Some plants grow in places where the soil is very poor. To get extra nutrients, these plants dissolve insects and absorb their bodies. These include the Venus flytrap, a plant you can see in a garden centre.

The Venus flytrap is a small plant with four to seven leaves. Each leaf ends in a pair of leaflets hinged at the middle and which will form the trap. The edges of these leaflets can release a sticky substance which will dissolve insects.

When an insect lands on them, hairs on the leaf surfaces are pressed and this makes the leaves close together very rapidly. The trapping mechanism can tell between a living insect and dust or raindrops. The leaflets of the trap snap shut in about one-tenth of a second. The edges of the leaflets are fringed by stiff hairs which act like the bars of a prison cell.

The gaps in the bars allow small insects to escape, as only large insects are worth digesting.