is now often called a living fossil). Unknown to me, until I started writing this entry, there are actually two species of coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae found along the western edge of the Indian ocean and L. menadoensis which live in Indonesia (the species was only named in 1999).
Keep reading for more instances of cartoon coelacanths...
There are several video games that feature coelacaths. One of which is Nintendo's Animal Crossing which allows you to catch them while fishing (Dinofish.com has a video of this you can watch here). Dinofish also has an extensive list of other coelacanth sightings in the media (under the conservation tab) as does the wikipedia article if you feel like exploring further.
Thus concludes our tour of pop culture coelacanth sightings. I hope you had fun.
14 November 2007
Waterlily-based Pokémon
Following up on my previous post about Pokémon, I think I found the original source of information for the article I posted over on this website.
This site also talks about a Pokémon that I instantly loved as someone who studies aquatic plants -- it is based on the genus Victoria, a member of the waterlily family Nymphaeaceae, and found in calm waters of the Amazon river basin in South America.
So, I present Lotad (and Lombre).
(more biology below the fold)
The Legendary Pokémon site says the name Lotad probably comes from combining Lotus and lily pad. But see that very pronounced upturned edge? It has to be a Victoria. The official description of Lotad on the Pokémon website confirms this:"It looks like an aquatic plant and serves as a ferry to Pokémon that can't swim."
The history of people sitting on giant Victoria leaves goes back to the Victorian era, when this was a common plant in cultivation in showy water gardens.
Like these kids sitting upon leaves at the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1906.
Yes, this was before Photoshop, the leaves really are this large!
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There are many more Pokémon to discuss, so I think this might be a regular feature on this blog.
And I modify my statement earlier, if you let your kids know that Pokémon are based on actual species, I think this game/cartoon franchise can be very educational. I really need to start watching the cartoon!
07 November 2007
Entomological origins of Pokémon
I just read a pretty interesting blog entry about Pokémon, which turns out is a series first started by an amateur entomologist. I can't say I ever paid much attention to the Pokémon themselves while my sister used to watch the cartoon, but it turns out that some Pokémon undergo metamorphosis in biologically real ways. I'll post some pictures below, taken from the Pokémon website.
For those who didn't read the blog entry I linked to, the cicada nymph-like Pokémon (Nincada) later emerges as an adult cicada (Ninjask) and its molted skin (Shedinja).
Who knew that Pokémon could also be (somewhat) educational?
