The Coolest Carnivorous Toilet Plant You'll See This Week N. rapah pitchers have huge orifices, but they also grow large concave lids held at an angle of about 90 degrees away from the orifice. The inside of these lids are covered with glands that exude huge amounts of nectar. Most importantly, the distance from the front of the pitcher's mouth to the glands corresponds exactly to the head to body length of mountain tree shrews.
The shrew perches on the plant to lick nectar from the "lid" and on most occasions it poops into the conveniently positioned toilet bowl to mark its territory. [...] This toilet bowl system is so effective that the plant satisfies almost all its nutritional needs from the shrew feces.
Starting the countdown until some furry couple cosplays as this at a con.
(Appropriately enough, my captcha for that comment was "whimpers one".)
I think I get it... The shrew is the unwitting "top," and the plant is a copro(phagic)philiac.
Can't wait for the "two pitcher plants, one shrew" video.
Shouldn't that be "2shrews1pitcher"?
Ya see, that's the beauty of it...
There's two containers this time (cup/pitcher) that are doing the poo eating by way of one shrew/girl. Granted, they're putting their nectar, instead of their feces, into the shrew, but it comes out of the shrew in its feces. Right?
...
I guess it turned out to be one of those jokes you have to explain.
*hangs head*
is a nice followup. Symbiotic life between ants and carnivorous plant: http://discovermagazine.com/2001/oct/featplants/
Theft of food!
this totally trumps composting toilets. can we genetically tinker with these plants to work for us, instead?
Man, I been sittin' on the plant for an hour.
I for one, welcome our ice cream dispensing toilet overlords.
That link doesn't quite work (anymore), the address is /2010/03/11/ instead.